Publications by authors named "Britz J"

Background: This study aimed to analyze the incidence of delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) and outcome stratified by age in patients who suffered aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Methods: A cohort study with patients from Christ the Redeemer Hospital from 2014 to 2020, with 359 patients separated into 2 groups, 48 of them aged under 40 years and 311 aged 40 years or over.

Results: In patients under 40 years of age, DCI was found in 81.

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Objectives: Guidelines recommend addressing health behaviors, mental health, and social needs in primary care. However, it is unclear how often patients want support to address these risks. As part of a randomized trial comparing enhanced care planning versus usual care, we evaluated what risks patients wanted to address.

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Background/objectives: Although the embodiment of action-related language is well-established in the mother tongue (L1), less is known about the embodiment of a second language (L2) acquired later in life through formal instruction. We used the high temporal resolution of ERPs and topographic ERP analyses to compare embodiment in L1 and L2 and to investigate whether L1 and L2 are embodied with different strengths at different stages of linguistic processing.

Methods: Subjects were presented with action-related and non-action-related verbs in a silent reading task.

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Introduction: The 1985 Hames Consortium convened family medicine researchers to identify outstanding questions in their practice.

Method: In this descriptive review, we collected, codified, and analyzed available literature to describe the availability of evidence to answer these questions.

Results: Of 136 total questions, researchers rated 33 questions as not at all answered (24.

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Article Synopsis
  • AI is expected to significantly influence family medicine, with expert insights guiding its integration into the specialty.
  • Two articles explore AI's performance on the American Board of Family Medicine In-Training Examination and its broader implications.
  • Additional articles cover clinical updates on various medical conditions, as well as issues related to the profession of family medicine, including job negotiations for women physicians and definitions of primary care.
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  • Creatine transporter (CTD) and guanidinoacetate methyltransferase (GAMT) deficiencies cause serious brain issues like intellectual disabilities and seizures, with no effective treatment for CTD and a strict diet plus supplements needed for GAMT.
  • A core outcome set (COS) has been developed in collaboration with caregivers and health professionals to determine key outcomes for assessing CTD and GAMT in clinical trials, including factors like cognitive functioning and emotional regulation.
  • This COS aims to prioritize patient and caregiver perspectives to improve the drug development process, enhance trial comparability, reduce bias, and optimize resource use in research for these conditions.
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Variations in interoceptive signals from the baroreceptors (BRs) across the cardiac and respiratory cycle can modulate cortical excitability and so affect awareness. It remains debated at what stages of processing they affect awareness-related event-related potentials (ERPs) in different sensory modalities. We investigated the influence of the cardiac (systole/diastole) and the respiratory (inhalation/exhalation) phase on awareness-related ERPs.

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Quite a lineup showcasing JABFM's emphasis on research and information for family medicine to improve patients' lives. Articles cover many topics: telemedicine, a clinical decision support tool, control of cardiovascular risk factors, opioid dose reduction, cancer survivorship care, patient engagement with case management/navigation, primary care physician capacity and usual source of care, marketing practices of Medicare Advantage programs, review articles (new diabetes medicine and treatment CHF with reduced ejection fraction), and more.

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  • Unhealthy alcohol use (UAU) is a major health issue, being the fourth leading preventable cause of death in the US, with recommendations for routine screening in primary care that are not widely implemented.
  • A study tested the effectiveness of practice facilitation—providing tailored education and support—in improving UAU screening and interventions compared to usual care in primary care settings in Virginia.
  • Results showed significant improvements in screening rates and brief interventions in practices that received the facilitation, demonstrating that such support can enhance the delivery of care for alcohol misuse.
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Introduction: Unhealthy alcohol use increases the risk for and exacerbation of chronic health conditions. As such, screening, prevention, and management of unhealthy alcohol use is especially critical to improving health outcomes for patients with multiple chronic health conditions. It is unclear to what extent multiple chronic condition status is a barrier to screening for unhealthy alcohol use in the primary care setting.

