Publications by authors named "Connor O'Brien"

Recovery homes are located throughout the United States, with the self-governed Oxford Houses representing one of the largest networks with over 3000 homes. Although there is a growing literature on the characteristics and outcomes of these recovery homes, far less is known about differences among the homes. The current study used a set of characteristics that had been proposed by a leader within the Oxford House recovery movement, and a university research team operationalized them into what is now called the Oxford House Stability Questionnaire.

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  • The study investigates current management practices for patients using temporary mechanical circulatory support (tMCS) devices like intra-aortic balloon pumps and Impella in North American cardiac intensive care units.
  • An online survey was conducted, with a response rate of 84% from 37 centers, focusing on hemodynamic monitoring, hemocompatibility, and weaning/removal of the devices.
  • Results showed significant variability in how these practices are implemented, indicating a need for standardized guidelines to improve patient outcomes with tMCS.
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Importance: For patients with nonspine bone metastases, short-course radiotherapy (RT) can reduce patient burden without sacrificing clinical benefit. However, there is great variation in uptake of short-course RT across practice settings.

Objective: To evaluate whether a set of 3 implementation strategies facilitates increased adoption of a consensus recommendation to treat nonspine bone metastases with short-course RT (ie, ≤5 fractions).

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Passive heat management is crucial in space, especially for extended missions involving protection from sunlight. Thermal coatings with desirable optical properties can drastically reduce the power consumed by active cooling systems, thereby reserving more resources for other critical systems onboard. Specifically, materials with wavelength-dependent reflectance and emittance are desirable for managing incident sunlight and self-cooling by thermal emission.

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Background: Associations of early changes in vasoactive support with cardiogenic shock (CS) mortality remain incompletely defined.

Methods: The Critical Care Cardiology Trials Network is a multicenter registry of cardiac intensive care units. Patients admitted with CS (2018-2023) had vasoactive dosing assessed at 4 and 24 hours from cardiac intensive care unit admission and quantified by the vasoactive-inotropic score (VIS).

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VEXAS (vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory and somatic mutation) syndrome is a novel autoinflammatory, late-onset, disorder first identified in 2020. It is caused by mutations in the UBA1 gene. The most prominent clinical features reported by VEXAS patients are cutaneous and haematological, having characteristic skin features reported as the initial presenting findings of the disease.

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Herein, advancements in electroanalytical devices for the simultaneous detection of diverse breast cancer (BC) markers are demonstrated. This article identifies several important areas of exploration for electrochemical diagnostics and highlights important factors that are pivotal for the successful deployment of novel bioanalytical devices. We have highlighted that the limits of detection (LOD) reported for the multiplex electrochemical biosensor can surpass the sensitivity displayed by current clinical standards such as ELISA, FISH, and PCR.

