Publications by authors named "Chua T"

Objectives: The present study aimed to assess the factors associated with pet owners' expectations for receiving antibiotics for their pet dogs and/or cats and the factors associated with pets (dogs and/or cats) receiving antibiotics during non-routine veterinary clinic consultations in Singapore.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on consenting pet owners who attended 16 veterinary clinics in Singapore, between March and December 2023. An online survey measured participants' knowledge of antibiotic use, prior antibiotic use experience, expectation for antibiotics and receipt of antibiotics during the last non-routine clinic consultation for their pets.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The Singapore integrated 24-hour activity guide for children and adolescents was introduced to promote healthy lifestyle behaviors, including physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep, and diet, to enhance metabolic health and prevent noncommunicable diseases. To support the dissemination and implementation of these recommendations, a user-friendly online resource was created to help children and adolescents adopt these behaviors in Singapore.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the acceptability of the online resource in the adoption of healthier lifestyle behaviors, and the change in the users' behaviors with the use of this online resource.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Numerous human diseases, including those caused by viruses like Nipah virus and SARS-CoV, can be traced back to bats as their origin. Malaysia, notably Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo Island, is home to a rich diversity of bats that serve as hosts for various viruses. This comprehensive review represents the inaugural exploration of viruses found in Malaysian bats, as documented in scientific journals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background Context: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common comorbidity among patients undergoing spinal fusion for adult spinal deformity (ASD) surgery. An elevated Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and elevated postoperative glucose have been shown to increase the risk of complications following spine and other orthopedic surgeries; however, data is limited for ASD.

Purpose: To investigate glycemic control and ASD surgery to inform surgical decision making, medical optimization, and patient education.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Study Design: Retrospective propensity-score matched, case control study at 2 academic tertiary care centers.

Objective: To assess the effect of PE on (1) intraoperative blood loss, defined as conventional estimates of blood loss (EBL) and hemoglobin mass loss, and (2) secondary outcomes in patients with spinal metastases from hypervascular histologies.

Background Context: Preoperative embolization (PE) intends to reduce blood loss during surgery for spinal metastases of hypervascular tumors such as renal cell carcinoma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Cases of H5 highly pathogenic avian influenza are increasing, with a high mortality rate of 60% in humans, although no human infections have been reported in Malaysian Borneo despite circulation in local poultry and migratory birds.
  • Deforestation in coastal areas may bring humans closer to these migratory birds, raising the risk of zoonotic spillover events, where diseases jump from animals to humans.
  • A recent survey of over 10,000 individuals found evidence of exposure to H5 viruses, indicating potential human contact with the virus, and emphasizes the need for enhanced surveillance of cross-species pathogen transmission in areas where humans and migratory birds interact.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: The preschool years are a critical period for developing cognitive abilities such as reasoning, memorization, comprehension, quick thinking, and problem-solving. Sedentary behavior (SB) is known to be associated with cognitive development in preschool children. However, limited research has focused on how different types of SB (active, passive) and sedentary patterns (bouts, breaks) affect preschool children's cognitive abilities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Generalized zero-shot learning (GZSL) aims to recognize unseen categories by leveraging knowledge from seen categories, but faces challenges due to mismatches between visual features and semantic attributes.
  • The issues arise mainly from attribute diversity (differences in the specificity of attributes) and instance diversity (variations in visual examples that share the same attributes), leading to ambiguity in visual representation.
  • To address these challenges, a new network called PSVMA+ is introduced, which adapts visual and semantic elements at multiple levels of granularity and improves feature learning by integrating different levels effectively, resulting in better performance in identifying unseen categories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In the age of automation and technology, incorporating empathy in pre-licensure healthcare education is essential in providing empathic care to patients and co-workers. This can be achieved through interprofessional education (IPE).

Objective: To consolidate evidence to evaluate interprofessional education's impact on pre-licensure healthcare students' empathy levels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Study Design: Retrospective study.

Objective: To compare the true cost between posterior cervical laminectomy and fusion and cervical laminoplasty using time driven activity-based costing methodology.

Summary Of Background Data: Cervical laminoplasty (LP) and posterior cervical laminectomy with fusion (LF) are effective procedures for treating cervical myelopathy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Poor mood states pose the most frequent mental health, creating a considerable burden to global public health. Sedentary behavior is an essential factor affecting mood states, however, previous measures to reduce sedentary time in Chinese young adults have focused only on increasing physical activity (PA). Sedentary, PA, and sleep make up a person's day from the standpoint of time use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cardiocerebral infarction (CCI), which is concomitant with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and acute ischemic stroke (AIS), is a rare but severe presentation. However, there are few data on CCI, and the treatment options are uncertain. We investigated the characteristics and outcomes of CCI compared with AMI or AIS alone.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Patients requiring coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) have multiple co-morbidities which need to be considered in totality when determining surgical risks. The objective of this study is to evaluate short-term and long-term mortality rates of CABG surgery, as well as to identify the most significant risk factors for mortality after isolated CABG.

