Publications by authors named "D S De Witt"

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) and atrial fibrillation (AF) disproportionately affect older adults, who are at increased risk of bleeding from treatment with anticoagulant therapy. The impact of bleeding on older adults' quality of life (QoL) is poorly understood due to the lack of a validated measure of their experience. This study's purpose is to describe the first evidence-based steps in developing a new condition-specific patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) for the effect of anticoagulant-related bleeding on older adults' QoL.

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Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of multiple decision aid strategies in promoting high quality shared decision making for prevention of stroke in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation.

Design: Cluster randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Six academic medical centers in the United States.

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Article Synopsis
  • Congenital heart disease (CHD) significantly increases the risk of thromboembolism (TE) in children, with a study finding that 33% of affected patients experienced recurrent TE within a year.
  • Among the risk factors identified, immobility and the presence of central venous catheters (CVC) were strongly associated with a higher likelihood of recurrence, demonstrating the need for careful monitoring and management in this population.
  • The study calls for larger multicenter research to further validate these findings and improve understanding of TE recurrence in pediatric patients with CHD.
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Background: The Randomized Evaluation of Decision Support Interventions for Atrial Fibrillation (RED-AF) trial is a multi-site, randomized controlled clinical trial examining the effectiveness of a patient decision aid and an encounter decision aid in promoting shared decision-making (SDM) during a clinical encounter for patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). We sought to describe baseline characteristics of patients and clinicians in the trial and compare them to the demographics of the larger AF population. We also conducted an analysis of possible predictors of attrition rates at baseline, 6 and 12 months.

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Article Synopsis
  • The German Consortium for Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (GC-HBOC) has established a system for monitoring women at high risk for breast cancer, recommending annual screenings using the BOADICEA risk model for those with a 10-year risk of 5% or more.
  • Women with a family history of breast cancer may qualify for increased surveillance as they age, even if their initial risk doesn’t meet the threshold.
  • Two methods were compared for determining when a woman's risk increases: the 'prediction by aging pedigree' (AP) which tracks family history over time, and a simpler 'conditional probability' (CP) approach, which estimates future risks based on initial assessments; the CP method was found to be
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