Publications by authors named "Kim Michael"

Introduction: The effects of sex and apolipoprotein E (APOE)-Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk factors-on white matter microstructure are not well characterized.

Methods: Diffusion magnetic resonance imaging data from nine well-established longitudinal cohorts of aging were free water (FW)-corrected and harmonized. This dataset included 4741 participants (age = 73.

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Background: Chronotype defines an organism's biological preference for timing of activity and sleep. Being a morning chronotype (i.e.

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Background: Short-term percutaneous mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices provide hemodynamic support in cardiogenic shock or during high-risk percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Aims: To assess the impact of age on the clinical and angiographic characteristics and in-hospital outcomes of all patients undergoing PCI with the Impella MCS.

Methods: Data on all patients that underwent PCI with an Impella was divided into three groups according to age: < 65, 65 to < 75 years, and ≥ 75 years.

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Introduction: This study examines the therapeutic efficacy of polynucleotide-based therapies, specifically REJURAN, for managing scars and burns. Scars and burns present significant challenges in dermatology, often affecting patients' quality of life. Traditional treatments can be limited in effectiveness, prompting the exploration of innovative approaches like polynucleotide therapy, which utilizes salmon DNA to stimulate tissue repair, modulate inflammation, and enhance collagen production.

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  • This study examines the link between early postoperative levels of CCL14, a specific chemokine, and persistent severe acute kidney injury (AKI) in children who have undergone cardiac surgery.
  • It was a retrospective analysis involving patients under 18 who had urine samples collected within the first day after surgery, focusing on those with and without persistent severe AKI, which was defined as lasting for 72 hours or more.
  • The results showed that while persistent severe AKI occurred in a small percentage of patients and was associated with more complex surgeries, CCL14 levels did not differ significantly between those with and without AKI, suggesting it may not be a useful predictive marker.
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Purpose: Eye morphology varies significantly across the population, especially for the orbit and optic nerve. These variations limit the feasibility and robustness of generalizing population-wise features of eye organs to an unbiased spatial reference.

Approach: To tackle these limitations, we propose a process for creating high-resolution unbiased eye atlases.

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Background: Matrix metalloproteinase 7 (MMP-7) is a novel biomarker for diagnosis of biliary atresia (BA), the most common cholestatic liver disease in infancy. There is a pressing need to determine the utility of MMP-7 levels in infants with congenital heart disease (CHD) to avoid unnecessary invasive diagnostic procedures in this high-risk population. We investigated the utility of MMP-7 in discriminating BA from non-BA cholestasis in infants with CHD and whether MMP-7 elevation was present in infants requiring treatment for clinically significant PH.

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Background: Matrix metalloproteinase 7 (MMP-7) is a novel biomarker for diagnosis of biliary atresia (BA), the most common cholestatic liver disease in infancy. There is a pressing need to determine the utility of MMP-7 levels in infants with congenital heart disease (CHD) to avoid unnecessary invasive diagnostic procedures in this high-risk population. We investigated the utility of MMP-7 in discriminating BA from non-BA cholestasis in infants with CHD and whether MMP-7 elevation was present in infants requiring treatment for clinically significant PH.

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Background: Total talus replacement (TTR) implants are designed to replace the diseased talar anatomy, reduce pain, maintain ankle range of motion, and restore ankle function after conservative treatments have failed. Currently TTR implants are produced by 3D printing a patient-specific implant designed from the patient's preoperative anatomy. TTR surgery using patient-specific implants is a relatively new technique that remains understudied in the literature.

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Background: Hybrid coronary revascularization (HCR) is a well-established technique for treating multi-vessel coronary disease. There remains a paucity of discussion assessing the efficacy of HCR with respect to the timing of the surgical component relative to that of the percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).

Methods: A retrospective review was undertaken of our prospectively collected database from January 2009 to December 2019.

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Objectives: Despite the significant disease burden due to cardiac arrest, there is a relative paucity of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to inform definitive management. We aimed to evaluate the current scope of cardiac arrest RCTs published between 2015 and 2022.

Methods: We conducted a search in October 2023 of MEDLINE, Embase, and Web of Science for cardiac arrest RCTs.

