Dofetilide use is not associated with increased mortality in patients with left ventricular hypertrophy and atrial fibrillation.

Background: Left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is common in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), however, many antiarrhythmic drugs (AADs) are contraindicated. US guidelines recommend avoiding pure class III antiarrhythmics such as dofetilide in patients with significant LVH due to concern for an increased risk of death, however, clinical data is lacking. We sought to determine if dofetilide use was associated with increased mortality in patients with LVH.

Does education modify the association between depression and cardiovascular health? (from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey, 2013-14 and 2015-16).

Study Objective: Depression and education have associations with cardiovascular health. We hypothesized educational attainment would modify the association between depression and cardiovascular health.

Design: We used the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), a validated instrument to categorize individuals as having minimal (0-4), moderate (5-9) or severe (≥10) depression.

Direct-to-consumer advertising for robotic surgery.

Direct-to-consumer advertising is described as the promotion or marketing of a product directly from the seller to the consumer. We examined whether websites on Google™ provided clinical data or referenced peer-reviewed publications as part of their advertising in relation to the urological procedures. We created an electronic database for clinical direct-to-consumer advantages and/or disadvantages using the search terms "robotic sacrocolpopexy", "robotic prostatectomy", "robotic nephrectomy" and "robotic cystectomy" on the first 3 pages of Google™.

A Single Error Is One Too Many: The Forced Choice Recognition Trial of the CVLT-II as a Measure of Performance Validity in Adults with TBI.

Objective: The Forced Choice Recognition (FCR) trial of the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II) was designed to serve as a performance validity test (PVT). The present study was designed to compare the classification accuracy of a more liberal alternative (≤15) to the de facto FCR cutoff (≤14).

Method: The classification accuracy of the two cutoffs was computed in reference to psychometrically defined invalid performance, across various criterion measures, in a sample of 104 adults with TBI clinically referred for neuropsychological assessment.

Aggregating validity indicators embedded in Conners' CPT-II outperforms individual cutoffs at separating valid from invalid performance in adults with traumatic brain injury.

Continuous performance tests (CPT) provide a useful paradigm to assess vigilance and sustained attention. However, few established methods exist to assess the validity of a given response set. The present study examined embedded validity indicators (EVIs) previously found effective at dissociating valid from invalid performance in relation to well-established performance validity tests in 104 adults with TBI referred for neuropsychological testing.