Publications by authors named "Char D"

Hospital patient boarding in emergency departments has reached unprecedented crisis levels over the past 4 years. Boarding and crowding has been demonstrated by prior literature to have adverse effects on patient care as well as increased associated costs. Importantly, the increase in hospital patient boarding has created critical shortcomings in disaster preparedness by limiting the capacity of emergency departments to respond to mass casualty incidents due to space and staffing constraints.

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Objective: To provide an overview of the literature on the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on healthcare disparities in various groups, in relation to social determinants of health (SDOH) and longstanding social disparities.

Design: The Disaster Preparedness and Response Committee of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) addressed the impact of health disparities in disaster planning and response. A workgroup composed of seven physicians with academic and deployment disaster medicine experience was formed.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to evaluate whether protamine administration increases pulmonary artery pressures (PAPs) in patients undergoing specific heart surgeries, like pulmonary artery reconstruction and unifocalization.
  • Conducted as a retrospective study using data from a pediatric heart center, researchers analyzed outcomes after protamine and calcium were administered, revealing significant increases in PAP at intervals post-administration.
  • The findings indicated that protamine led to a notable rise in PAP after surgery, while coadministering calcium did not result in a greater increase.
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Audience: Emergency medicine (EM) residents. This simulation curriculum may also be utilized for senior medical students conducting EM rotations.

Background: Ophthalmologic education represents only a small portion of medical school curriculums and continues to decrease over time, leaving physicians poorly equipped to diagnose and manage eye complaints.

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Importance: Safe integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into clinical settings often requires randomized clinical trials (RCT) to compare AI efficacy with conventional care. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening is at the forefront of clinical AI applications, marked by the first US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) De Novo authorization for an autonomous AI for such use.

Objective: To determine the generalizability of the 7 ethical research principles for clinical trials endorsed by the National Institute of Health (NIH), and identify ethical concerns unique to clinical trials of AI.

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Objectives: To determine if bolus administration of calcium increases pulmonary artery pressures after unifocalization procedures or pulmonary artery reconstruction surgery.

Design: Retrospective cohort study using Stanford University's data warehouse.

Setting: A large pediatric heart center within an academic quaternary care facility.

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PURPOSEValidated and accurate prognostic testing is critical for precision medicine in uveal melanoma (UM). Our aims were to (1) prospectively validate an integrated prognostic classifier combining a 15-gene expression profile (15-GEP) and RNA expression and (2) identify clinical variables that enhance the prognostic accuracy of the 15-GEP/ classifier.MATERIALS AND METHODSThis study included 1,577 patients with UM of the choroid and/or ciliary body who were enrolled in the Collaborative Ocular Oncology Group Study Number 2 (COOG2) and prospectively monitored across 26 North American centers.

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Article Synopsis
  • - This study examined the relationship between clinical/demographic features and the intensity of treatments pediatric patients receive at the end of life (EOL), aiming to create a new classification system for these EOL trajectories.
  • - Conducted at a children's hospital from 2013 to 2021, the research included 1,111 patients aged 0-26, revealing that 85.7% died in-hospital, predominantly within ICUs.
  • - The analysis identified five key EOL trajectories, showing that certain patient characteristics, like recent surgeries or organ transplants, correlated with more aggressive treatments compared to those who had palliative care or were older.
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Artificial intelligence (AI) applications have great potential to enhance perioperative care. This paper explores promising areas for AI in anesthesiology; expertise, stakeholders, and infrastructure for development; and barriers and challenges to implementation.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the potential solutions for disaster healthcare disparities. This paper is the third of a three-part series that was written by the Disaster Healthcare Disparities Workgroup of the American College of Emergency Physicians Disaster Preparedness and Response Committee. The committee conducted a literature review and chose articles most representative and demonstrative of solutions to disaster healthcare disparities found in a past workgroup product.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the potential solutions for disaster healthcare disparities. This paper is the second of a three-part series that was written by the Disaster Healthcare Disparities Workgroup of the American College of Emergency Physicians Disaster Preparedness and Response Committee. The committee conducted a literature review and chose articles most representative and demonstrative of solutions to disaster healthcare disparities found in a past workgroup product.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the potential solutions for disaster healthcare disparities. This paper is the first of a three-part series that was written by the Disaster Healthcare Disparities Workgroup of the American College of Emergency Physicians Disaster Preparedness and Response Committee. The committee workgroup conducted a literature review and chose articles most representative and demonstrative of solutions to disaster healthcare disparities found in a past workgroup product exploring disaster healthcare disparities seen in disaster.

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Background: The current approach to increasing diversity in medical education fails to consider local community demographics when determining medical school matriculation.

Purpose: We propose that medical schools better reflect their surrounding community, both because racially/ethnically concordant physicians have been shown to provide better care and to repair the historical and current racist impacts of these institutions that have criminalized, displaced, and excluded local Black and Brown communities.

Methods And Results: In this study, we used geospatial analysis to determine that medical school enrollments generally fail to reflect their surrounding community, represented as their core-based statistical area, within which the individual medical schools reside.

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Background: Disparities in pediatric heart transplant outcomes based on socioeconomic status (SES) have been previously observed. However, there is a need to reevaluate these associations in contemporary settings with advancements in transplant therapies and increased awareness of health disparities. This retrospective study aims to investigate the relationship between SES and outcomes for pediatric heart transplant patients.

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Importance: More than 80% of patients who present to the emergency department (ED) with acute heart failure (AHF) are hospitalized. With more than 1 million annual hospitalizations for AHF in the US, safe and effective alternatives are needed. Care for AHF in short-stay units (SSUs) may be safe and more efficient than hospitalization, especially for lower-risk patients, but randomized clinical trial data are lacking.

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Health equity is a primary goal of healthcare stakeholders: patients and their advocacy groups, clinicians, other providers and their professional societies, bioethicists, payors and value based care organizations, regulatory agencies, legislators, and creators of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-enabled medical devices. Lack of equitable access to diagnosis and treatment may be improved through new digital health technologies, especially AI/ML, but these may also exacerbate disparities, depending on how bias is addressed. We propose an expanded Total Product Lifecycle (TPLC) framework for healthcare AI/ML, describing the sources and impacts of undesirable bias in AI/ML systems in each phase, how these can be analyzed using appropriate metrics, and how they can be potentially mitigated.

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Anesthetic induction in children can have significant psychological and behavioral impacts. Strategies like premedication or parental presence for induction may reduce distress. In children who require ongoing procedural care into adulthood, like those who receive heart transplants, transitioning from these strategies toward independence may require intermediate steps.

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Family-centered rounding has emerged as the gold standard for inpatient paediatrics rounds due to its association with improved family and staff satisfaction and reduction of harmful errors. Little is known about family-centered rounding in subspecialty paediatric settings, including paediatric acute care cardiology.In this qualitative, single centre study, we conducted semi-structured interviews with providers and caregivers eliciting their attitudes toward family-centered rounding.

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