Background: Colonoscopy is the gold standard for lower gastrointestinal diagnostics. The procedure is invasive, and its demand is high, resulting in long waiting times. Colon capsule endoscopy (CCE) is a procedure that uses a video capsule to investigate the colon, meaning that it can be carried out in a person's own home.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In patients without COVID-19, dysnatremia is associated with mortality. These relationships are not well established in patients with COVID-19. We tested the hypotheses that patients with COVID-19 were more likely to have dysnatremia than those without COVID-19 and that, among those with COVID-19, dysnatremia is associated with mortality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCOVID-19 can cause acute kidney injury and may cause or exacerbate chronic kidney diseases, including glomerular diseases. SARS-CoV-2 infection of kidney cells has been reported, but it remains unclear if viral infection of kidney cells causes disease. The most important causes of kidney injury in patients with COVID-19 include impaired renal perfusion and immune dysregulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: The aim of this work was to evaluate the performance of colon capsule endoscopy (CCE) in a lower gastrointestinal diagnostic care pathway.
Method: This large multicentre prospective clinical evaluation recruited symptomatic patients (patients requiring investigation of symptoms suggestive of colorectal pathology) and surveillance patients (patients due to undergo surveillance colonoscopy). Patients aged 18 years or over were invited to participate and undergo CCE by a secondary-care clinician if they met the referral criteria for a colonoscopy.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disproportionately impacts patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), especially those with kidney failure requiring replacement therapy (KFRT). Patients with KFRT have increased risk of developing COVID-19, and though initial reports suggested that mortality of these patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) setting is prohibitively high, those studies suffered from significant limitations. Subject of Review: The Study of the Treatment and Outcomes in Critically Ill Patients With COVID-19 (STOP-COVID) is a multicenter cohort study that enrolled adults with COVID-19 admitted to ICUs in 68 medical centers across the USA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Opin Nephrol Hypertens
March 2020
Purpose Of Review: Vitamin D deficiency is common in patients with kidney disease and many patients receive vitamin D supplementation. Several large, well-designed clinical trials have been published in the last few years evaluating the effects of vitamin D supplementation on important outcomes for patients with kidney disease including effects on cardiovascular disease, secondary hyperparathyroidism, and kidney disease progression.
Recent Findings: Several negative trials have been published showing no effect of cholecalciferol supplementation on cardiovascular events, kidney disease progression, and albuminuria.
Background: Rhabdomyolysis is a pathologic condition in which intracellular muscle constituents leak into the blood circulation. It is usually caused by muscle trauma. "Spinning" is an indoor form of cycling where participants use a special stationary exercise bicycle with a weighted flywheel and undergo high-intensity cycling classes focusing on endurance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Electric stimulation (E-stim) has been found to be an effective treatment in improving wound healing rates. However, the wound healing trajectory and its related predictors for complete wound closure (CWC) have not been reported with E-stim treatment.
Materials And Methods: This was a retrospective study.
Objective: Current practice precludes compression in patients with wounds and reduced arterial flow; however, this treatment may reduce edema and vascular resistance, thus improving distal circulation. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of compression on skin perfusion pressure (SPP), edema, and ankle range of motion.
Design: This was a quasi-experimental time series.
Management of chronic wounds remains unsatisfactory in terms of treatment cost and time required for complete wound closure (CWC).This study aimed to calculate the healing rates, estimated cost, and time required for CWC in wounds; compare estimated wound care costs between healing and nonhealing wounds; and compare cost effectiveness between venous leg ulcer (VLU) and non-VLU.This was a retrospective cohort study performed at a physical therapy (PT) wound care clinic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough Western medical acupuncture (WMA) is commonly practised in the UK, a particular approach called dry needling (DN) is becoming increasingly popular in other countries. The legitimacy of the use of DN by conventional non-physician healthcare professionals is questioned by acupuncturists. This article describes the ongoing debate over the practice of DN between physical therapists and acupuncturists, with a particular emphasis on the USA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWound dehiscence is the separation of a wound along surgical sutures. A 57-year-old, otherwise healthy mechanic presented with a large open wound of >1 month duration on his left hand. His wound had dehisced after treatment that involved cleansing, surgical sutures, and oral antibiotics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMed Hypotheses
October 2015
The pathophysiology of the chronicity and non-healing status of wounds remains unknown. This paper presents the following hypothesis: abnormal patterns of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFRs) are the culprits of wound chronicity and non-healing. More specifically, for patients with poor circulation, the decreased VEGFR-2 level is the cause of poor wound healing; for patients with non-compromised circulation, for example, patients with concurrent chronic wounds and active autoimmune diseases, the increased VEGFR-1 level is related to the non-healing status of wounds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNursing and healthcare literature about foot care focuses predominantly on people who have diabetes. There is a lack of clarity about which health and social care professionals should provide foot care to patients who can no longer manage to carry out this activity of daily living but do not have diabetes. This article explains why patients may no longer be able to look after their own feet and aims to give health professionals guidance on foot problems, assessment and care, and advise them on when it is appropriate to refer patients for specialist advice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Treat Options Neurol
January 2015
The management of patients with large territory ischemic strokes and the subsequent development of malignant brain edema and increased intracranial pressure is a significant challenge in modern neurology and neurocritical care. These patients are at high risk of subsequent neurologic decline and are best cared for in an intensive care unit or a comprehensive stroke center with access to neurosurgical support. Risks include hemorrhagic conversion, herniation, poor functional outcome, and death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOstomy Wound Manage
January 2013
In East Asian countries, oriental medicine (OM) has been used for thousands of years to manage a wide variety of chronic wounds, but in western countries the role of OM in wound care remains to be established. To summarize current practices and available evidence of OM in the management of chronic wounds, a search of Chinese and English databases was conducted and summarized with an emphasis on randomized controlled trials, clinical trials, and meta-analyses of topical and systemic OM treatments. Hundreds of reports were identified, mostly in the Chinese literature, but few randomized controlled clinical studies have been conducted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnalysis of the proteomic profile of pressure ulcers over time is a critical step in the identification of biomarkers of healing or nonhealing in pressure ulcers. The wound fluid from 32 subjects with 42 pressure ulcers was evaluated over 6 weeks at 15 time points. Samples specific to both the interior and the periphery of the wound bed were collected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNew quaternary bimetallic nitride halides and the first examples of quintinary nitride mixed halides have been synthesised in the phase system Ca - Sr - N - Cl - Br. The variation in structure with composition has been investigated by powder X-ray and powder neutron diffraction techniques. All compounds crystallise in the R-3m spacegroup, with the anti-alpha-NaFeO(2) structure.
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