Association between anxiety, depression, and emotional distress and hypoglossal nerve stimulator adherence.

Purpose: To evaluate relationships between hypoglossal nerve stimulator (HNS) adherence and the presence of anxiety, depression, and emotional distress.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of subjects with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), who had HNS implanted and activated at The Ohio State University Medical Center (OSUMC). Patient usage data from the previous 6 months was obtained from 33 patients.

Proficiency-based Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery skills training results in durable performance improvement and a uniform certification pass rate.

Background: The authors have previously documented a 100% certification pass rate immediately after a proficiency-based skills training curriculum for the Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) program. This study aimed to determine the durability of skills acquired after initial training.

Methods: For this study, 21 novice medical students were enrolled in institutional review board (IRB)-approved protocols at two institutions.

Pretraining on Southwestern stations decreases training time and cost for proficiency-based fundamentals of laparoscopic surgery training.

Background: We previously reported a proficiency-based Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS) curriculum that uniformly resulted in passing the technical skills certification criteria. We hypothesized that pretraining using the Southwestern (SW) videotrainer stations would decrease costs and training time and maintain benefits.

Study Design: Group I (2nd-year medical student, n = 10) underwent FLS pretesting (Pretest 1), SW station proficiency-based training, repeat FLS testing (Pretest 2), FLS proficiency-based training, and final FLS testing (Posttest).