Late effects of hemopoietic stem cell transplant for sickle cell disease: monitoring and management.

Introduction: Allogeneic hemopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a curative therapy for sickle cell disease (SCD). Exposure to both SCD and HSCT conditioning regimens is associated with late health effects.

Areas Covered: This review addresses post-HSCT outcomes and late health effects among individuals with SCD exposed to allogeneic HSCT regimens, summarizes recommendations for long-term care, and identifies future survivorship research needs.

Understanding COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Canada.

While Canada has had relatively high vaccination rates against COVID-19, specifically during earlier waves of the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy has continued to serve as a significant barrier to adequate protection against the virus and, more recently, booster vaccine uptake. This paper explores the processes underlying Canadians' perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines and their decisions to take or refuse them, as well as how public policy and health messaging about vaccination has influenced vaccination attitudes and behaviors. Our focus group interviews with 18 vaccinated and unvaccinated adult Canadians conducted during October 2021 reveal that, in some respects, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy conforms to prior knowledge about some of the factors that affect vaccine attitudes (e.

Privacy-preserving biological age prediction over federated human methylation data using fully homomorphic encryption.

DNA methylation data play a crucial role in estimating chronological age in mammals, offering real-time insights into an individual's aging process. The epigenetic pacemaker (EPM) model allows inference of the biological age as deviations from the population trend. Given the sensitivity of this data, it is essential to safeguard both inputs and outputs of the EPM model.

The underlying mechanism, efficiency, and safety of manual therapy for functional gastrointestinal disorders: A narrative review.

Introduction: Functional gastrointestinal disorders encompass a range of conditions resulting from complicated gut-brain interactions, which can negatively impact sufferers' lives. They are prevalent in clinical practice and the community, with a lifetime prevalence of almost 40 % worldwide. The challenge in diagnosing these disorders lies in the non-specificity of symptoms and the absence of reliable biomarkers.

Competency in Robotic Surgery: Standard Setting for Robotic Suturing Using Objective Assessment and Expert Evaluation.

Objective: Surgical skill assessment tools such as the End-to-End Assessment of Suturing Expertise (EASE) can differentiate a surgeon's experience level. In this simulation-based study, we define a competency benchmark for intraoperative robotic suturing using EASE as a validated measure of performance.

Design: Participants conducted a dry-lab vesicourethral anastomosis (VUA) exercise.

Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Transgender and Gender Diverse Adult Patients Seeking Facial Surgery.

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) patients may present to a surgical context with complex mental health challenges, many of which stem from external stressors. TGD patients also may face disparities regarding the accessibility and quality of health care experiences, which also erodes the mental health of patients. Providers who offer gender-affirming surgery need to be aware of the context that patients may arrive in and install practices that can address the needs of TGD patients.

Navigating the uncertainty: A novel taxonomy of vaccine hesitancy in the context of COVID-19.

Vaccine hesitancy remains a significant and evolving public health challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a unique decision context with significant uncertainty caused by the novelty of the disease being targeted, unfamiliarity with the vaccines being offered, misinformation, and strong handed government measures. In an effort to extend our understanding of vaccine hesitancy to the high uncertainty decision environment presented by COVID-19, we present a novel taxonomy of the determinants of vaccine hesitancy, based on an inductive analysis of qualitative data gathered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Institutional trust is a distinct construct related to vaccine hesitancy and refusal.

Background: Vaccine hesitancy is driven by a heterogeneous and changing set of psychological, social and historical phenomena, requiring multidisciplinary approaches to its study and intervention. Past research has brought to light instances of both interpersonal and institutional trust playing an important role in vaccine uptake. However, no comprehensive study to date has specifically assessed the relative importance of these two categories of trust as they relate to vaccine behaviors and attitudes.

Surgical Artificial Intelligence in Urology: Educational Applications.

Surgical education has seen immense change recently. Increased demand for iterative evaluation of trainees from medical school to independent practice has led to the generation of an overwhelming amount of data related to an individual's competency. Artificial intelligence has been proposed as a solution to automate and standardize the ability of stakeholders to assess the technical and nontechnical abilities of a surgical trainee.

