Publications by authors named "McKinnon G"

Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to compare the image quality and visibility of lesions in zero echo time (ZTE) MRI using a deep learning (DL) algorithm against conventional reconstruction methods, and to evaluate DL ZTE's effectiveness in assessing bone loss for shoulder instability compared to CT scans.
  • Forty-four patients with shoulder instability underwent both ZTE MRI and CT scans, with images evaluated by two radiologists for clarity, resolution, and how well they showed lesions, using a rating scale.
  • Results indicated that DL ZTE MRI images had superior resolution and showed lesions more clearly than conventional methods, with excellent agreement between DL ZTE and CT scans for measuring bone parameters.
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Article Synopsis
  • Harm reduction strategies at music festivals aim to improve safety by monitoring drug-related toxicity through the EDNAV project, which gathers drug intelligence from patients at hospitals.
  • Blood samples from festival attendees with severe drug-related issues were analyzed for over 700 substances during the 2022/2023 festival season.
  • The study found 228 cases of drug-related toxicity among 1603 medical encounters, with common drugs detected being MDMA, ketamine, and cocaine, alongside several unreported substances, indicating emerging drug use patterns.
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Background: Four externally validated sentinel node biopsy (SNB) prediction nomograms exist for malignant melanoma that each incorporate different clinical and histopathologic variables, which can result in substantially different risk estimations for the same patient. We demonstrate this variability by using hypothetical melanoma cases.

Methods: We compared the MSKCC and MIA calculators.

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Background: In the context of drug prohibition, potential adulteration and variable purity pose additional health risks for people who use drugs, with these risks often compounded by the outdoor music festival environment. Ahead of the imminent implementation of drug checking services in Queensland, Australia, this study aims to characterise this problem using triangulated survey and wastewater data to understand self-reported and detected drug use among attendees of a multi-day Queensland-based music festival in 2021 and 2022.

Methods: We administered an in-situ survey focusing on drug use at the festival to two convenience samples of 136 and 140 festival attendees in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

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Objective: The purpose of this guideline update is to reassess and update recommendations in the prior guideline from 2016 on the appropriate management of patients with uveal melanoma.

Methods: In 2021, a multidisciplinary working group from the Provincial Cutaneous Tumour Team, Cancer Care Alberta, Alberta Health Services was convened to update the guideline. A comprehensive review of new research evidence in PubMed as well as new clinical practice guidelines from prominent oncology groups informed the update.

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Importance: Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an aggressive cutaneous neuroendocrine carcinoma. Due to its relatively low incidence and limited prospective trials, current recommendations are guided by historical single-institution retrospective studies.

Objective: To evaluate the overall survival (OS) of patients in Canada with head and neck MCC (HNMCC) according to American Joint Committee on Cancer 8th edition staging and treatment modalities.

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Introduction: The Emerging Drugs Network of Australia - Victoria (EDNAV) project is a newly established toxicosurveillance network that collates clinical and toxicological data from patients presenting to emergency departments with illicit drug related toxicity in a centralised clinical registry. Data are obtained from a network of sixteen public hospital emergency departments across Victoria, Australia (13 metropolitan and three regional). Comprehensive toxicological analysis of a purposive sample of 22 patients is conducted each week, with reporting of results to key alcohol and other drug stakeholders.

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Background: Alerts about changes in unregulated drug markets may be useful for supporting health and community workers to anticipate, prevent, and respond to unexpected adverse drug events. This study aimed to establish factors influencing the successful design and implementation of drug alerts for use in clinical and community service settings in Victoria, Australia.

Methods: An iterative mixed methods design was used to co-produce drug alert prototypes with practitioners and managers working across various alcohol and other drug services and emergency medicine settings.

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Background: Drug alerts designed for health and community workforces have potential to avert acute harms associated with unpredictable illicit drug markets, by preparing workers to respond to unusual drug-related events, and distribute information to service users. However, the design of such alerts is complicated by diverse needs of individuals, and broader socio-political contexts. Here, we discuss the tensions that arose in the process of co-designing drug alert templates with health and community workers.

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Background: An international survey was conducted to investigate the preferences for completion lymph node dissection (CLND) in head and neck melanomas.

Methods: A questionnaire was sent through the American Society of Head & Neck Surgery (AHNS) and Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (CSO).

