Publications by authors named "Maria Aquino"

Article Synopsis
  • - The study focused on the health and development review mandated for children in England at ages 2-2½ years, emphasizing the use of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) to assess early development and gather population-level data on trends and disparities.
  • - Through 15 focus groups involving parents and health professionals, researchers explored experiences and priorities regarding child development measurements during these reviews.
  • - Two main themes emerged: the desire for a comprehensive measurement approach that promotes open discussions about a child's development within the family context, and the need for clarity in the tool's purpose and consistent implementation among practitioners.
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Background: Making Every Contact Count (MECC) is a public health strategy which strives to enable brief interventions to be implemented through opportunistic healthy lifestyle conversations. In a mental health inpatient setting a bespoke MECC training package has been developed to encourage cascade training through a train the trainer model and to incorporate an additional regional health strategy A Weight Off Your Mind into Core MECC training to provide a focus on healthy weight management. This study evaluated the fidelity of design of MECC in the mental health inpatient setting and fidelity of the training package currently being cascaded across the region.

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Background: Appropriate use of medication is an important indicator of quality healthcare delivery among children. Previously published studies on drug utilization involved Filipino households in general and were conducted in the 1990s. No recent Philippine studies have been conducted that focus on drug utilization in children.

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Trauma can be both a cause and a consequence of homelessness and has lasting impacts on mental health and wellbeing. Often research focusses on trauma and adversity in childhood leading to homelessness, but understanding traumatic experiences during adulthood homelessness can be just as important for informing intervention development and policies to mitigate and eradicate homelessness. Working with people with lived experience of homelessness, this review aimed to synthesis the qualitative evidence exploring the impact of trauma during homelessness on mental health (including substance use) from the perspective of adults (18 years of age and older) experiencing homelessness.

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Article Synopsis
  • Turnaround time is a crucial metric in primary healthcare, indicating the duration patients spend in a facility from registration to the end of their consultation.
  • This study assessed turnaround times in a rural Philippine primary care facility, comparing periods before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing data from 342 randomly selected patient records.
  • Results indicated a median turnaround time of 29.0 minutes overall, with no significant difference found between the pre-pandemic (29.3 minutes) and pandemic periods (27.5 minutes) based on statistical analysis.*
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Background: Primary care for pediatric patients focuses on providing comprehensive, accessible, and coordinated healthcare from the neonatal period to adolescence. The implementation and use of electronic medical records (EMR) in pediatric primary care facilities is an efficient strategy to gather necessary information on the epidemiology of common pediatric diseases in the Philippines.

Objectives: This study aimed to determine the frequency distribution of pediatric diseases in a rural primary healthcare facility in the Philippines.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study evaluated how infectious acute gastroenteritis (AGE) in children is managed in a rural healthcare setting, assessing prescription patterns and laboratory use against established clinical guidelines.
  • - Analysis of medical records for patients under 19 diagnosed with AGE revealed low adherence to recommendations for rehydration and antibiotic use, with only 52% prescribed appropriate rehydration solutions and just 24% following guidelines on antibiotic prescriptions for non-specific cases.
  • - Despite low antibiotic prescription rates, the study showed high adherence to guidelines for laboratory use, with 73% deferring stool analyses and 70% deferring CBCs, indicating a careful approach to diagnostic testing in managing AGE.
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Background And Objective: Inequity in access to healthcare continues to be a problem in the Philippines. This was further aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Telemedicine is considered a potential strategy to address inequitable access to healthcare; however, it only gained popularity during the pandemic.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and safety of a publicly available large language model (LLM)-ChatGPT in the sub-domain of glaucoma.

Design: Evaluation of diagnostic test or technology.

Subjects Participants And/or Controls: We seek to evaluate the responses of an artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT (version GPT-3.

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Lower-intensity interventions delivered in primary and community care contacts could provide more equitable and scalable weight management support for postnatal women. This mixed-methods systematic review aimed to explore the effectiveness, implementation, and experiences of lower-intensity weight management support delivered by the non-specialist workforce. We included quantitative and qualitative studies of any design that evaluated a lower-intensity weight management intervention delivered by non-specialist workforce in women up to 5 years post-natal, and where intervention effectiveness (weight-related and/or behavioural outcomes), implementation and/or acceptability were reported.