Artificial Intelligence-Based Video Feedback to Improve Novice Performance on Robotic Suturing Skills: A Pilot Study.

Automated skills assessment can provide surgical trainees with objective, personalized feedback during training. Here, we measure the efficacy of artificial intelligence (AI)-based feedback on a robotic suturing task. Forty-two participants with no robotic surgical experience were randomized to a control or feedback group and video-recorded while completing two rounds (R1 and R2) of suturing tasks on a da Vinci surgical robot.

Development of a Classification System for Live Surgical Feedback.

Importance: Live feedback in the operating room is essential in surgical training. Despite the role this feedback plays in developing surgical skills, an accepted methodology to characterize the salient features of feedback has not been defined.

Objective: To quantify the intraoperative feedback provided to trainees during live surgical cases and propose a standardized deconstruction for feedback.

A Multi-institution Study on the Association of Virtual Reality Skills with Continence Recovery after Robot-assisted Radical Prostatectomy.

Background: Virtual reality (VR) simulators are increasingly being used for surgical skills training. It is unclear what skills are best improved via VR, translate to live surgical skills, and influence patient outcomes.

Objective: To assess surgeons in VR and live surgery using a suturing assessment tool and evaluate the association between technical skills and a clinical outcome.

Severity Grading Systems for Intraoperative Adverse Events. A Systematic Review of the Literature and Citation Analysis.

Introduction: The accurate assessment and grading of adverse events (AE) is essential to ensure comparisons between surgical procedures and outcomes. The current lack of a standardized severity grading system may limit our understanding of the true morbidity attributed to AEs in surgery. The aim of this study is to review the prevalence in which intraoperative adverse event (iAE) severity grading systems are used in the literature, evaluate the strengths and limitations of these systems, and appraise their applicability in clinical studies.

Urinary Bladder "Melanosis": A Case Report and Review of the Literature.

Melanosis of the urinary bladder, so-called melanosis vesicae, is a rare condition characterized by dark, velvety bladder mucosa observed by cystoscopy examination. Up to 20 examples have been reported in the English literature, and the etiology of this disease still needs to be discovered. We present an 82-year-old woman with a history of pelvic organ prolapse-associated urinary symptoms.

Automated Capture of Intraoperative Adverse Events Using Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Intraoperative adverse events (iAEs) impact the outcomes of surgery, and yet are not routinely collected, graded, and reported. Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have the potential to power real-time, automatic detection of these events and disrupt the landscape of surgical safety through the prediction and mitigation of iAEs. We sought to understand the current implementation of AI in this space.

Recommendations for Intraoperative Adverse Events Data Collection in Clinical Studies and Study Protocols. An ICARUS Global Surgical Collaboration Study.

Introduction: Intraoperative adverse events (iAEs) occur and have the potential to impact the postoperative course. However, iAEs are underreported and are not routinely collected in the contemporary surgical literature. There is no widely utilized system for the collection of essential aspects of iAEs, and there is no established database for the standardization and dissemination of this data that likely have implications for outcomes and patient safety.

A material-sparing simplified buoyancy method for determining the true density of solids.

True density is an important physical property of powdered materials, especially in the context of powder compaction. Currently available methods for true density determination either require a significant amount of materials or are laborious. Hence, a material-sparing and efficient method for true density determination is of value.

Urinary complications after penile inversion vaginoplasty in transgender women Systematic review and meta-analysis.

Introduction: Penile inversion vaginoplasty (PIV) remains the gold standard technique for vaginoplasty, a gender-affirming feminizing surgery, but has been associated with urinary complications; however, there is little literature synthesizing urinary complications after PIV surgery, and there is a need to compile these complications to counsel patients pre- and postoperatively on managing surgical expectations. In this systematic review, we summarize the prevalence of urinary complications following PIV.

Methods: We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and Scopus databases in July 2020.