Publications by authors named "Gareth Roberts"

Article Synopsis
  • Blood cultures are crucial for managing sepsis and bloodstream infections, relying on swift laboratory processing for accurate clinical decision-making.
  • The study created a detailed process map and discrete event simulation (DES) model to analyze blood culture processing, revealing valuable insights on optimization opportunities.
  • Results showed that both laboratory technician and scientist availability significantly affect processing times, highlighting the need for improved resource management to enhance patient outcomes.
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Introduction: Perianeurysmal Vasogenic Oedema (PAVO) is a rare but important complication of endovascular treatment of intracranial aneurysms. Many potential risk factors have been identified including age, aneurysm size, aneurysm location, immunological profile, type of coil used, diabetes, hypertension, and smoking. PAVO can cause persistent post-procedural symptoms, subsequently increasing post-embolization morbidity.

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Concentrations of chemicals in river water provide crucial information for assessing environmental exposure and risks from fertilisers, pesticides, heavy metals, illicit drugs, pathogens, pharmaceuticals, plastics and perfluorinated substances, among others. However, using concentrations measured along waterways (e.g.

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Objectives: To identify the factors that determine treatment choices following pre-dialysis education.

Design: Retrospective cohort study using data linkage with univariate and multivariate analyses using linked data.

Setting: Secondary care National Health Service Wales healthcare system.

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Background: Value-Based Healthcare (VBHC) focuses on the value of patient outcomes and is achieved by ensuring resources already available are managed to realise the best possible individual and population health outcomes. Patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) measure the impact of illnesses from the patient perspective. We conducted a scoping review to understand how PROMs were implemented and used, and their impact in the context of VBHC.

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Perianeurysmal vasogenic oedema (PAVO) is a rare complication associated post-embolisation of intracranial aneurysms. The prevalence, risk factors predisposing to susceptibility, and pathologic mechanisms underlying this process are not clearly understood. Since this complication may be associated with poor clinical outcomes, the authors designed this study to describe possible risk factors, underlying mechanisms, and management of PAVO through published case reports.

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Introduction: Why is it that phonologies exhibit greater dispersion than we might expect by chance? In earlier work we investigated this using a non-linguistic communication game in which pairs of participants sent each other series of colors to communicate a set of animal silhouettes. They found that above-chance levels of dispersion, similar to that seen in vowel systems, emerged as a result of the production and perception demands acting on the participants. However, they did not investigate the process by which this dispersion came about.

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CADORmed is a free bespoke Excel® tool for committed effective dose assessment using latest dose coefficients from ICRP OIR publications. The field of application of CADORmed is special monitoring, and it is not available for the dose assessment of chronic exposure. Calculations are made according to EURADOS guidelines and principles (EURADOS report 2013-1).

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We investigated the emergence of sociolinguistic indexicality using an artificial-language-learning paradigm. Sociolinguistic indexicality involves the association of linguistic variants with nonlinguistic social or contextual features. Any linguistic variant can acquire "constellations" of such indexical meanings, though they also exhibit an ordering, with first-order indices associated with particular speaker groups and higher-order indices targeting stereotypical attributes of those speakers.

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Introduction: There is growing recognition that in order to remain sustainable, the UK's National Health Service must deliver the best patient outcomes within available resources. This focus on outcomes relative to cost is the basis of value-based healthcare (VBHC) and has led to interest in the recording of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to measure patient perspectives on the impact of a health condition on their lives. Every health board in Wales is now required to collect PROMS as part of routine care.

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This study addressed whether lifetime stressor exposure was associated with psychophysiological reactivity and habituation to a novel laboratory-based stressor. Eighty-six participants (Mage = 23.31 years, SD = 4.

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Introduction: Significant variation exists in the prevalence of home haemodialysis (HHD) among UK renal centres. Our centre has a HHD prevalence of 2%, and we aimed to study how many patients who chose HHD as their preferred mode of renal replacement therapy (RRT) went on to receive this treatment and the barriers to starting this treatment.

Methods: A retrospective single-centre analysis of electronic medical records for all patients who chose HHD at the time of RRT education was performed, and data were collected on patient demographics, comorbidity, frailty, RRT events, and barriers to HHD.