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  • The study aimed to clarify the roles, responsibilities, and qualifications of pediatric cardiology chiefs by surveying those currently in the position across North America, addressing a gap in the literature.* -
  • A total of 62% of pediatric cardiology chiefs participated in a mixed-methods survey, revealing key attributes necessary for the role, including communication skills, honesty, and conflict resolution, while also highlighting concerns about administrative demands and a lack of diversity.* -
  • The findings emphasize the importance of communication and mentorship in leadership roles and suggest that future research should explore broader perspectives, including faculty and international viewpoints.*
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Adequate sampling is essential to an accurate pathologic evaluation of pancreatectomy specimens resected for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) after neoadjuvant therapy (NAT). However, limited data are available for the association between the sampling and survival in these patients. We examined the association of the entire submission of the tumor (ESOT) and the entire submission of the pancreas (ESOP) with disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS), as well as their correlations with clinicopathologic features, for 627 patients with PDAC who received NAT and pancreaticoduodenectomy.

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Purpose: The value of pelvic lymph node irradiation is debated for patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) undergoing curative-intent radiation therapy (RT). We sought to compare the oncological outcomes between bladder-only (BO)-RT and whole-pelvis (WP)-RT using a large Canadian multicenter collaborative database.

Patients And Methods: The study cohort consisted of 809 patients with MIBC (cT2-4aN0-2M0) who underwent curative RT at academic centers across Canada.

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  • This study looks at how patients feel and what support they need after being diagnosed with serious brain tumors, specifically WHO grades 3 and 4 gliomas.
  • Researchers interviewed 15 patients to understand their emotions, experiences with doctors, and how satisfied they were with the care they received.
  • The results showed that patients often didn’t understand the information given, felt a lack of empathy from doctors, found it hard to trust the medical process, but still recognized the good support services available.
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Connectivity matrices derived from diffusion MRI (dMRI) provide an interpretable and generalizable way of understanding the human brain connectome. However, dMRI suffers from inter-site and between-scanner variation, which impedes analysis across datasets to improve robustness and reproducibility of results. To evaluate different harmonization approaches on connectivity matrices, we compared graph measures derived from these matrices before and after applying three harmonization techniques: mean shift, ComBat, and CycleGAN.

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Imaging findings inconsistent with those expected at specific chronological age ranges may serve as early indicators of neurological disorders and increased mortality risk. Estimation of chronological age, and deviations from expected results, from structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data has become an important proxy task for developing biomarkers that are sensitive to such deviations. Complementary to structural analysis, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has proven effective in identifying age-related microstructural changes within the brain white matter, thereby presenting itself as a promising additional modality for brain age prediction.

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Background: Robotic pancreatoduodenectomy is an increasingly accepted alternative for the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, the ability to perform a meticulous robotic-assisted superior mesenteric artery (SMA) dissection to obtain a margin-negative resection remains unknown. PDAC within the head of the pancreas (HOP) that involves the superior mesenteric vein (SMV) and portal vein (PV) requires total venous control (TVC) and a 'vein-to-the-right' (or anterior artery-first) approach to SMA dissection to minimize venous congestion and operative blood loss.

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  • Oncogenic mutations in and are key drivers of intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs), which can lead to pancreatic cancer, and prior research showed that these mutations lead to cystic lesions in a specific mouse model.
  • The study investigated how these mutations affect cell characteristics and gene expression using advanced transcriptional profiling techniques and CRISPR screens to find potential weaknesses in cells with these mutations.
  • The findings revealed that co-expression of and led to a distinct gene signature and increased reliance on glycolysis, suggesting that targeting metabolic changes could be a promising strategy for treating or preventing IPMNs.
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Introduction: With the rise of online references, podcasts, webinars, self-test tools, and social media, it is worthwhile to understand whether textbooks continue to provide value in medical education, and to assess the capacity they serve during fellowship training.

Methods: A prospective mixed-methods study based on surveys that were disseminated to seven paediatric cardiology fellowship programmes around the world. Participants were asked to read an assigned chapter of textbook, followed by the completion of the survey.

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  • This study investigates the effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) derived from intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN), highlighting the need for tailored treatment approaches due to limited evidence on this specific type of cancer.
  • In a cohort of 1,031 patients, factors like nodal disease and elevated levels of carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) were linked to worse overall survival, with high-risk patients showing significant survival benefits from adjuvant chemotherapy.
  • The findings suggest that a significant portion of patients (approximately 79.3%) are either overtreated or undertreated, emphasizing the
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Mapping information from photographic images to volumetric medical imaging scans is essential for linking spaces with physical environments, such as in image-guided surgery. Current methods of accurate photographic image to computed tomography (CT) image mapping can be computationally intensive and/or require specialized hardware. For general purpose 3-D mapping of bulk specimens in histological processing, a cost-effective solution is necessary.

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