Response Rates and Nonresponse Bias Among 20 Years of Pediatrician Surveys.

Objectives: Our objectives were to examine the following: physician survey response rates across a 20-year period; the impact of a token incentive on response rates; whether survey nonresponse bias is present and if it is associated with response rate; and the impact of a token incentive on nonresponse bias.

Methods: We utilized data from 68 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) pediatrician surveys from 2000 to 2019 and an AAP administrative database, which included information for both respondents and non-respondents (target sample). Linear regression examined response rates over time.

Early Childhood Screening Practices and Barriers: A National Survey of Primary Care Pediatricians.

Background And Objectives: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends screening during the first 3 years of life for developmental risk/delay, maternal depression, and social determinants of health (SDOH) using standardized tools. Adoption of these guidelines has been gradual, and barriers to screening are as varied as pediatric practices are themselves.

Methods: We analyzed 2019 American Academy of Pediatrics Periodic Survey data.

An illustration of model agnostic explainability methods applied to environmental data.

Historically, two primary criticisms statisticians have of machine learning and deep neural models is their lack of uncertainty quantification and the inability to do inference (i.e., to explain what inputs are important).

A dependent Bayesian Dirichlet process model for source apportionment of particle number size distribution.

The relationship between particle exposure and health risks has been well established in recent years. Particulate matter (PM) is made up of different components coming from several sources, which might have different level of toxicity. Hence, identifying these sources is an important task in order to implement effective policies to improve air quality and population health.

Pediatrician-Reported Injury Prevention Anticipatory Guidance by Patient Age Group.

Objective: Unintentional injuries remain a leading cause of death for children and adolescents older than 1 year. Injury prevention has long been a cornerstone of anticipatory guidance. Previous studies have established the sustained efficacy of injury prevention anticipatory guidance in pediatric primary care.

Why Your Doctor Didn't Go to Class: Student Culture, High-Stakes Testing, and Novel Coupling Configurations in an Allopathic Medical School.

A clear pattern has emerged in allopathic medical schools across the United States: Most medical students have stopped going to class. While this trend among students is well known in medical education, few studies to date have examined the underlying sociological mechanisms driving this collective behavior or how these dynamics are related to institutional change in medical education. Drawing on 33 in-depth interviews with medical students in an allopathic medical school, we examine medical student culture and its role in shaping how medical students make sense of the institutionalized licensing requirement of the United States Medical Licensing Exam.

Ineffectiveness of Paramedic Naloxone Administration as a Standalone Metric for Community Opioid Overdoses and the Increasing Use of Naloxone by Community Members.

Introduction: With Canada's growing opioid crisis, many communities are attempting to monitor cases in real-time. Paramedic Naloxone Administration (PNA) has become a common metric for monitoring overdoses. We evaluate whether the use of naloxone administration counts represents an effective monitoring tool for community opioid overdoses.

The Oakville Oil Refinery Closure and Its Influence on Local Hospitalizations: A Natural Experiment on Sulfur Dioxide.

: An oil refinery in Oakville, Canada, closed over 2004⁻2005, providing an opportunity for a natural experiment to examine the effects on oil refinery-related air pollution and residents' health. : Environmental and health data were collected for the 16 years around the refinery closure. Toronto (2.

Air Health Trend Indicator: Association between Short-Term Exposure to Ground Ozone and Circulatory Hospitalizations in Canada for 17 Years, 1996⁻2012.

The Air Health Trend Indicator is designed to estimate the public health risk related to short-term exposure to air pollution and to detect trends in the annual health risks. Daily ozone, circulatory hospitalizations and weather data for 24 cities (about 54% of Canadians) for 17 years (1996⁻2012) were used. This study examined three circulatory causes: ischemic heart disease (IHD, 40% of cases), other heart disease (OHD, 31%) and cerebrovascular disease (CEV, 14%).

The use of chained two-point clusters for the examination of associations of air pollution with health conditions.

Objectives: There are a few accepted and intensively applied statistical methods used to study associations of ambient air pollution with health conditions. Among the most popular methods applied to assess short term air health effects are case-crossover (using events) and time-series methodologies (using counts). A few other techniques for studying counts of events have been proposed, including the Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM).

