Outcomes of the modern management approach for locally advanced (T-T) laryngeal cancer: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Our centre (Freeman Hospital, Newcatle Upon Tyne NHS Trust) has favoured primary surgery over chemoradiotherapy for specific advanced laryngeal cancer patients (e.g. large-volume tumours, airway compromise, significant dysphagia, T disease).

Piloting co-developed behaviour change interventions to reduce exposure to air pollution and improve self-reported asthma-related health.

Background: Exposure to air pollution can exacerbate asthma with immediate and long-term health consequences. Behaviour changes can reduce exposure to air pollution, yet its 'invisible' nature often leaves individuals unaware of their exposure, complicating the identification of appropriate behaviour modifications. Moreover, making health behaviour changes can be challenging, necessitating additional support from healthcare professionals.

Computed tomography-based radiomic markers are independent prognosticators of survival in advanced laryngeal cancer: a pilot study.

Objective: Advanced laryngeal cancers are clinically complex; there is a paucity of modern decision-making models to guide tumour-specific management. This pilot study aims to identify computed tomography-based radiomic features that may predict survival and enhance prognostication.

Methods: Pre-biopsy, contrast-enhanced computed tomography scans were assembled from a retrospective cohort ( = 72) with advanced laryngeal cancers (T3 and T4).

"I have to stay inside …": Experiences of air pollution for people with asthma.

Asthma, characterized by airway inflammation, sensitization and constriction, and leading to symptoms including cough and dyspnoea, affects millions of people globally. Air pollution is a known asthma trigger, yet how it is experienced is understudied and how individuals with asthma interact with air quality information and manage exacerbation risks is unclear. This study aimed to explore how people living with asthma in Scotland, UK, experienced and managed their asthma in relation to air pollution.

Personal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) and self-reported asthma-related health.

PM (fine particulate matter ≤2.5 μm in diameter) is a key pollutant that can produce acute asthma exacerbations and longer-term deterioration of respiratory health. Individual exposure to PM is unique and varies across microenvironments.

Airway Injury Caused by Aspiration of Iron Sulfate Pills: A Series of 11 Cases.

It is not widely recognized that iron (ferrous sulfate) pill aspiration causes airway damage. Clinical diagnosis is challenging because patients are often unaware that they have aspirated a pill. The literature on this entity consists mainly of case reports.

MATILDA.FT: A mesoscale simulation package for inhomogeneous soft matter.

In this paper, we announce the public release of a massively parallel, graphics processing unit (GPU)-accelerated software, which is the first to combine both coarse-grained particle simulations and field-theoretic simulations in one simulation package. MATILDA.FT (Mesoscale, Accelerated, Theoretically Informed, Langevin, Dissipative particle dynamics, and Field Theory) was designed from the ground-up to run on CUDA-enabled GPUs with Thrust library acceleration, enabling it to harness the possibility of massive parallelism to efficiently simulate systems on a mesoscopic scale.

Public engagement with air quality data: using health behaviour change theory to support exposure-minimising behaviours.

Exposure to air pollution prematurely kills 7 million people globally every year. Policy measures designed to reduce emissions of pollutants, improve ambient air and consequently reduce health impacts, can be effective, but are generally slow to generate change. Individual actions can therefore supplement policy measures and more immediately reduce people's exposure to air pollution.

Short-term Endoscopic Outcomes of Balloon and Rigid Bronchoplasty in the Management of Benign Subglottic and Tracheal Stenosis.

Background: Endoscopic therapies are firmly established in the management algorithm of benign subglottic and tracheal stenosis (SGTS). The optimal dilation strategy, however, has yet to be elucidated. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of balloon versus rigid bronchoplasty in the treatment of benign SGTS.

Silver Nitrate-coated versus Standard Indwelling Pleural Catheter for Malignant Effusions: The SWIFT Randomized Trial.

Tunneled, indwelling pleural catheters (IPCs) have been demonstrated to be an effective method of managing malignant pleural effusions. However, they allow pleurodesis and can therefore be removed in only a subset of patients. A novel, silver nitrate-coated IPC was developed with the intention of creating a rapid, effective chemical pleurodesis to allow more frequent and earlier catheter removal.

An institution-wide tracheostomy rounding team: Initial caregiver perceptions.

Purpose: To analyze and present the initial findings of provider perceptions regarding the impact of the implementation of a hospital-wide Tracheostomy Rounding Team (TRT) on the delivery of tracheostomy care at the Cleveland Clinic.