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Background: Head elevation is recommended as a tier zero measure to decrease high intracranial pressure (ICP) in neurocritical patients. However, its quantitative effects on cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP), jugular bulb oxygen saturation (SjvO), brain tissue partial pressure of oxygen (PbtO), and arteriovenous difference of oxygen (AVDO) are uncertain. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of head elevation on ICP, CPP, SjvO, PbtO, and AVDO among patients with acute brain injury.

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This issue highlights changes in medical care delivery since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and features research to advance the delivery of primary care. Several articles report on the effectiveness of telehealth, including its use for hospital follow-up, medication abortion, management of diabetes, and as a potential tool for reducing health disparities. Other articles detail innovations in clinical practice, from the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to a validated simple risk score that can support outpatient triage decisions for patients with COVID-19.

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This issue highlights climate change, its effects on patients, and actions clinicians can take to make a difference for their patients and communities. The issue also includes several reports on current trends in family physician practice patterns and the influence of practice structure. Four articles focus on controlled or illicit substances.

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Introduction: Practice-based research networks (PBRNs) improve primary care by addressing issues that matter to clinicians. Building trust between researchers and care teams is essential to this process, which often requires visiting practices to cultivate relationships and perform research activities. However, in a recent study using practice facilitation to improve the delivery of a preventive service, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted us to convert all planned facilitation from an in-person to virtual format.

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Background: Chronic disruption of the circadian timing system, often reflected as a loss of restful sleep, also includes myriad other pathophysiological effects.

Objective: The current study examined how chronic circadian disruption (CD) could contribute to pathology and rate of progression in the AβPP/PS1 mouse model of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Methods: A chronic CD was imposed until animals reached 6 or 12 months of age in AβPP/PS1 and C57BL/6J control mice.

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Background: Primary care is the foundation of health care, resulting in longer lives and improved equity. Primary care was the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic public response and essential for access to care. Yet primary care faces substantial structural and systemic challenges.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted to explore how a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy at a South African university affected health science students' acceptance of the vaccine, primarily focusing on the reasons behind their hesitancy.
  • The research involved semi-structured interviews with 10 students, which revealed that individual and contextual factors significantly influenced their views on vaccination, highlighting barriers that outweighed perceived benefits.
  • The findings emphasize the need for further strategies and collaboration with stakeholders to tackle misinformation and enhance education about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccination among students.
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Theories of embodied cognition postulate that language processing activates similar sensory-motor structures as when interacting with the environment. Only little is known about the neural substrate of embodiment in a foreign language (L2) as compared to the mother tongue (L1). In this fMRI study, we investigated embodiment of motor and non-motor action verbs in L1 and L2 including 31 late bilinguals.

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Over the last decade, EEG resting-state microstate analysis has evolved from a niche existence to a widely used and well-accepted methodology. The rapidly increasing body of empirical findings started to yield overarching patterns of associations of biological and psychological states and traits with specific microstate classes. However, currently, this cross-referencing among apparently similar microstate classes of different studies is typically done by "eyeballing" of printed template maps by the individual authors, lacking a systematic procedure.

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Microstates represent electroencephalographic (EEG) activity as a sequence of switching, transient, metastable states. Growing evidence suggests the useful information on brain states is to be found in the higher-order temporal structure of these sequences. Instead of focusing on transition probabilities, here we propose "Microsynt", a method designed to highlight higher-order interactions that form a preliminary step towards understanding the syntax of microstate sequences of any length and complexity.

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Background: Recruiting underrepresented people and communities in research is essential for generalizable findings. Ensuring representative participants can be particularly challenging for practice-level dissemination and implementation trials. Novel use of real-world data about practices and the communities they serve could promote more equitable and inclusive recruitment.

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Objectives: To help better control chronic conditions we need to address root causes of poor health like unhealthy behaviors, mental health, and social needs. However, addressing these needs in primary care is difficult. One solution may be connecting patients with a navigator for support creating a personal care goal.

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Purpose: Primary care is the foundation of the health care workforce and the only part that extends life and improves health equity. Previous research on the geographic and specialty distribution of physicians has relied on the American Medical Association's Masterfile, but these data have limitations that overestimate the workforce.

Methods: We present a pragmatic, systematic, and more accurate method for identifying primary care physicians using the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) and the Virginia All-Payer Claims Database (VA-APCD).

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