Vascular comorbidities worsen prognosis of patients with heart failure hospitalised with COVID-19.

Background: Prior diagnosis of heart failure (HF) is associated with increased length of hospital stay (LOS) and mortality from COVID-19. Associations between substance use, venous thromboembolism (VTE) or peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and its effects on LOS or mortality in patients with HF hospitalised with COVID-19 remain unknown.

Objective: This study identified risk factors associated with poor in-hospital outcomes among patients with HF hospitalised with COVID-19.

Z Probe, An Efficient Tool for Characterizing Long Non-Coding RNA in FFPE Tissues.

Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues are a valuable resource for biomarker discovery in order to understand the etiology of different cancers and many other diseases. Proteins are the biomarkers of interest with respect to FFPE tissues as RNA degradation is the major challenge in these tissue samples. Recently, non-protein coding transcripts, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), have gained significant attention due to their important biological actions and potential involvement in cancer.

"Enhanced Recovery" Protocol Compliance Influences Length of Stay: Resolving Barriers to Implementation.

Initial implementation and maintenance of an enhanced recovery protocol (ERP) is complex and has not been adequately described. The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of an ERP at a tertiary care academic institution. A secondary aim was to identify barriers to implementation and continued protocol compliance (PC) to further decrease length of stay (LOS).

External Validation of Velazquez-Gomez Severity Score Index and ATLAS Scores and the Identification of Risk Factors Associated with Mortality in Infections.

Treatment guidelines for Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) are limited by a lack of widely accepted clinical prediction tools (CPTs). Two published CPTs, the Velazquez-Gomez Severity Score Index (VGSSI) and ATLAS scores, were evaluated, and variables showing the greatest correlation with mortality in patients with CDI were identified to further develop an objective, mortality-based CPT. A retrospective review of the charts of 271 hospitalized patients with CDI was performed.

A single-center retrospective review of postoperative infectious complications in the surgical management of mandibular fractures: Postoperative antibiotics add no benefit.

Background: Mandibular fractures are common facial injuries and treatment may be complicated by post-operative infection. Risk of infection from contamination with oral flora is well established but no consensus exists regarding antibiotic prophylaxis. The purpose of this study is to assess risk factors and perioperative antibiotics on surgical site infection (SSI) rates following mandibular fracture surgery.

The Effect of Progressive-Tension Closure on Donor Site Seroma Formation in Delayed Latissimus Dorsi Flaps for Breast Reconstruction.

Background: Autologous tissue flaps play an integral part in breast reconstruction. The latissimus dorsi myocutaneous flap is an effective and aesthetic method of immediate breast reconstruction, although a high rate of donor site seroma formation has plagued this procedure. Many techniques to reduce donor site seromas have been undertaken.

Evaluating application of the National Healthcare Safety Network central line-associated bloodstream infection surveillance definition: a survey of pediatric intensive care and hematology/oncology units.

Objective: To evaluate the application of the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) definition in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and pediatric hematology/oncology units (PHOUs) participating in a multicenter quality improvement collaborative to reduce CLABSIs; to identify sources of variability in the application of the definition.

Design: Online survey using 18 standardized case scenarios. Each described a positive blood culture in a patient and required a yes- or-no answer to the question "Is this a CLABSI?" NHSN staff responses were the reference standard.

Surveillance of hospital-acquired central line-associated bloodstream infections in pediatric hematology-oncology patients: lessons learned, challenges ahead.

Across 36 US pediatric oncology centers, 576 central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) were reported over a 21-month period. Most infections occurred in those with leukemia and/or profound neutropenia. The contribution of viridans streptococci infections was striking.

Empirical bayesian selection of hypothesis testing procedures for analysis of sequence count expression data.

Differential expression analysis of sequence-count expression data involves performing a large number of hypothesis tests that compare the expression count data of each gene or transcript across two or more biological conditions. The assumptions of any specific hypothesis-testing method will probably not be valid for each of a very large number of genes. Thus, computational evaluation of assumptions should be incorporated into the analysis to select an appropriate hypothesis-testing method for each gene.

A mouse model of the most aggressive subgroup of human medulloblastoma.

Medulloblastomas that display a large cell/anaplastic morphology and overexpress the cellular c-MYC gene are highly aggressive and carry a very poor prognosis. This so-called MYC-subgroup differs in its histopathology, gene expression profile, and clinical behavior from other forms of medulloblastoma. We generated a mouse model of MYC-subgroup medulloblastoma by transducing Trp53-null cerebellar progenitor cells with Myc.

A Phenotype-Driven Dimension Reduction (PhDDR) approach to integrated genomic association analyses.

An immediate challenge in integrated genomic analysis involving several types of genomic factors all measured genome-wide is the ultra-high dimensionality. Screening all possible relationships among the genomic factors is an NP-hard problem; therefore in practice proper dimension reduction is necessary. In this paper we develop the Phenotype-Driven Dimension Reduction (PhDDR) approach to the analysis of gene co-expressions, and discuss its extensions to integration of other genetic factors.

A procedure to statistically evaluate agreement of differential expression for cross-species genomics.

Motivation: Animal models play a pivotal role in translation biomedical research. The scientific value of an animal model depends on how accurately it mimics the human disease. In principle, microarrays collect the necessary data to evaluate the transcriptomic fidelity of an animal model in terms of the similarity of expression with the human disease.

Graph ranking for exploratory gene data analysis.

Background: Microarray technology has made it possible to simultaneously monitor the expression levels of thousands of genes in a single experiment. However, the large number of genes greatly increases the challenges of analyzing, comprehending and interpreting the resulting mass of data. Selecting a subset of important genes is inevitable to address the challenge.