PTSD Coach as an early mobile intervention to improve cancer-related anxiety and psychosocial oncology uptake in patients newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer: pilot randomized controlled trial.

Background: This pilot study aimed to provide supportive evidence for the feasibility of conducting a full-scale intervention trial with patients newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer (HNC). This included assessing the acceptability and potential usefulness of the PTSD Coach mobile app as an early self-management intervention that gives information about anxiety symptoms, offers self-assessment of symptoms with feedback, tools to self-manage anxiety, and connects to support.

Methods: A three-arm randomized controlled trial was conducted.

Safety of Percutaneous Dilatational Tracheostomy in Critically Ill Adults With Obesity: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of endoscopic percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy (PDT) in obese and nonobese critically ill adults.

Methods: A retrospective study of all cases of PDT performed at two academic health centers between 2016 and 2023 was conducted. Primary outcomes included peri- and postoperative complications stratified by both timing and severity.

Genetic Risk For Depression and Quality of Life in Patients With Head and Neck Cancer.

Importance: Although patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) have been shown to experience high distress, few longitudinal studies include a comprehensive evaluation of biopsychosocial factors affecting quality of life (QoL), including genetic risk for depression.

Objective: To identify factors at the time of cancer diagnosis associated with QoL scores at 3 months after treatment in patients newly diagnosed with a first occurrence of HNC.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This prospective longitudinal study of 1464 participants with a 3-month follow-up, including structured clinical interviews and self-administered measures was carried out at the Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery at 2 tertiary care McGill University Affiliated Hospitals, McGill University Health Centre, and Jewish General Hospital.

Geriatric Voice: Distinctive Clinical Profiles of Working Seniors in a Tertiary Laryngology Clinic.

Objectives: Voice disorders have been reported in up to 47% of the geriatric population. Few studies have assessed dysphonia in the elderly, with none examining vocal function in working seniors. This study aims to profile the clinical characteristics of individuals aged 65 years and older, comparing working and non-working seniors.

Established Adult Tracheostomy Tube Exchange: How Often is Enough?

Currently, there is no clinical consensus on how often adults with long-term tracheostomies should have their tubes exchanged. For high-functioning patients who are able to provide diligent tracheostomy care tubes can be exchanged every 6 months. Patients who have a difficult time with tracheostomy care should have them exchanged every 1-3 months.

Prevention of respiratory virus transmission by resident memory CD8 T cells.

An ideal vaccine both attenuates virus growth and disease in infected individuals and reduces the spread of infections in the population, thereby generating herd immunity. Although this strategy has proved successful by generating humoral immunity to measles, yellow fever and polio, many respiratory viruses evolve to evade pre-existing antibodies. One approach for improving the breadth of antiviral immunity against escape variants is through the generation of memory T cells in the respiratory tract, which are positioned to respond rapidly to respiratory virus infections.

Laryngeal Amyloidosis: What is the Role of Imaging?

Objective/hypothesis: To review the imaging findings of laryngeal amyloidosis and to identify radiological findings suggestive of this disease.

Study Design: Retrospective case series.

Methods: A retrospective chart review of patients with pathologically confirmed laryngeal amyloidosis was performed from 2009 to 2022.

Plant water limitation and its impact on the oviposition preferences of the monarch butterfly (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae).

Intensifying drought conditions across the western United States due to global climate change are altering plant-insect interactions. Specialist herbivores must find their host plants within a matrix of nonhosts, and thus often rely upon specific plant secondary chemistry for host location and oviposition cues. Climate-induced alterations to plant chemistry could thus affect female selection of larval food plants.

Pregnancies in the United States by Desire for Pregnancy: Estimates for 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015.

We examine whether changes in U.S. pregnancy, birth, and abortion rates between 2009 and 2015 reflect underlying change in the incidence of pregnancies classified by retrospectively reported pregnancy desires: pregnancies reported as having occurred at about the right time, later than wanted, too soon, or not wanted at all, and those for which individuals expressed other feelings, including uncertainty, ambivalence, or indifference.

Airway Resistance and Respiratory Distress in Laryngeal Cancer: A Computational Fluid Dynamics Study.

Background: Obstructive upper airway pathologies are a great clinical challenge for the airway surgeon. Protection against acute obstruction is critical, but avoidance of unnecessary tracheostomy must also be considered. Decision-making regarding airway, although supported by some objective findings, is largely guided by subjective experience and training.

Complication Rate of Percutaneous Dilatational Tracheostomy in Critically Ill Adults With Obesity: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Importance: Obesity has traditionally been described as a relative contraindication to percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy (PDT). Increased familiarity with the technique and use of bronchoscopy or real-time ultrasonography to enhance visualization have led many practitioners to expand the indication for PDT to patients historically deemed to have high risk of perioperative complications.

Objective: To assess the reported complication rate of PDT in critically ill adults with obesity and compare it with that of open surgical tracheostomies (OSTs) in this patient population and with that of PDT in their counterparts without obesity.

Transmitter and receiver of the low frequency horseshoe bat Rhinolophus paradoxolophus are functionally matched for fluttering target detection.

Flutter-detecting foragers require specific adaptations of the transmitter and the receiver of their echolocation systems to detect and evaluate flutter information in the echoes of potential prey. These adaptations include Doppler shift compensation (DSC), which keeps the echo frequency from targets ahead constant at a reference frequency (f), and an auditory fovea in the cochlea, which results in foveal areas in the hearing system with many sharply tuned neurons with best frequencies near f. So far, this functional match has been verified only for a very few key species, but is postulated for all flutter-detecting foragers.

Biopsychosocial Markers of Body Image Concerns in Patients with Head and Neck Cancer: A Prospective Longitudinal Study.

(1) Background: Patients and survivors of head and neck cancer (HNC) are at a high risk of developing body image concerns. Despite the prevalence of body image concerns in patients with HNC, there is a lack of longitudinal research exploring the wide array of its associated determinants. The current longitudinal study examined the determinants and longitudinal course of body image dissatisfaction in patients with HNC.

Diagnostic Accuracy of Liquid Biomarkers in Airway Diseases: Toward Point-of-Care Applications.

Background: Liquid biomarkers have shown increasing utility in the clinical management of airway diseases. Salivary and blood samples are particularly amenable to point-of-care (POC) testing due to simple specimen collection and processing. However, very few POC tests have successfully progressed to clinical application due to the uncertainty and unpredictability surrounding their diagnostic accuracy.

Psychosocial outcomes of human papillomavirus (HPV)- and non-HPV-related head and neck cancers: A longitudinal study.

Objectives: Human papillomavirus (HPV) has prompted a need to further investigate how this new biomarker changes the head and neck cancer (HNC) psychosocial landscape. This study aimed to: (a) characterize the sociodemographic, psychological, and social profiles of patients with HPV-positive versus -negative squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck; and (b) identify how HPV status contributes to anxiety and depression (primary outcome), quality of life (QoL), and sexuality needs.

Methods: We conducted a prospective longitudinal study of 146 patients newly diagnosed with oral, oropharyngeal, nasopharyngeal, and hypopharyngeal cancer.

Metastatic Clear Renal-Cell Carcinoma Mimicking Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer: A Case Report.

Metastatic renal cell carcinoma to the thyroid is a rare yet aggressive histopathologic diagnosis, which may often be omitted from the initial clinical differential. This is in part due to the long latency period between the initial renal primary and appearance of metastatic disease, coupled with the diagnostic limitations of fine-needle aspiration biopsies. We herein present an interesting case of a metastatic clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma mimicking an aggressive primary thyroid neoplasm, 10 years after a nephrectomy for a renal primary, highlighting key diagnostic and management considerations.

Revised recommendations from the CSO-HNS taskforce on performance of tracheotomy during the COVID-19 pandemic - what a difference a year makes.

Background: During the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery (CSO-HNS) task force published recommendations on performance of tracheotomy. Since then, our understanding of the virus has evolved with ongoing intensive research efforts. New literature has helped us better understand various aspects including patient outcomes and health care worker (HCW) risks associated with tracheotomy during the COVID-19 pandemic.