Publications by authors named "Mandy Ow"
Article Synopsis
- Childhood undernutrition leads to serious health risks and socio-economic challenges, prompting a study on effective interventions.
- The study, called SPROUT, tested an oral nutritional supplement (ONS) combined with dietary counseling (DC) against a DC-only group among undernourished children in Vietnam.
- Results showed that the ONS+DC group experienced significantly greater improvements in weight, height, and overall health compared to the DC-only group, indicating a beneficial approach for addressing childhood undernutrition.
Objective: To explore the clinical pathways, including signs and symptoms, and symptom progression patterns preceding idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) diagnosis.
Design And Setting: A historical cohort study was conducted using primary care patient records from the Optimum Patient Care Research Database.
Participants: Patients included were at least 30 years, had IPF diagnosis, identified via clinical-coding and free-text records and had a consultation with a chest specialist prior to IPF diagnosis.
Cognitive decline is an important issue of global public health. Cognitive aging might begin at middle adulthood, the period particularly vulnerable to stress in lifespan. Essence of chicken (EOC) has consistently demonstrated its beneficial effects on various cognitive domains as nutritional supplementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Although systemic corticosteroid (SCS) treatment, irrespective of duration or dosage, is associated with adverse outcomes for patients with asthma, the longitudinal effects of this treatment on adverse outcomes, healthcare resource utilization (HCRU), and healthcare costs are unknown.
Methods: We identified patients initiating intermittent or long-term SCS who were diagnosed with active asthma from UK general practice with linked secondary care data. Control (non-SCS) patients were matched by sex and index date with those initiating SCS.
The increasing focus of healthcare systems worldwide on long-term care highlights the need for culturally sensitive Health-Related Quality of Life instruments to accurately capture perceived health of various populations. Such instruments require a contextualized conceptual framework of health domains, which is lacking in some socio-cultural contexts. We developed a comprehensive and culturally sensitive conceptual framework of health domains relevant to the Singaporean population.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: In order to protect medical students from burnout and its untoward psychiatric effects, it is imperative to understand their stress, burnout, coping, and resilience experiences. This study aimed to derive collective definitions from the medical student perspective, to identify common themes of students' experiences, and to distinguish pre-clinical and clinical year students' experiences relating to these four constructs.
Methods: The authors conducted focus groups of medical students in Singapore across 4 years using a semi-structured question guide.
Background: Recruitment rates for cancer trials are low for racial/ethnic minorities. Little is known about factors influencing trial recruitment in Asian patients. Our aim is to examine the barriers and facilitators for participation in trials among multi-ethnic Asian women with breast cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: This study aims to identify domains of quality of life (QoL) that are culturally relevant to Chinese caregivers of advanced cancer patients in Singapore and to evaluate content adequacy of currently available instruments for use in the target population.
Methods: English- and Chinese-speaking caregivers of advanced cancer patients receiving care under a tertiary cancer center and/or a community hospice home care/day care provider were recruited for in-depth interviews. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis.
Purpose: This study was designed to compare the clinical outcomes of patients who underwent limited resection (LR) versus pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) for duodenal gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs).
Methods: A systematic review of the literature was performed to identify studies analyzing the clinical outcomes of LR and PD for duodenal GISTs.
Results: Eleven studies were included, of which 7 that compared 162 patients who underwent LR versus 98 patients who underwent PD were suitable for meta-analysis.