Publications by authors named "Lauren Riehm"
Article Synopsis
- - The study focused on improving communication with seriously ill hospital patients by implementing the Serious Illness Care Program (SICP), aiming for better conversations about their health.
- - It involved a review of 112 patients, comparing the quality of discussions about serious illness before and after SICP implementation, revealing significant improvements in key areas such as understanding prognosis and defining patient values.
- - The findings suggest that SICP enhances the quality of serious illness conversations in a hospital setting, underscoring its potential as an effective tool for better patient-care practices.
It is challenging to discriminate the early presentation of Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) as well as sensitively and accurately distinguishing between mild, moderate, and severe levels of impairment. As gait dysfunction is one of the cardinal symptoms of DCM, we hypothesized that spatiotemporal gait parameters, including the enhanced gait variability index (eGVI), could be used to sensitively discriminate between different severities of DCM. A total of 153 patients recently diagnosed with DCM were recruited and stratified on the basis of DCM severity grades, as measured using the modified Japanese Orthopedic Association (mJOA) scale.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) involves spinal cord compression, which causes neurological decline. Neurological impairment in DCM is variable and can involve complex upper limb dysfunction including loss of manual dexterity, hyperreflexia, focal weakness, and sensory impairment. The modified Japanese Orthopaedic Association (mJOA) score relies on the patients' subjective perceptions, whereas existing objective measures such as strength and sensory testing do not capture subtle changes in dexterity and function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- This study analyzed MRI data to determine how changes in spinal cord signal intensity relate to the severity of degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) and surgical outcomes.
- Researchers examined 419 MRIs for signal changes, categorizing them into three groups based on T1 and T2-weighted imaging results and found that higher levels of signal change correlated with worse clinical severity.
- The presence of specific signal changes, particularly T1-hypointensity, was linked to reduced chances of recovery after surgery, indicating that these imaging markers may be useful for predicting surgical outcomes in DCM patients.