Impact of Precision in Staging Acute Kidney Injury and Chronic Kidney Disease on Treatment Outcomes: An Observational Study.

(1) Background: "Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes" (KDIGO) provides guidelines for identifying the stages of acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). A data-driven rule-based engine was developed to determine KDIGO staging compared to KD-related keywords in discharge letters. (2) Methods: To assess potential differences in outcomes, we compare the patient subgroups with exact KDIGO staging to imprecise or missing staging for all-cause mortality, in-hospital mortality, selection bias and costs by applying Kaplan-Meier analysis and the Cox proportional hazards regression model.

Robotic-Enhanced Prosthetic Liners for Vibration Therapy: Reducing Phantom Limb Pain in Transfemoral Amputees.

Phantom limb pain, a common challenge for amputees, lacks effective treatment options. Vibration therapy is a promising non-pharmacologic intervention for reducing pain intensity, but its efficacy in alleviating phantom limb pain requires further investigation. This study focused on developing prosthesis liners with integrated vibration motors to administer vibration therapy for phantom limb pain.

User-Centered Design of Limb Prostheses: A New University Course Designed to Spark Interest in Orthotics & Prosthetics for Bioengineering Students.

There is a current need to increase recruitment in orthotics and prosthetics, and a promising approach is to increase awareness, interest and cross-disciplinary engagement in O&P among students of allied disciplines such as bioengineering. We describe a new interdisciplinary course we jointly developed at the University of Pittsburgh and deployed for the first time in the spring of 2023. The course was built on core foci of human-centered design, design thinking, experiential learning, 3D printing, creative problem-solving and prototyping.

Assessing Phase-Change Materials as Effective Long-Term Biosensors in Limb Prosthetics.

Monitoring and controlling the microclimate at the skin-socket interface of limb prostheses is an important, yet unresolved, clinical problem. Phase-change materials (PCMs) represent a promising biosensor technology that holds the potential to both detect and alter (i.e.