Materials And Methods: Based on prior literature, a novel multidisciplinary TRT was designed and implemented at the Cleveland Clinic in December of 2018. After the TRT began clinical care, a previously validated RedCap survey was administered anonymously to 358 caregivers to assess provider experience, comfort, and prior education regarding tracheostomy management.

Epidemiology of Adult Pleural Disease in the United States.

Background: Comprehensive US epidemiologic data for adult pleural disease are not available.

Research Question: What are the epidemiologic measures related to adult pleural disease in the United States?

Study Design And Methods: Retrospective cohort study using Healthcare Utilization Project databases (2007-2016). Adults (≥ 18 years of age) with malignant pleural mesothelioma, malignant pleural effusion, nonmalignant pleural effusion, empyema, primary and secondary spontaneous pneumothorax, iatrogenic pneumothorax, and pleural TB were studied.

Using osmotic pressure simulations to test potentials for ions.

This paper presents a new method to simulate the osmotic pressure of an ionic solution. Previous simulation methods confine ions between walls, and the osmotic pressure is inferred from the force required to maintain this confinement. In this work, we impose a harmonic potential on the ions to form a nonuniform concentration profile in the solution.

SBML Level 3: an extensible format for the exchange and reuse of biological models.

Systems biology has experienced dramatic growth in the number, size, and complexity of computational models. To reproduce simulation results and reuse models, researchers must exchange unambiguous model descriptions. We review the latest edition of the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), a format designed for this purpose.

Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) Level 3 Package: Distributions, Version 1, Release 1.

Biological models often contain elements that have inexact numerical values, since they are based on values that are stochastic in nature or data that contains uncertainty. The Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) Level 3 Core specification does not include an explicit mechanism to include inexact or stochastic values in a model, but it does provide a mechanism for SBML packages to extend the Core specification and add additional syntactic constructs. The SBML Distributions package for SBML Level 3 adds the necessary features to allow models to encode information about the distribution and uncertainty of values underlying a quantity.

Accuracy of a Robotic Endoscopic System in Cadaver Models with Simulated Tumor Targets: ACCESS Study.

Background: Bronchoscopy for the diagnosis of peripheral pulmonary lesions continues to present clinical challenges, despite increasing experience using newer guided techniques. Robotic bronchoscopic platforms have been developed to potentially improve diagnostic yields. Previous studies in cadaver models have demonstrated increased reach into the lung periphery using robotic systems compared to similarly sized conventional bronchoscopes, although the clinical impact of additional reach is unclear.

Pleural Disease in Women.

There are several pleural diseases that occur either predominantly or exclusively in females. Most of these entities are related to obstetric or gynecological conditions. In this article, we will provide an overview of Meigs' syndrome, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, endometriosis, catamenial pneumothorax, catamenial hemothorax, pleural effusions that occur in the peripartum period, lymphangioleiomyomatosis, and malignant pleural effusions related to breast cancer.

Chronic, Active Inflammation in Patients With Failed Total Knee Replacements Undergoing Revision Surgery.

Chronic pain and restricted knee motion is a significant problem following the total knee arthroplasty (TKA). The molecular pathogenesis of pain post-TKA is not known and no targeted therapeutic intervention is available. The aim of this study was to investigate whether pro-inflammatory mediators are elevated in revision knee patients, indicating an active, ongoing inflammatory process that may contribute to pain.

Guided proposals for efficient weighted stochastic simulation.

Rare event probabilities play an important role in the understanding of the behavior of biochemical systems. Due to the intractability of the most natural Markov jump process representation of a system of interest, rare event probabilities are typically estimated using importance sampling. While the resulting algorithm is reasonably well developed, the problem of choosing a suitable importance density is far from straightforward.

Estimating the health impact of air pollution in Scotland, and the resulting benefits of reducing concentrations in city centres.

Air pollution continues to be a key health issue in Scotland, despite recent improvements in concentrations. The Scottish Government published the Cleaner Air For Scotland strategy in 2015, and will introduce Low Emission Zones (LEZs) in the four major cities (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow) by 2020. However, there is no epidemiological evidence quantifying the current health impact of air pollution in Scotland, which this paper addresses.

Single-Cell Transcriptomic Analysis of Human Lung Provides Insights into the Pathobiology of Pulmonary Fibrosis.

The contributions of diverse cell populations in the human lung to pulmonary fibrosis pathogenesis are poorly understood. Single-cell RNA sequencing can reveal changes within individual cell populations during pulmonary fibrosis that are important for disease pathogenesis. To determine whether single-cell RNA sequencing can reveal disease-related heterogeneity within alveolar macrophages, epithelial cells, or other cell types in lung tissue from subjects with pulmonary fibrosis compared with control subjects.