Vitamin D, tuberculin skin test conversion, and latent tuberculosis in Mongolian school-age children: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled feasibility trial.

Background: By modulating immune function, vitamin D might increase innate immunity and inhibit the growth of initial bacterial invasion and protect against tuberculosis infection.

Objective: We examined the effect of vitamin D supplementation on tuberculin skin test (TST) conversion.

Design: A double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted in 120 Mongol schoolchildren.

Effects of FTY720 and rapamycin on inflammation in taurocholate-induced acute pancreatitis in the rat.

Objectives: This study aimed at T-cell inhibition by immunosuppressants to reduce cell damage and improve the course of severe acute pancreatitis (SAP).

Methods: A taurocholate-induced SAP was used and 5 groups were compared: (1) rapamycin + FTY720, (2) rapamycin, (3) FTY720, (4) cortisol, and (5) control: sodium chloride. Drugs were applied intravenously at SAP induction; 6 hours later, rats were killed.

Do surface DC-shifts affect epileptic hippocampal EEG activity?

Despite considerable research on EEG-feedback of slow cortical potentials (SCPs) for seizure control in epilepsy, the underlying mechanisms and the direct effects on intracerebral pathological activity within the focal area remain unclear. Intrahippocampal EEG recordings from four patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and implanted electrodes were analyzed with regard to spike activity and power in 10 frequency bands (0.5-148Hz) during SCP feedback based on surface recordings (position Cz).

Disease- and treatment-related effects on the pituitary-gonadal functional axis: a study in men with epilepsy.

The consideration of the patient's gender has become an established practice in the choice of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) for the treatment of epilepsy. This study was undertaken to confirm that temporal lobe epilepsy and the use of hepatic enzyme-inducing AEDs, have a negative effect on sex hormones in men. We calculated the testosterone (T)/luteinizing hormone (LH) ratio to reflect the effects of epilepsy or its treatment on the most important androgen and its pituitary control hormone.

[Which factors have an impact on levetiracetam serum concentrations? An analysis in 163 patients with epilepsy].

We evaluated factors possibly influencing serum concentrations of levetiracetam (LEV-SC). The study included 163 patients with epilepsy (91 men, 72 women; mean age 39.6 years).

The effect of synacthen on acute necrotizing pancreatitis in rats.

Objectives: This study investigates the hypothesis that an adrenocorticotropic hormone-analog therapy may ameliorate relative adrenal insufficiency in the early phase of acute necrotizing pancreatitis (NP) by boosting endogenous glucocorticoid production.

Methods: Forty Wistar rats with taurocholate-induced NP were divided into 5 groups: the first group received low-dose Synacthen (0.5 mg/kg); the second, high-dose Synacthen (5mg/kg); the third,low-dose cortisol (10 mg/kg); the fourth, high-dose cortisol (100 mg/kg); and the fifth, the control group, received no treatment.

Which patients become seizure free with antiepileptic drugs? An observational study in 821 patients with epilepsy.

Objectives: Analysis of factors influencing seizure outcome in antiepileptic drug treatment of epilepsy.

Patients And Methods: Retrospective analysis of 500 patients with complete seizure control and 321 patients with refractory epilepsy (mean ages 33.3 and 32.

Correlation between EEG rhythms during sleep: surface versus mediotemporal EEG.

We compared surface and intracranial electroencephalogram recordings of mediotemporal structures. These structures are critically involved in declarative memory formation and memory consolidation during sleep. As memory processing is suggested to involve the interplay between fast and slow oscillations, we hypothesized different correlations between frequency bands in surface versus mediotemporal electroencephalogram recordings.

Human neocortical and hippocampal near-DC shifts are interconnected.

Hippocampal DC shifts have been observed under various physiological and pathological conditions. Here, we studied the interconnection of slow shifts (0.01 Hz high-pass) in surface EEG and hippocampal shifts as emerging in an event-related EEG biofeedback paradigm.

Rhinal-hippocampal connectivity determines memory formation during sleep.

Compared with waking state attention, volition and semantic processing play a minor role during sleep. Thus, investigating declarative memory formation during sleep may allow us to isolate mnemonic core processes. The most feasible approach to memory formation during sleep is the analysis of dream memories.