Advance Care Planning in Huntington's Disease.

Advance care planning (ACP) is a useful tool that benefits adult patients, care providers, and surrogate decision makers, through providing opportunities for patients to consider, express, and formalize their beliefs, preferences, and wishes pertaining to decisions regarding future medical care at a time when they retain decision-making capacity. Early and timely consideration of ACP discussions is paramount in Huntington's disease (HD) given the potential challenges in ascertaining decision-making capacity in the advanced stages of the disease. ACP helps to empower and extend patient autonomy, providing clinicians and surrogate decision makers with reassurance that management is consistent with a patient's expressed wishes.

International Guidelines for the Treatment of Huntington's Disease.

The European Huntington's Disease Network (EHDN) commissioned an international task force to provide global evidence-based recommendations for everyday clinical practice for treatment of Huntington's disease (HD). The objectives of such guidelines are to standardize pharmacological, surgical and non-pharmacological treatment regimen and improve care and quality of life of patients. A formalized consensus method, adapted from the French Health Authority recommendations was used.

27 years of prenatal diagnosis for Huntington disease in the United Kingdom.

Purpose: There is little long-term, population-based data on uptake of prenatal diagnosis for Huntington disease (HD), a late-onset autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder, and the effect of the availability of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) on families' decisions about conventional prenatal diagnosis is not known. We report trends in prenatal diagnosis and preimplantation diagnosis for HD in the United Kingdom since services commenced.

Methods: Long-term UK-wide prospective case record-based service evaluation in 23 UK Regional Genetic Centres 1988-2015, and four UK PGD centers 2002-2015.

Health Care Delivery Practices in Huntington's Disease Specialty Clinics: An International Survey.

Background: Little is known about the organization of clinical services for Huntington's disease (HD).

Objective: To describe how health care services are organized and delivered in HD-clinics taking part in or eligible for the Enroll-HD study.

Methods: In 2014, a 69-item survey was administered to sites taking part in or eligible for the Enroll-HD study.

A pragmatic multi-centre randomised controlled trial of fluid loading in high-risk surgical patients undergoing major elective surgery--the FOCCUS study.

Introduction: Fluid strategies may impact on patient outcomes in major elective surgery. We aimed to study the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of pre-operative fluid loading in high-risk surgical patients undergoing major elective surgery.

Methods: This was a pragmatic, non-blinded, multi-centre, randomised, controlled trial.

Usefulness of neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio as predictor of new-onset atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass grafting.

The neutrophil/lymphocyte (N/L) ratio integrates information on the inflammatory milieu and physiologic stress. It is an emerging marker of prognosis in patients with cardiovascular disease. We investigated the relation between the N/L ratio and postoperative atrial fibrillation (AF) in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting.

Use of preoperative natriuretic peptides and echocardiographic parameters in predicting new-onset atrial fibrillation after coronary artery bypass grafting: a prospective comparative study.

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common complication after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). We prospectively compared the ability of echocardiographic parameters and the cardiac neurohormones, brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) to predict AF in this setting.

Methods: We recruited 275 patients undergoing nonemergency CABG.