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Landscape fire activity is changing in many regions because of climate change. Smoke emissions from landscape fires contain many harmful air pollutants, and beyond the potential hazard posed to human health, these also have ecological impacts. Insects play essential roles in most ecosystems worldwide, and some work suggests they may also be sensitive to smoke exposure.

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Eponyms highlight the contributions made to medicine over the years, and celebrate individuals for their work involving diseases, pathologies, and anatomical landmarks. We have compiled an in-depth report of eponyms used in skull base neurosurgery, as well as the historical contexts of the personalities behind the names. A literature search identified 36 eponyms of the bones, foramina and ligaments of the skull base named after anatomists and physician-scientists.

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Over half a century ago, George Zipf observed that more frequent words tend to be older. Corpus studies since then have confirmed this pattern, with more frequent words being replaced and regularized less often than less frequent words. Two main hypotheses have been proposed to explain this: that frequent words change less because selection against innovation is stronger at higher frequencies, or that they change less because stochastic drift is stronger at lower frequencies.

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Background: Gross total resection remains the gold-standard approach for vestibular schwannomas (VS) when surgery is indicated. In select cases, incomplete resection (IR) becomes a desired alternative to preserve the facial nerve function and the patient's quality of life. While a lot of earlier studies described incompletely resected sporadic VSs as dormant, more recent studies reported a higher growth rate following IR, therefore an evaluation of the residual VS growth rates could have important implications for the follow-up treatment protocols and provide relevant information for neurosurgeons, neuro-otologists, neuropathologists, and radiologists.

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Background: The Raymond-Roy classification has been the standard for neck recurrences following endovascular coiling with three grades. Several modified classification systems with subdivisions have been reported in literature but it is unclear whether this adds value in predicting recurrence or retreatment. Our aim is to assess if these subdivisions aid in predicting recurrence and need for retreatment.

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Cavernous sinus haemangiomas (CSHs) are rare malformations of the microcirculation arising from the cavernous sinus. A systematic review and pooled data analysis of the associated clinical features, diagnostic modalities, management, and outcomes for CSHs was done. In total, 68 articles (338 cases) were eligible for analysis based on our selection criteria.

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Aims: In UK there are around 76,000 hip fractures occur each year 10% to 15% of which are undisplaced intracapsular. There is considerable debate whether internal fixation is the most appropriate treatment for undisplaced fractures in older patients. This study describes cannulated hip screws survivorship analysis for patients aged ≥ 60 years with undisplaced intra-capsular fractures.

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Meningiomas remains a clinical dilemma. They are the commonest "benign" types of brain tumours and, although being typically benign, they are divided into three WHO grades categories (I, II and III) which are associated with the tumour growth rate and likelihood of recurrence. Recurrence depends on extend of surgery as well as histopathological diagnosis.

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Intracranial aneurysms are a common asymptomatic vascular pathology, the rupture of which is a devastating event with a significant risk of morbidity and mortality. Aneurysm detection and risk stratification before rupture events are, therefore, imperative to guide prophylactic measures. Artificial intelligence has shown great promise in the management pathway of aneurysms, through automated detection, the prediction of rupture risk, and outcome prediction after treatment.

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Background: Previous evidence suggests home-based dialysis to be more cost-effective than unit-based or hospital-based dialysis. However, previous analyses to quantify the costs of different dialysis modalities have used varied perspectives, different methods, and required assumptions due to lack of available data. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence reports uncertainty about the differences in costs between home-based and unit-based dialysis.

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Context: Too many people living with chronic kidney disease are opting for and starting on hospital-based dialysis compared to a home-based kidney replacement therapy. Dialysis services are becoming financially unsustainable.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the efficacy of coproductive research in chronic kidney disease service improvement to achieve greater sustainability.

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Objectives: To explore how people with chronic kidney disease who are pre-dialysis, family members and healthcare professionals together navigate common shared decision-making processes and to assess how this impacts future treatment choice.

Design: Coproductive qualitative study, underpinned by the Making Good Decisions in Collaboration shared decision-model. Semistructured interviews with a purposive sample from February 2019 - January 2020.

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Purpose/objective: The objective of this cross-sectional study was to assess how psychosocial variables predict U.K. military veterans' level of engagement in bespoke recovery pathways (Aim 1) and a sports-specific recovery pathway (Aim 2).

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