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Prcis: In our case series, the 3-year failure for Paul Glaucoma Implant (PGI) implantation was 14.6%. At 3 years postoperatively, there was a significant reduction in mean intraocular pressure (IOP) and the number of glaucoma medications used.

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Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, United Kingdom (UK) stop smoking services had to shift to remote delivery models due to social distancing regulations, later reintroducing face-to-face provision. The "Living Well Smokefree" service in North Yorkshire County Council adopted a hybrid model offering face-to-face, remote, or a mix of both. This evaluation aimed to assess the hybrid approach's strengths and weaknesses and explore potential improvements.

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Objectives: This study measured changes in patient satisfaction levels before and after the introduction of primary care system strengthening interventions in urban, rural, and remote sites in the Philippines.

Methods: A previously validated 16-item questionnaire was distributed to 200 patients per site before implementation of interventions and to a different set of 200 patients 1 year after implementation. We compared the percentage change in highly satisfied patients per site before and after implementing interventions using a two-proportion Z-test.

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Introduction: Strengthening primary care helps address health inequities that continue to persist in the Philippines. The Philippine Primary Care Studies pilot-tested interventions to improve the primary care system. One intervention was the provision of a free subscription to an electronic decision support application called UpToDate (UTD) for primary care providers (PCPs), including doctors, nurses, midwives and community health workers (CHWs).

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Background: Trauma is an experience (physical or emotional) that is life-threatening, harmful, or out of the ordinary and has lasting effects on mental health and wellbeing. Much of the information about trauma within homeless populations focuses on events in childhood. Using coproduction principles, we aimed to synthesise qualitative evidence exploring the impact of trauma during adulthood homelessness on mental health, including substance use.

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Objectives: The draft genome sequence of Campylobacter jejuni (Cj26) was analysed to investigate genetic mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance, virulence-associated genes, and phylogenetic context.

Methods: Antimicrobial resistance was assessed by agar dilution and disk diffusion. Cj26 was sequenced using NovaSeq 6000 technology.

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Background: Cow's milk protein allergy (CMPA) is a common allergy in infants and can affect proper growth and development. This study verified factors associated with the evolution of the nutritional status (NS) among infants with CMPA fed with hypoallergenic formulas (HF).

Methods: This is a longitudinal study of infants (n = 1036) participating on a governmental program in Brazil.

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The emergence of fluoroquinolone and macrolide resistance in C. jejuni, a recognized zoonotic pathogen, has increased worldwide. This study aimed to investigate phenotypic resistance to ciprofloxacin and erythromycin, the molecular mechanisms involved, and the strain of C.

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Amikacin is the antibiotic of choice for the treatment of Gram-negative infections, namely, those in neutropenic oncology patients. No populational pharmacokinetic studies are currently available reporting amikacin pharmacokinetics in neutropenic oncology patients despite their specific pathophysiological features and treatments. A large-scale retrospective study was herein conducted to specifically investigate the effects that tumor diseases have on the pharmacokinetic parameters of amikacin and identify whether chemotherapy, the lag time between administration of chemotherapy and amikacin, age and renal function contribute to amikacin pharmacokinetics in neutropenic cancer patients.

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Background: 'Making Every Contact Count' (MECC) is a public health strategy supporting public-facing workers to use opportunities during routine contacts to enable health behaviour change. A mental health hospital in the North East of England is currently implementing a programme to embed MECC across the hospital supporting weight management ('A Weight Off Your Mind'). Bespoke MECC training has been developed to improve staff confidence in discussing physical activity, healthy eating, and related behaviour change with service users.

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Article Synopsis
  • Inequities in health access and outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), especially in the Philippines, highlight the need for stronger primary care systems, which are currently undervalued and underfunded.
  • A study involving healthcare workers across urban, rural, and remote areas of the Philippines examined the effects of system interventions, such as performance incentives and improved technology, on job satisfaction and retention.
  • Results showed significant improvements in perceived compensation fairness and medicine access for urban and rural workers, but remote providers reported declines in job motivators and other aspects of job satisfaction despite the interventions.
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Objective: The objective of this study is to elucidate the effectiveness of home based rehabilitation (HBR) and compare its results with those obtained in conventional rehabilitation (CR) programs, carried out in clinics and/or outpatient clinics.

Methods: Searches were conducted in five databases of randomized clinical trials. Study selection, data extraction, and assessment of the methodological quality of included studies were conducted independently by two reviewers, with discrepancies resolved by a third reviewer.

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