Methods: All patients with complete dataset who underwent isolated CABG between January 2008 and December 2017 were included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The ODYSSEY OUTCOMES trial evaluated the impact of alirocumab, a drug that targets cholesterol, compared to a placebo on major cardiovascular events in patients with recent acute coronary syndrome, involving over 18,000 participants.
  • - Results showed that while both men and women experienced significant reductions in cholesterol levels and cardiovascular events with alirocumab, women had higher initial cholesterol and lipoprotein(a) levels and more co-morbidities.
  • - The study concluded that alirocumab improves cardiovascular outcomes post-acute coronary syndrome for both sexes, especially in individuals with higher baseline levels of lipoprotein(a).
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Most pretest probability (PTP) tools for obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD) were Western -developed. The most appropriate PTP models and the contribution of coronary artery calcium score (CACS) in Asian populations remain unknown. In a mixed Asian cohort, we compare 5 PTP models: local assessment of the heart (LAH), CAD Consortium (CAD2), risk factor-weighted clinical likelihood, the American Heart Association/American College of Cardiology and the European Society of Cardiology PTP and 3 extended versions of these models that incorporated CACS: LAH, CAD2, and the CACS-clinical likelihood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: In 2022, the Minister for Health of Singapore launched Healthier SG, a national strategy in championing the shift towards a population health approach.

Method: The Singapore Heart Foundation conducted a series of roundtable discussions, also attended by representatives of the Singapore Cardiac Society and the Chapter of Cardiologists of the Academy of Medicine Singapore. During the meetings, the authors formulated interventions supportive of Healthier SG that specifically aimed to uplift the state of cardiovascular (CV) preventive care in Singapore.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Perinatal depression and anxiety are public health concerns affecting approximately 1 in 10 women in Singapore, with clear evidence of association with various adverse outcomes in mother and child, including low birthweight, preterm birth and negative impact on infant neurodevelopment, temperament and behaviour. A workgroup was formed to develop recommendations to address the perinatal mental health needs of women with depression and anxiety. The approach was broad-based and aimed to incorporate holistic methods that would be readily applicable to the network of care providers supporting childbearing women.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study investigates the effects of different types of physical activity (PA) on the physical fitness (PF) of young children in Japan, with a particular focus on how substituting sedentary behavior (SB) with active behaviors influences PF. We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 1843 participants aged 3-6 years from northeastern Japan. Using triaxial accelerometers, we quantified PA, and PF was assessed via standardized tests.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Using a systematic literature search of original articles published during 2023 in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (GIE) and other high-impact medical and gastroenterology journals, the GIE Editorial Board of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy compiled a list of the top 10 most significant topic areas in general and advanced GI endoscopy during the year. Each GIE Editorial Board member was directed to consider 3 criteria in generating candidate topics-significance, novelty, and impact on global clinical practice-and subject matter consensus was facilitated by the Chair through electronic voting and a meeting of the entire GIE Editorial Board. The 10 identified areas collectively represent advances in the following endoscopic spheres: GI bleeding, endohepatology, endoscopic palliation, artificial intelligence and polyp detection, artificial intelligence beyond the colon, better polypectomy and EMR, how to make endoscopy units greener, high-quality upper endoscopy, endoscopic tissue apposition and closure devices, and endoscopic submucosal dissection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

While pre-training large-scale video-language models (VLMs) has shown remarkable potential for various downstream video-language tasks, existing VLMs can still suffer from certain commonly seen limitations, e.g., coarse-grained cross-modal aligning, under-modeling of temporal dynamics, detached video-language view.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A Background: Technological advancement in the recent years has enabled the application of single photon emission tomography (SPECT) to evaluate myocardial blood flow (MBF). This method offers increased sensitivity in the assessment of coronary health, quantifiable through non-invasive imaging beyond the more conventional methods such as with myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI).

B Aims: To correlate MBF, derived by dynamic SPECT, both global and by coronary territories to the summed stress scores (SSS) on conventional MPI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: This study determined hazard factors and long-term survival rate of total arterial coronary artery bypass graft surgery over 20 years in an extensively large, population-based cohort.

Methods: A total of 2979 patients who underwent isolated CABG from April 1999 to March 2020 were studied in 4 groups- Group-A (bilateral internal mammary artery ± radial artery), Group-B (single internal mammary artery + radial artery ± saphenous vein), Group-C (single internal mammary artery ± saphenous vein; no radial artery), and Group-D (radial artery ± saphenous vein; no internal mammary artery). The study endpoints analysed the correlation between the number and types of grafts with the survival time following isolated CABG surgery.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF