Objectives: During and since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, communities have needed to cope with several conditions that cause similar upper respiratory symptoms but are managed differently. We describe community reactions to a self-management toolkit for patients with upper respiratory symptoms to inform mobile e-health app development. The toolkit is based on the "4R" (Right Information, Right Care, Right Patient, Right Time) care planning and management model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChordomas are rare sarcomas arising from notochordal tissue and occur most commonly in the spine. The standard of care for chordomas without evidence of metastatic disease generally consists of en bloc resection followed by adjuvant radiotherapy. However, long-term (20-year) survival rates are approximately 30%.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Metastasis to the spinal column is a common complication of malignancy, potentially causing pain and neurologic injury. An automated system to identify and refer patients with spinal metastases can help overcome barriers to timely treatment. We describe the training, optimization and validation of a natural language processing algorithm to identify the presence of vertebral metastasis and metastatic epidural cord compression (MECC) from radiology reports of spinal MRIs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study sought to identify associations between the Yost Index, a geocoded area neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES) score, and race/ethnicity with patient refusal of recommended surgery for metastatic bone disease.
Methods: Patients with metastatic bone disease were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. The Yost Index was geocoded using factor analysis and categorized into quintiles using census tract-level American Community Service (ACS) 5-year estimates and seven nSES measures.
Background: Instrumented spinal fusions can be used in the treatment of vertebral fractures, spinal instability, and scoliosis or kyphosis. Construct-level selection has notable implications on postoperative recovery, alignment, and mobility. This study sought to project future trends in the implementation rates and associated costs of single-level versus multilevel instrumentation procedures in US Medicare patients aged older than 65 years in the United States.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Natl Cancer Inst
August 2024
Background: In this study, we provide the largest analysis to date of a US-based cancer cohort to characterize death from COVID-19.
Methods: A total of 4 020 669 patients across 15 subtypes living with cancer in 2020 and included in the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database were abstracted. We investigated prognostic factors for death due to COVID-19 using a Cox proportional hazards model and calculated hazard ratios (HRs).
Studying survivorship and causes of death in patients with advanced or metastatic cancer remains an important task. We characterize the causes of death among patients with metastatic cancer, across 13 cancer types and 25 non-cancer causes and predict the risk of death after diagnosis from the diagnosed cancer versus other causes (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on the outcomes of patients with metastatic cancer to bone has not been adequately studied. We analyzed the association between the Yost Index, a composite geocoded SES score, and overall survival among patients who underwent nonprimary surgical resection for bone metastases.
Methods: This population-based study used data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (2010 to 2018).
Electronic health records (EHRs) have transformed the way modern medicine is practiced, but they remain a major source of documentation burden among physicians. This study aims to use data from Signal, a tool provided by the Epic EHR, to analyze physician metadata in the Montefiore Health System via cluster analysis to assess EHR burden and efficiency. Data were obtained for a one-month period (July 2020) representing a return to normal operation post-telemedicine implementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Reirradiation with stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for patients with primary or secondary lung malignancies represents an appealing definitive approach, but its feasibility and safety are not well defined. The purpose of this study was to investigate the tumor control probability (TCP) and toxicity for patients receiving reirradiation with SBRT.
Patients And Methods: Eligible patients with recurrence of primary or secondary lung malignancies from our hospital were subjected to reirradiation with SBRT, and PubMed- and Embase-indexed articles were reviewed.
Objectives: Deaths from an unknown cause are difficult to adjudicate and oncologic studies of comparative effectiveness often demonstrate inconsistencies in incorporating these deaths and competing events (eg, heart disease and stroke) in their analyses. In this study, we identify cancer patients most at risk for death of an unknown cause.
Methods: This retrospective, population-based study used cancer registry data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (1992-2015).
To date, cyclic electron flow around PSI (PSI-CEF) has been considered the primary (if not the only) mechanism accepted to adjust the ratio of linear vs cyclic electron flow that is essential to adjust the ratio of ATP/NADPH production needed for CO carboxylation. Here we provide a kinetic model showing that cyclic electron flow within PSII (PSII-CEF) is essential to account for the accelerating rate of decay in flash-induced oscillations of O yield as the PQ pool progressively reduces to PQH. Previously, PSII-CEF was modeled by backward transitions using empirical Markov models like Joliot-Kok (J-K) type.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To analyze the long-term trends in pollen counts and asthma-related emergency department visits (AREDV) in adult and pediatric populations in the Bronx.
Methods: Daily values of adult and pediatric AREDV were retrospectively obtained from three major Bronx hospitals using ICD-10 codes and pollen counts were obtained from the Armonk station from 2001-2020. Wilcoxon Ranked Sum was applied to compare median values, while Spearman correlation was employed to examine the association between these variables, for both decades and each season.
Historically, two modeling approaches have been developed independently to describe photosynthetic electron transport (PET) from water to plastoquinone within Photosystem II (PSII): Markov models account for losses from finite redox transition probabilities but predict no reaction kinetics, and ordinary differential equation (ODE) models account for kinetics but not for redox inefficiencies. We have developed an ODE mathematical framework to calculate Markov inefficiencies of transition probabilities as defined in Joliot-Kok-type catalytic cycles. We adapted a previously published ODE model for PET within PSII that accounts for 238 individual steps to enable calculation of the four photochemical inefficiency parameters (miss, double hit, inactivation, backward transition) and the four redox accumulation states (S-states) that are predicted by the most advanced of the Joliot-Kok-type models (VZAD).
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