Publications by authors named "Donald E Mercante"

Article Synopsis
  • * Results showed that HIV+ participants brushed their teeth less often but had more dental cleanings and reported more instances of dry mouth compared to HIV- participants.
  • * Overall, while age, race, and sex influenced behaviors, HIV status had minimal effect on oral hygiene practices, suggesting that people living with HIV today have a better quality of life and engage in fewer high-risk behaviors than those in the past.
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Background: Effective screening of alcohol use and prevention of alcohol use disorder (AUD) requires the continuous preparation of educated and confident providers across all health professions who will ideally work in close collaboration in their future practices. As one mechanism for achieving this goal, the development and provision of interprofessional education (IPE) training modules for health care students may cultivate beneficial interactions among future health providers early in their formative education.

Methods: In the present study, we assessed attitudes about alcohol and confidence in screening and AUD prevention in 459 students at our health sciences center.

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Difelikefalin is a peripherally restricted kappa opioid receptor (KOR) agonist that was recently approved by the FDA to treat pruritis in dialysis patients. Here, we investigated the cardiovascular and renal responses to difelikefalin, and using the KOR antagonist norbinaltorphimine (norBNI), examined whether any difelikefalin-induced changes in the renal excretion of water and/or electrolytes were mediated through a central or peripheral KOR pathway. The effects of norBNI pretreatment on nalfurafine, a KOR agonist that crosses the blood-brain barrier, were also examined.

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Purpose/objectives: Baseline IPE perceptions for dental students were gathered prior to the implementation of a 2-year formalised IPE curriculum at a US institution. The goal was to establish a baseline of student perceptions and, in the future, continue to track student IPE perception data with IPE engagement as one measure of outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to analyse two dental student cohort perceptions of IPE after engaging in a 2-year longitudinal curriculum.

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Research within interprofessional education (IPE) indicates health professional students hold stereotypes of other health professions at all stages within their academic journey. IPE can minimize negative stereotypes and influence a student's willingness and readiness to collaborate with others. This article explores undergraduate pre-health student stereotypes of various health professionals at the beginning and end of a six-week summer academic enrichment program, which included IPE.

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Background: Inflammation persists among persons with human immunodeficiency virus (PWH) despite effective antiretroviral therapy and may contribute to T-cell dysfunction. Alcohol use is prevalent among PWH and promotes intestinal leak, dysbiosis, and a proinflammatory milieu. Whether alcohol use is associated with T-cell late differentiation remains to be investigated.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A total of 63 subjects participated, receiving either HBOT or no treatment in a controlled crossover design, which showed significant improvements in various symptoms, cognitive function, and quality of life measures for those receiving HBOT.
  • * Both groups experienced lasting benefits, with improvements maintaining at least two months after treatment, suggesting that HBOT could serve as an effective intervention for mTBI/PPCS.
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There is a lack of standardization among evaluations completed by clinical educators of student registered nurse anesthetists (SRNAs) during their clinical education as reported by nurse anesthesia program administrators and students. To address this issue, the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs (COA) Board created the Common Clinical Assessment Tool (CCAT) Special Interest Group to develop a standardized clinical evaluation instrument. The goal was to improve the consistency of clinical evaluation across nurse anesthesia programs while assisting program administrators to make programmatic changes to ensure compliance with COA standards.

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Under pressures to support health system transformation, many health professional accreditation organizations have incorporated standards requiring interprofessional education. However, the inclusion of population health topics and public health or health administration students into IPE experiences is limited. With the belief that understanding and cooperation among the health professions will be important to support health system transformation, The Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans has created several IPE experiences focused on population health, programs that are examined in this article along with insights that could prove useful for other programs seeking to build IPE into their regular curricula.

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Background: The average lifespan of persons living with HIV (PLWH) on antiretroviral therapy approximates the general population. However, PLWH are susceptible to early aging and frailty. Behaviors such as alcohol consumption may contribute to frailty among PLWH.

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The primary purpose of conducting two interprofessional education (IPE) experiences during a multidisciplinary physiology graduate-level course was to provide basic science, physical therapy, and physician assistant graduate students opportunities to work as a team in the diagnosis, treatment, and collaborative care when presented with a patient case focused on acute kidney injury (first case) and female athlete triad (second case). The secondary purpose was to apply basic physiology principles to patient case presentations of pathophysiology. The overall purpose was to assess the longitudinal effects and the value of IPE integrated within a basic science course.

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Exosomes are small extracellular microvesicles that are secreted by cells when intracellular multivesicular bodies fuse with the plasma membrane. We have previously demonstrated that Nischarin inhibits focal adhesion formation, cell migration, and invasion, leading to reduced activation of focal adhesion kinase. In this study, we propose that the tumor suppressor Nischarin regulates the release of exosomes.

