Clinical Decision Support Systems Used in Transplantation: Are They Tools for Success or an Unnecessary Gadget? A Systematic Review.

Although clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) have been used since the 1970s for a wide variety of clinical tasks including optimization of medication orders, improved documentation, and improved patient adherence, to date, no systematic reviews have been carried out to assess their utilization and efficacy in transplant medicine. The aim of this study is to systematically review studies that utilized a CDSS and assess impact on patient outcomes. A total of 48 articles were identified as meeting the author-derived inclusion criteria, including tools for posttransplant monitoring, pretransplant risk assessment, waiting list management, immunosuppressant management, and interpretation of histopathology.

Using Artificial Intelligence for Predicting Survival of Individual Grafts in Liver Transplantation: A Systematic Review.

The demand for liver transplantation far outstrips the supply of deceased donor organs, and so, listing and allocation decisions aim to maximize utility. Most existing methods for predicting transplant outcomes use basic methods, such as regression modeling, but newer artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have the potential to improve predictive accuracy. The aim was to perform a systematic review of studies predicting graft outcomes following deceased donor liver transplantation using AI techniques and to compare these findings to linear regression and standard predictive modeling: donor risk index (DRI), Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD), and Survival Outcome Following Liver Transplantation (SOFT).

A pilot study of primary care physicians' attitude to weight loss surgery in England: are the young more prejudiced?

Background: Primary care practitioners (PCP) are the "gate-keepers" for publicly funded weight loss surgery (WLS) in the United Kingdom, but their attitude toward WLS has not been studied to date.

Objective: This pilot study aimed to investigate opinions and experience of PCPs regarding WLS in the United Kingdom.

Setting: PCPs from 3 publicly funded primary care consortiums from distinct geographic areas within the United Kingdom were surveyed.

Does a PBL-based medical curriculum predispose training in specific career paths? A systematic review of the literature.

Background: North American medical schools have used problem-based learning (PBL) structured medical education for more than 60 years. However, it has only recently been introduced in other medical schools outside of North America. Since its inception, there has been the debate on whether the PBL learning process predisposes students to select certain career paths.

Change in Sexual Dysfunction Following Bariatric Surgery.

Obesity is associated with multiple comorbidities and psychosocial burdens, but often sexual dysfunction (SD) is overlooked. Bariatric surgery is the most effective treatment for morbid obesity, and its role in reversing SD is reviewed. A literature search of MEDLINE, PubMed Central, and Cochrane databases was conducted.

Cognitive Task Analysis: Bringing Olympic Athlete Style Training to Surgical Education.

Background: Surgical training is changing and evolving as time, pressure, and legislative demands continue to mount on trainee surgeons. A paradigm change in the focus of training has resulted in experts examining the cognitive steps needed to perform complex and often highly pressurized surgical procedures.

Objective: To provide an overview of the collective evidence on cognitive task analysis (CTA) as a surgical training method, and determine if CTA improves a surgeon's performance as measured by technical and nontechnical skills assessment, including precision, accuracy, and operative errors.