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  • Limited research exists on the causes of death in patients with cardiogenic shock (CS), prompting a study by the Critical Care Cardiology Trials Network from October 2021 to September 2022.
  • Among 1068 cases studied, 337 patients (31.6%) died, and 82.2% of these deaths were attributed to cardiovascular issues, primarily persistent cardiogenic shock.
  • Key findings showed that patients with prior cardiac arrest had higher risks of dying from anoxic brain injury or arrhythmia, and those receiving temporary mechanical circulatory support (tMCS) often succumbed to persistent shock.
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  • A study was conducted to assess the clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients in a cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) who were referred for cardiac surgery from 2017 to 2020 across 29 medical centers.
  • Out of 10,321 CICU admissions, 887 patients (8.6%) underwent various types of cardiac surgery, with common admission issues including shock and respiratory insufficiency.
  • The overall in-hospital mortality rate for these CICU patients was 11.7%, but those who had surgery had a lower rate of 9.1%, suggesting that clinicians effectively managed higher acuity patients with acceptable risks during surgery.
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  • * A study analyzed data from nearly 18,000 CICU admissions across 34 hospitals to assess the use of CCRx and its association with in-hospital survival, finding disparities in patient acuity and therapy utilization among hospitals.
  • * The findings revealed that patients in hospitals with higher CCRx usage tended to have more severe conditions and higher comorbidity rates; however, adjusted mortality rates did not significantly differ based on CCRx levels, implying patient factors primarily influence therapy variations.
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  • Invasive haemodynamic assessment using a pulmonary artery catheter is important for managing patients with cardiogenic shock (CS) and understanding their prognosis.
  • A study analyzed data from a multicenter registry involving patients with CS to find relationships between their haemodynamic parameters and outcomes like in-hospital mortality and end-organ dysfunction.
  • Key findings indicated that lower mean arterial pressure, lower systolic blood pressure, and other specific haemodynamic metrics were linked to worse outcomes and higher serum lactate levels, suggesting severe circulatory issues.
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  • The study investigates the varying use of pulmonary artery catheters (PACs) in cardiac intensive care units (CICUs) and their impact on patient outcomes, particularly in terms of in-hospital mortality among critically ill cardiac patients.
  • Data was collected from a multicenter network involving over 13,000 CICU admissions between 2017 and 2021, focusing on factors like patient diagnosis, demographic information, and PAC usage.
  • The findings revealed significant variation in PAC usage between different centers, with its use linked to lower mortality rates in shock patients, highlighting the need for more randomized trials to establish best practices for PAC application in cardiac care.
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The current tools for diagnosing and monitoring native kidney diseases as well as allograft rejection in transplant patients are suboptimal. Creatinine and proteinuria are non-specific and poorly sensitive markers of injury. Tissue biopsies are invasive and carry potential complications.

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The often high cost of bespoke transition-metal-containing and organic photocatalysts inspires the development of a practical and green method by which photocatalysts can be recovered and reused through multiple reaction iterations. Herein, we showcase a general method to access novel solid-supported photocatalysts (SSPCs) that are recoverable by simple filtration. Proof-of-concept SSPCs were successfully utilized in two representative photoredox-catalyzed transformations with recycled catalysts showing no loss in activity in iterative reaction runs.

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Background: The mechanism for possible association between obesity and poor clinical outcomes from Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains unclear.

Methods: We analyzed 22,915 adult COVID-19 patients hospitalized from March 2020 to April 2021 to non-intensive care using the American Heart Association National COVID Registry. A multivariable Poisson model adjusted for age, sex, medical history, admission respiratory status, hospitalization characteristics, and laboratory findings was used to calculate length of stay (LOS) as a function of body mass index (BMI).

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Aims: The aims of the Critical Care Cardiology Trials Network (CCCTN) are to develop a registry to investigate the epidemiology of cardiac critical illness and to establish a multicentre research network to conduct randomised clinical trials (RCTs) in patients with cardiac critical illness.

Methods And Results: The CCCTN was founded in 2017 with 16 centres and has grown to a research network of over 40 academic and clinical centres in the United States and Canada. Each centre enters data for consecutive cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) admissions for at least 2 months of each calendar year.

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The Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector (CuPID) CubeSat observatory is a 6U CubeSat designed to observe solar wind charge exchange in magnetospheric cusps to test competing theories of magnetic reconnection at the Earth's magnetopause. The CuPID is equipped with three instruments, namely, a wide field-of-view (4.6° × 4.

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Purpose Of Review: Cardiogenic shock (CS) is a highly morbid condition with mortality remaining greater than 30% despite improved pathophysiologic understanding and access to mechanical circulatory support (MCS). In response, shock teams modeled on successful multidisciplinary care structures for other diseases are being implemented nationwide.

Recent Findings: Primary data supporting a benefit of shock team implementation on patient outcomes are relatively limited and entirely observational.

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Heterometallic cobalt -butylcalix[6 and 8]arenes have been generated from the reaction of lithium reagents (-BuLi or -BuOLi) or NaH with the parent calix[]arene and subsequent reaction with CoBr. The reverse route, involving the addition of generated Li[Co(O-Bu)] to -butylcalix[6 and 8]arene, has also been investigated. X-ray crystallography reveals the formation of complicated products incorporating differing numbers of cobalt and lithium or sodium centers, often with positional disorder, as well as, in some cases, the retention of halide.

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