Publications by authors named "O'DONOGHUE D"

Injury of a coronary cusp of the aortic valve is a rare complication that can occur during coronary angiography. It usually occurs from multiple attempts with different catheters to access the ostia of the right coronary artery, but it has also occurred accessing the ostia of the left coronary artery. We present the case of a patient who underwent coronary angiography with suspected coronary cusp injury that remained asymptomatic but was found to have severe aortic regurgitation during coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) one week later, requiring an aortic valve replacement.

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Medicines optimisation ensures that people get the best possible outcomes from their medicines. As those with severe mental illness (SMI) are frequently prescribed psychotropic medicines with potentially significant side-effects, poor adherence to treatment and physical morbidity are common. This results in suboptimal symptom control, physical health problems and negative health outcomes.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a type of acquired brain injury (ABI) that happens when a sudden, external, physical assault damages the brain. TBI can cause long-term cognitive impairments and other lifestyle changes that may affect psychological wellbeing. Among the psychological challenges people recovering from TBI often face is the subjective loss of their pre-injury identity.

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Incorrect inhaler technique and non-adherence to inhaled preventer therapy often is the cause of poorly controlled asthma. Detecting and correcting non-adherence in asthma therapy has proven difficult. In addition, while patients may be able to demonstrate correct inhaler technique at the clinic recent evidence suggests that critical errors in inhaler technique occur in the home setting.

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Purpose: High-dose methotrexate (HDMTX; > 500 mg/m) is an important component of lymphoma therapy. Serum MTX monitoring at 48 hours is the standard approach to identify those at increased risk of developing MTX toxicity. Our aim was to characterize the incidence of complications and their association with MTX levels.

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Asthma is one of the most common chronic disorders of childhood. The typical symptoms are a result of reversible airway obstruction. There is no 'gold-standard' test to diagnose asthma, but the most commonly used investigation to help with a diagnosis is spirometry.

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The benefits of involving patients and the public in medical education are well documented, however there is a need to further explore how this can be translated to the setting of paediatric medical education. This article aims to identify how organisations can facilitate the involvement of paediatric patients and their parents/carers.While involving children in research can present challenges, we describe examples where organisations have successfully involved young people in clinical research and selection of research topics.

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Background: Many children attend Emergency Departments (ED) and Out of Hours (OoH) frequently for acute asthma. Follow up care is often suboptimal leaving these children at risk of a future attacks. We report on the development, implementation and evaluation of a safe asthma discharge care pathway (SADCP).

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Background: One reason that asthma remains poorly controlled in children is poor inhaler technique. Guidelines recommend checking inhaler technique at each clinical visit. However, they do not specify how best to train children to mastery of correct inhaler technique.

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Aim: Many challenges exist in determining true rates of adherence to antihypertensive medications among individuals in a clinic setting. For the first time, we aimed to compare patient-reported antihypertensive adherence with objective evidence using mass spectrometry spot urinalysis in a tertiary referral clinic setting.

Methods: A prospective observational single-centre cohort study was performed in a tertiary referral hypertension clinic, encompassing antihypertensive initiation and persistence.

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Background: The superior parietal lobule (SPL) is involved in somatosensory and visuospatial integration with additional roles in attention, written language, and working memory. A detailed understanding of the exact location and nature of associated white matter tracts could improve surgical decisions and subsequent postoperative morbidity related to surgery in and around this gyrus.

Objective: To characterize the fiber tracts of the SPL based on relationships to other well-known neuroanatomic structures through diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI)-based fiber tracking validated by gross anatomical dissection as ground truth.

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Objectives: The Global Kidney Health Atlas (GKHA) is a multinational, cross-sectional survey designed to assess the current capacity for kidney care across all world regions. The 2017 GKHA involved 125 countries and identified significant gaps in oversight, funding and infrastructure to support care for patients with kidney disease, especially in lower-middle-income countries. Here, we report results from the survey for the second iteration of the GKHA conducted in 2018, which included specific questions about health financing and oversight of end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) care worldwide.

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Background: The middle temporal gyrus (MTG) is understood to play a role in language-related tasks such as lexical comprehension and semantic cognition. However, a more specific understanding of its key white matter connections could promote the preservation of these functions during neurosurgery.

Objective: To provide a detailed description of the underlying white matter tracts associated with the MTG to improve semantic preservation during neurosurgery.

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Background: The medial occipital lobe, composed of the lingual gyrus and cuneus, is necessary for both basic and higher level visual processing. It is also known to facilitate cross-modal, nonvisual functions, such as linguistic processing and verbal memory, after the loss of the visual senses. A detailed cortical model elucidating the white matter connectivity associated with this area could improve our understanding of the interacting brain networks that underlie complex human processes and postoperative outcomes related to vision and language.

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Background: It is recognised that newly qualified doctors feel unprepared in many areas of their daily practice and that there is a gap between what students learn during medical school and their clinical responsibilities early in their postgraduate career. This study aimed to assess if undergraduate students and junior paediatric doctors met a Minimum Accepted Competency (MAC) of knowledge.

Methods: The knowledge of undergraduates and junior paediatric doctors was quantitatively assessed by their performance on a 30-item examination (the MAC examination).

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Background: The middle frontal gyrus (MFG) is involved in attention, working memory, and language-related processing. A detailed understanding of the subcortical white matter tracts connected within the MFG can facilitate improved navigation of white matter lesions in and around this gyrus and explain the postoperative morbidity after surgery. We aimed to characterize the fiber tracts within the MFG according to their connection to neuroanatomic structures through the use of diffusion spectrum imaging-based fiber tractography and validate the findings by gross anatomic dissection for qualitative visual agreement.

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Introduction: 21% of NHS staff are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds yet account for a disproportionately high number of medical-staff deaths from COVID-19. Using data from the published OpenSAFELY Collaborative, we analysed consultant physicians to determine those at increased risk of COVID-19 related death.

Methods: Data from 13,500 consultant physicians collected by the Royal College of Physicians were analysed to determine those at an increased risk of death from COVID-19, assuming no comorbidities.

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Introduction: Fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) positivity is determined by a threshold decided by individual screening programs. Data are limited on correlation between FIT levels and pathology identified at colonoscopy. Our aim was to examine the correlation between FIT levels and pathology identified in a national colorectal cancer screening program.

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Background: Health information systems (HIS) are fundamental tools for the surveillance of health services, estimation of disease burden and prioritization of health resources. Several gaps in the availability of HIS for kidney disease were highlighted by the first iteration of the Global Kidney Health Atlas.

Methods: As part of its second iteration, the International Society of Nephrology conducted a cross-sectional global survey between July and October 2018 to explore the coverage and scope of HIS for kidney disease, with a focus on kidney replacement therapy (KRT).

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Background: Patients undergoing haemodialysis (HD) are at higher risk of developing worse outcomes if they contract COVID-19. In our renal service we reduced HD frequency from thrice to twice-weekly in selected patients with the primary aim of reducing COVID 19 exposure and transmission between HD patients.

Methods: Dialysis unit nephrologists identified 166 suitable patients (38.

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Background: Research indicates that cachexia is common among persons with chronic illnesses and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, there continues to be an absence of a uniformed disease-specific definition for cachexia in chronic kidney disease (CKD) patient populations.

Objective: The primary objective was to identify cachexia in patients receiving haemodialysis (HD) using a generic definition and then follow up on these patients for 12 months.

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Background: BowelScreen, The National Bowel Screening Programme in Ireland, offers free colorectal screening to persons aged 60-69 through a home Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) kit. 40.2% uptake in the first screening round was below the programme standard (≥50.

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