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There is increasing interest in Bayesian group sequential design because of its potential to improve efficiency in clinical trials, to shorten drug development time, and to enhance statistical inference precision without undermining the clinical trial's integrity or validity. We propose a Bayesian sequential design for clinical trials with time-to-event outcomes and use alpha spending functions to control the overall type I error rate. Bayes factor is adapted for decision-making at interim analyses.

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The purpose of this study was to apply a quality improvement model in the application of an intraprofessional educational experience by improving student perceptions of collaboration and increasing the number of collaborative experiences within the dental hygiene curriculum. A quality improvement model, Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), was used to initiate an intraprofessional education experience for dental hygiene and dental students. Faculty members utilized the PDSA worksheet to plan, implement, and analyze the educational experience.

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The purpose of the study was to determine the impact of an interprofessional education (IPE) experience on first year students across all schools of a health sciences center on the topic of pediatric immunizations. The authors conducted a pre-/post-test at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans with 731 first year students from 25 academic programs encompassing all six schools (Allied Health, Dentistry, Graduate Studies, Medicine, Nursing and Public Health). In the four questions related to the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) sub-competencies and the three questions related to professional role regarding immunizations, there was a statistically significant difference in the pre-/post-test survey results (P < 0.

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Incorporating active interprofessional education (IPE) opportunities into the classroom setting is a potentially effective mechanism to enhance student learning both in the basic sciences and for future interprofessional collaboration. We integrated an IPE exercise into a graduate-level human physiology course at our health sciences center that enrolled physician assistant (PA), physical therapy (PT), and graduate studies students. Our activity adopted and targeted the four Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) competency domains of values/ethics (VE), roles/responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams and teamwork (TT).

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Background: The objectives of this study were: (1) to assess the use of interprofessional education (IPE) to improve the knowledge and skill levels of nursing and occupational therapy students regarding respiratory therapy (RT) medical devices and techniques, nursing and RT students regarding safe patient transfers, and RT and occupational therapy students regarding safe handling of a patient's medical lines during transfers and (2) to promote collaborative behaviors.

Methods: A prospective mixed methods approach was used for data collection of an IPE high-fidelity simulation experience involving 73 nursing, occupational therapy, and RT students at an academic medical institution. The Interprofessional Education Collaborative roles and responsibilities and interprofessional communication sub-competency guided the development of the IPE experience.

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The primary purpose of conducting an interprofessional education (IPE) experience during the renal physiology block of a graduate-level course was to provide basic science, physical therapy, and physician assistant graduate students with an opportunity to work as a team in the diagnosis, treatment, and collaborative care of a patient with acute kidney injury. The secondary purpose was to enhance the understanding of basic renal physiology principles with a patient case presentation of renal pathophysiology. The overall purpose was to assess the value of IPE integration within a basic science course by examining student perceptions and program evaluation.

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Purpose: To enhance audiology and physician assistant (PA) student appreciation for collaboration/team-based care through an interprofessional educational activity focused on hearing assessments.

Method: A total of 18 students from Louisiana State University Health-New Orleans's audiology and PA programs participated in an optional interprofessional education learning opportunity, which included a demonstration of hearing assessments. To assess student perspectives regarding interprofessional learning, the students completed pre- and post-surveys.

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Background: Digital pupillometry (DP) accurately and precisely measures pupillary responses. Little is known about using DP to measure the sedative effect of isolated propofol administration.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of 19 adults undergoing moderate sedation with propofol during which we measured pupillary changes using DP.

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Purpose: To obtain physician assistant (PA) student perceptions about an interprofessional education (IPE) training experience embedded in a multidisciplinary science course.

Methods: An IPE training experience was integrated into a graduate human physiology course offered to PA, physical therapy, and graduate studies students. The focus of the activity related to the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) competency domains of (1) roles and responsibilities and (2) teams and teamwork.

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Several researchers have proposed solutions to control type I error rate in sequential designs. The use of Bayesian sequential design becomes more common; however, these designs are subject to inflation of the type I error rate. We propose a Bayesian sequential design for binary outcome using an alpha-spending function to control the overall type I error rate.

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Motivation: Testing SNP-SNP interactions is considered as a key for overcoming bottlenecks of genetic association studies. However, related statistical methods for testing SNP-SNP interactions are underdeveloped.

Results: We propose the SNP Interaction Pattern Identifier (SIPI), which tests 45 biologically meaningful interaction patterns for a binary outcome.

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Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to identify the risk factors for major complications developing during the operative treatment of mandibular fractures.

Patients And Methods: We conducted a retrospective medical record review of patients who had undergone open reduction, internal fixation of mandibular fractures from August 1, 2012 to December 31, 2014 at a large, urban teaching hospital and level 1 trauma center. The outcome variable of interest was major complications, defined as the occurrence of any one of the following events: hospital readmission, return to the operating room, and a prolonged, unexpected postoperative stay.

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