Publications by authors named "Lisa Hofer"
Background: Improving health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is an important disease management goal in persons with Multiple Sclerosis (PwMS). HRQoL decreases with increasing age and prolonged disease duration; other factors remain less understood.
Objective: To identify associations of multiple sclerosis (MS) disease characteristics and symptom burden with low HRQoL.
Aims: To describe the point prevalence, risk factors and possible outcomes of delirium in inpatients.
Design: A cross-sectional point prevalence study.
Background: Delirium is an acute brain syndrome that negatively affects patients, healthcare professionals and institutions alike; it is common in inpatient settings and is preventable in about one third of cases.
Background: Little data exist on the time spent by emergency department (ED) personnel providing intravenous (IV) fluid to 'responsive' versus 'unresponsive' patients.
Methods: A prospective, convenience sample of adult ED patients was studied; patients were enrolled if preload expansion was indicated for any reason. Using a novel, wireless, wearable ultrasound, carotid artery Doppler was obtained before and throughout a preload challenge (PC) prior to each bag of ordered IV fluid.
Objectives: To evaluate different image quality scoring systems in the assessment of factors limiting diagnostic accuracy of prostate MRI.
Methods: This retrospective IRB-approved study included 281 patients undergoing prostate MRI prior to biopsy. Four readers (2 experienced, 2 novice) independently reviewed all MRI examinations (n = 295) and assigned scores for subjective image quality (1-5; 1:poor, 5:excellent), the PI-QUAL and the PSHS scoring system.
A preload challenge (PC) is a clinical maneuver that, first, increases the cardiac filling (i.e., preload) and, second, calculates the change in cardiac output.
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- Post-mortem imaging techniques like Virtopsy®—which combines imaging with guided biopsies—are being explored as noninvasive alternatives to traditional autopsies for prenatal and postnatal cases.
- This study involved 101 cases and found that both Virtopsy and conventional autopsy agreed on the cause of death in 90.1% of cases; however, Virtopsy missed significant pathologies in nearly one-third of cases.
- The study indicated that while Virtopsy has high sensitivity for determining causes of death, it also has lower specificity, meaning it has a tendency to produce false positives for pathologies that were not confirmed by autopsy.
Background: Lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) affects mainly elderly patients. To this day, it is unclear whether comorbidities influence treatment success. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to assess the impact of comorbidities on the treatment effectiveness in symptomatic LSS.
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