The Impact of Commercial Health Plan Prior Authorization Programs on the Utilization of Services for Low Back Pain.

Study Design: An observational study.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a health plan's prior authorization (PA) programs for low back pain (LBP) in a non-Medicare population by assessing changes in pre-surgical nonoperative care; lumbar fusion trends; and overall back surgery rates compared with another health plan with a similar program and national benchmarks. The PA programs require mandatory physiatrist consultation before surgical evaluation, with subsequent additional LBP surgery PA.

Congenital scoliosis SRS-22 outcomes in children treated with observation, surgery, and VEPTR.

Study Design: Prospective, nonrandomized study of children with congenital scoliosis.

Objective: To determine the outcomes of children with congenital scoliosis using SRS-22.

Summary Of Background Data: Outcome measures in children with congenital scoliosis are unreported.

A search engine to identify pathway genes from expression data on multiple organisms.

Background: The completion of several genome projects showed that most genes have not yet been characterized, especially in multicellular organisms. Although most genes have unknown functions, a large collection of data is available describing their transcriptional activities under many different experimental conditions. In many cases, the coregulatation of a set of genes across a set of conditions can be used to infer roles for genes of unknown function.