Objective: Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) refers to the presence of visual hallucinations occurring secondary to visual impairment. The aim of this study was to understand the phenomenology of CBS in children and assess the emotional impact and support needs of patients and their families.
Design: Semistructured qualitative interview study.
Background: Visual impairment can significantly impact an individual's daily activities. Patients require regular monitoring, typically occurring within hospital eye services. Capacity constraints have necessitated innovative solutions to improve patient care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcquired hemophilia A (AHA) is a rare bleeding disorder caused by inhibitory autoantibodies to factor (F)VIII. The goals of treatment are 2-fold, namely immunosuppressive therapy to eradicate the inhibitor and hemostatic management to control bleeding. Emicizumab, a bispecific antibody that acts as a FVIIIa-mimetic, has seen growing use in AHA following its approval for congenital hemophilia A.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTher Adv Ophthalmol
November 2024
Background: Charles Bonnet syndrome (CBS) refers to the experience of visual hallucinations occurring secondary to sight loss. Although there is an increasing amount of research on this phenomenon, CBS remains a lesser-known outcome of visual impairment, with limited research into the impact on the patient.
Objectives: To explore the experiences and opinions of visually impaired military veterans with CBS regarding the impact of visual hallucinations.
Onchocerca is an important genus of vector-borne filarial nematodes that infect both humans and animals worldwide. Many Onchocerca spp., most of medical and veterinary health relevance, are the focus of a variety of diagnostic and molecular research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVet Clin North Am Food Anim Pract
October 2023
We developed and evaluated the Digital Platform for Exercise (DPEx): a decentralized, patient-centric approach designed to enhance all aspects of clinical investigation of exercise therapy. DPEx integrated provision of a treadmill with telemedicine and remote biospecimen collection permitting all study procedures to be conducted in patient's homes. Linked health biodevices enabled high-resolution monitoring of lifestyle and physiological response.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The snake genera Atropoides, Cerrophidion, and Metlapilcoatlus form a clade of neotropical pit vipers distributed across Mexico and Central America. This study evaluated the myotoxic and neurotoxic effects of nine species of Atropoides, Cerrophidion, and Metlapilcoatlus, and the neutralising efficacy of the ICP antivenom from Costa Rica against these effects, in the chick biventer cervicis nerve-muscle preparation. Given the prominence of PLAs within the venom proteomes of these species, we also aimed to determine the neutralising potency of the PLA inhibitor, varespladib.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Evaluation of the Australian Triage Scale in patients who present to the emergency department with upper gastrointestinal bleeding BACKGROUND: Upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) is a common presentation to the emergency department (ED). Study aims were to evaluate the utility of the Australasian Triage Score (ATS) in patients presenting to the ED with UGIB.
Methods: This retrospective observational study included 356 patients over a 2-year period who presented to a metropolitan hospital ED.
Pretreatment prognostication, on-treatment monitoring, and early detection of physiological symptoms are considerable challenges in cancer. We describe the feasibility of high-resolution wearable data (steps per day, walking speed) to longitudinally profile physiological trajectories extracted from Apple Health data in three patients with lung cancer from diagnosis through cancer treatment after obtaining informed consent. We used descriptive statistics to describe our approach of building longitudinal physiological profiles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Monoclonal antibodies are widely used anticancer therapies. Increasing demand for ambulatory care necessitates exploration of efficiency measures.
Objectives: The primary objective was to evaluate the impacts on chair time and associated cost of priming IV administration sets with a bolus of the prescribed monoclonal antibody drugs.
Background: Whether structured exercise therapy improves chemotherapy delivery, tolerability, and tumor response is unclear.
Methods: This was a secondary analysis of a phase 2 trial investigating exercise therapy (n = 72) versus usual care (n = 72) in patients with primary breast cancer. Exercise therapy comprised individualized treadmill walking three times weekly for 20-50 minutes per session at 55%-100% of pretreatment exercise capacity.
Purpose: The magnitude of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) impairment during anticancer treatment and CRF response to aerobic exercise training (AT) are highly variable. The aim of this ancillary analysis was to leverage machine learning approaches to identify patients at high risk of impaired CRF and poor CRF response to AT.
Methods: We evaluated heterogeneity in CRF among 64 women with metastatic breast cancer randomly assigned to 12 weeks of highly structured AT (n = 33) or control (n = 31).
Background: A dramatic decline in mental health of people worldwide in the early COVID-19 pandemic years has not recovered. In rural and remote Australia, access to appropriate and timely mental health services has been identified as a major barrier to people seeking help for mental ill-health. From 2020 to 2021 a care navigation model, Navicare, was co-designed with rural and remote communities in the Greater Whitsunday Region of Central Queensland in Australia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Observational data have shown that postdiagnosis exercise is associated with reduced risk of prostate cancer death. The feasibility and tumor biological activity of exercise therapy is not known.
Objective: To identify recommended phase 2 dose of exercise therapy for patients with prostate cancer.
Objective: To determine the incidence of patients presenting in pain to a large Australian inner-city emergency department (ED) using a clinical text deep learning algorithm.
Materials And Methods: A fine-tuned, domain-specific, transformer-based clinical text deep learning model was used to interpret free-text nursing assessments in the electronic medical records of 235,789 adult presentations to the ED over a three-year period. The model classified presentations according to whether the patient had pain on arrival at the ED.
Background: Physical activity and metformin pharmacotherapy are associated with improved clinical outcomes in breast and colorectal cancer survivors. Myokines are cytokines secreted from skeletal muscle that may mediate these associations.
Methods: This hypothesis-generating analysis used biospecimens collected from a multi-centre 2 × 2 factorial randomized design of 116 patients with stage I-III breast and colorectal cancer who were randomized to 12 weeks of (1) aerobic exercise (moderate intensity titrated to 220 min/week); (2) metformin (850 mg daily for 2 weeks and then titrated to 850 mg twice per day); (3) aerobic exercise and metformin; or (4) control.
Purpose: Postdiagnosis exercise is associated with lower breast cancer (BC) mortality but its link with risk of recurrence is less clear. We investigated the impact and dose-response relationship of exercise and recurrence in patients with primary BC.
Methods: Multicenter prospective cohort analysis among 10,359 patients with primary BC from 26 centers in France between 2012 and 2018 enrolled in the CANcer TOxicities study, with follow-up through October 2021.