Rural-urban disparities in healthcare factors and long-term health outcomes in individuals with pediatric-onset spinal cord injury.

Objective: Adults with pediatric-onset spinal cord injury (SCI) require long-term care and demonstrate elevated risk of secondary health conditions and psychosocial challenges. Medical providers are typically found in more populous and wealthy areas, resulting in a relative lack of providers in rural areas, a discrepancy even more pronounced among specialty providers. As a result, those who reside in rural regions potentially have unmet medical needs, representing a significant public health concern.

The increase in medical admissions with anorexia nervosa during the COVID-19 pandemic in Western Australia.

Objective: A comparative study to describe the increase in medical admissions of children and adolescents with anorexia nervosa (AN) in Western Australia in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (peri-pandemic).

Method: Patient demographics, physiological parameters, length of stay, time to assessment by the Eating Disorder Service (EDS), and commencement of specialist eating disorder (ED) outpatient treatment was collected for adolescents admitted with AN between 1st January 2019 and 31st December 2020.

Results: The number of admissions doubled from 126 in 2019 to 268 in 2020.

Imaging approaches for monitoring three-dimensional cell and tissue culture systems.

The past decade has seen an increasing demand for more complex, reproducible and physiologically relevant tissue cultures that can mimic the structural and biological features of living tissues. Monitoring the viability, development and responses of such tissues in real-time are challenging due to the complexities of cell culture physical characteristics and the environments in which these cultures need to be maintained in. Significant developments in optics, such as optical manipulation, improved detection and data analysis, have made optical imaging a preferred choice for many three-dimensional (3D) cell culture monitoring applications.

The safety and efficacy of hybrid surgery for multilevel cervical degenerative disc disease versus anterior cervical discectomy and fusion or cervical disc arthroplasty: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Multilevel cervical degenerative disc disease (CDDD) can be treated surgically with anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF), cervical disc arthroplasty (CDA), or a hybrid surgery (HS) of the two in which both procedures are used at different vertebral levels. A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed to compare the clinical and radiographical outcomes of HS against ACDF or CDA alone.

Methods: Three electronic databases were searched for articles published before December 2018.

A Mobile Health Intervention to Improve Hepatitis C Outcomes Among People With Opioid Use Disorder: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: People who inject drugs are at a disproportionate risk for contracting hepatitis C virus (HCV). However, use of HCV prevention and treatment services remains suboptimal among people with substance use disorders due to various health system, societal, and individual barriers. Mobile health applications offer promising strategies to support people in recovery from substance use disorders.

Selective fixation of the medial malleolus in unstable ankle fractures.

Background: Whilst the lateral malleolus appears to be crucial in controlling anatomical reduction of the talus, the role of the medial malleolus is less clear. Medial sided complications including infection, damage to local structures and symptomatic hardware are not without morbidity. This study compares the outcomes of patients with bimalleolar or trimalleolar ankle fractures who underwent fibular nail stabilisation with or without medial malleolar fixation.

Effects of perceptual similarity but not semantic association on false recognition in aging.

This study investigated semantic and perceptual influences on false recognition in older and young adults in a variant on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. In two experiments, participants encoded intermixed sets of semantically associated words, and sets of unrelated words. Each set was presented in a shared distinctive font.

The continuum of hepatitis C care for criminal justice involved adults in the DAA era: a retrospective cohort study demonstrating limited treatment uptake and inconsistent linkage to community-based care.

Background: Incarcerated populations are disproportionately burdened by hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The introduction of highly-effective, direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment has potential to substantially reduce the burden of liver disease in this population, but accurate information about access to and utilization of this treatment is currently limited. The goals of this study were to characterize receipt of HCV care and treatment services for a cohort of HCV-infected adults identified in a state prison system, and to describe the complex health needs of this population.

Acquisition versus consolidation of auditory perceptual learning using mixed-training regimens.

Learning is considered to consist of two distinct phases-acquisition and consolidation. Acquisition can be disrupted when short periods of training on more than one task are interleaved, whereas consolidation can be disrupted when a second task is trained after the first has been initiated. Here we investigated the conditions governing the disruption to acquisition and consolidation during mixed-training regimens in which primary and secondary amplitude modulation tasks were either interleaved or presented consecutively.