Evaluating the Use of Dexamethasone in Diabetic Patients Undergoing Total Joint Arthroplasty: A Systematic Review and Metaanalysis.

Background: The American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons strongly recommends the use of dexamethasone in patients undergoing total joint arthroplasty due to its therapeutic effects. However, use in diabetic patients is controversial due to safety. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine safety: (1) calculating the postoperative glucose levels; (2) finding the ideal dexamethasone dosing regimen; and (3) reporting complications of dexamethasone administration in diabetic patients undergoing total joint arthroplasty.

Cancer Nursing Frameworks to Guide Clinical Capability, Education and Careers: A Scoping Review of the International Literature.

Aim: This review aimed to provide a current global profile of all existing cancer nursing competency, capability, education and career frameworks and map capabilities and competencies to the clinical, facilitation of education, management and research pillars of practice.

Design: Scoping review.

Data Sources: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Cochrane Library, Epistemonikos, Google Scholar, Medline, and PubMed.

The role of the gut microbiome in regulating the response to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionised cancer therapy, yet the proportion of patients who achieve long-term disease control remain suboptimal. Over the past decade, the gut microbiome has been shown to influence immune-mediated tumour suppression as well as responses to ICI therapies. Compositional differences in gut microbiome may account for the differences in outcomes from immune checkpoint blockade.

Poor vaccine responders mask the true trend in vaccine effectiveness against progression to severe disease.

Vaccines can reduce an individual's risk of infection and their risk of progression to severe disease given infection. The latter effect is less commonly estimated but is relevant for vaccine impact modeling and cost-effectiveness calculations. Using a motivating example from the COVID-19 literature, we note how vaccine effectiveness against progression to severe disease can appear to increase from below 0 % to over 70 % within 8 months.

Sequential auditory grouping reduces binaural pitch fusion in listeners with normal hearing, hearing aids, and cochlear implantsa).

Binaural pitch fusion, the perceptual integration of dichotically presented stimuli that evoke different pitches, can be considered a type of simultaneous grouping. Hence, auditory streaming cues such as temporally flanking stimuli that promote sequential grouping might compete with simultaneous dichotic grouping to reduce binaural fusion. Here, we measured binaural pitch fusion using an auditory streaming task in normal-hearing listeners and hearing-impaired listeners with hearing aids and/or cochlear implants.