Results: Hundred and forty-nine surgeons completed the survey.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to compare deep learning (DL) image reconstruction with conventional MRI methods, focusing on noise reduction settings of 50% and 75% among orthopedic MRI datasets.
  • It involved 54 patients and utilized quantitative metrics like edge sharpness and signal-to-noise ratio, alongside expert radiologist rankings to assess image quality and diagnostic confidence.
  • Results revealed that both DL settings yielded better image quality than conventional methods, but there was less consensus among radiologists on which DL setting was superior.
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Background: Intra-lesional interleukin 2 (IL-2) therapy trials for the treatment of in-transit melanoma using different treatment protocols have been published reporting varied results. This study assesses the results of IL-2 therapy in our institution and to evaluate the reproducibility of our response rates when using the same treatment protocol as another Canadian centre.

Methods: A retrospective review was undertaken of patients with in-transit melanoma who were treated with intralesional IL-2 in a single institution from 2010 to 2016.

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Background: Intralesional injection of interleukin-2 (IL-2) for in-transit melanoma (ITM) is associated with a high rate of complete response. However, there is a paucity of data on treatment durability and long-term outcomes.

Objectives: To provide long-term data on patients with a complete response to IL-2 therapy for ITM.

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Introduction: Initiation of chemotherapy in patients with cancer near end-of-life (EOL) has become more frequent due to an increasing number of treatment options. We aimed to analyze the proportion of metastatic colorectal cancer patients (mCRC) in Alberta, Canada, who were started on a new chemotherapy regimen within 90 days of death.

Methods: This was a retrospective, population-based study using data from the cancer measurement outcomes and evaluation (C-MORE) database.

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Background: Patient-reported outcomes (pros) are essential to capture the patient's perspective and to influence care. Although pros and pro measures are known to have many important benefits, they are not consistently being used and there is there no Canadian pros oversight. The Position Statement presented here is the first step toward supporting the implementation of pros in the Canadian health care setting.

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Background: Skin flap necrosis (SFN) is a morbid complication that is disfiguring, leads to acute and chronic wound issues, often requires further surgery, and can delay adjuvant chemotherapy. Although most surgeons rely on the clinical examination, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy can extrapolate tissue oxygenation and may serve as an important tool to assess flap perfusion intraoperatively. This cohort study was undertaken to evaluate the capacity of NIR spectroscopy to detect clinically relevant differences in tissue perfusion intraoperatively.

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argue that multidisciplinary action in planning and health will contribute to more equitable communities and improved health and wellbeing

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Background: Even though obesity is a well-established risk factor for developing colon cancer, its prognostic value is not very well understood. The present study elucidated the effect of obesity, as measured by the body mass index (BMI) and body surface area (BSA), on colon cancer outcomes.

Patients And Methods: Patients with a diagnosis of stage III colon cancer from 2011 to 2016 who had undergone adjuvant chemotherapy in Alberta, Canada were identified.

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Objective: Self-management has been proposed as a strategy to help cancer patients optimize their health and well-being during survivorship. Previous reviews have shown variable effects of self-management on outcomes. The theoretical basis and psychoeducational components of these interventions have not been evaluated in detail.

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Purpose: To introduce a new method for in-phase zero TE (ipZTE) musculoskeletal MR imaging.

Methods: ZTE is a 3D radial imaging method, which is sensitive to chemical shift off-resonance signal interference, especially around fat-water tissue interfaces. The ipZTE method addresses this fat-water chemical shift artifact by acquiring each 3D radial spoke at least twice with varying readout gradient amplitude and hence varying effective sampling time.

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Purpose: To introduce a novel reconstruction method for simultaneous multi-slice (SMS)-accelerated multi-shot diffusion weighted imaging (ms-DWI).

Methods: SMS acceleration using blipped-CAIPI schemes have been proposed to speed up the acquisition of ms-DWIs. The reconstruction of the data requires (a) phase compensation to combine data from different shots and (b) slice unfolding to separate the data of different slices.

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Objective: To assess whether preoperative ultrasound (US) assessment of regional lymph nodes in patients who present with primary cutaneous melanoma provides accurate staging.

Background: It has been suggested that preoperative US could avoid the need for sentinel node (SN) biopsy, but in most single-institution reports, the sensitivity of preoperative US has been low.

Methods: Preoperative US data and SNB results were analyzed for patients enrolled at 20 centers participating in the screening phase of the second Multicenter Selective Lymphadenectomy Trial.

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