Bayesian modeling framework for optimizing pre-hospital stroke triage decisions.

Ischemic stroke is responsible for significant morbidity and mortality in the United States and worldwide. Stroke treatment optimization requires emergency medical personnel to make rapid triage decisions concerning destination hospitals that may differ in their ability to provide highly time-sensitive pharmaceutical and surgical interventions. These decisions are particularly crucial in rural areas, where transport decisions can have a large impact on treatment times - often involving a trade-off between delay in pharmaceutical therapy or a delay in endovascular thrombectomy.

Subcortical brain iron and its link to verbal memory in children with developmental language disorder.

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a common neurodevelopmental condition characterized by significant difficulty with language learning, comprehension, and expression. The neurocognitive bases of DLD are underspecified but are thought to be related, in part, to altered basal ganglia (BG). The BG are known to have a high level of brain iron, which contributes to myelination and dopaminergic pathways among other physiological mechanisms.

Device Use Among Spanish-English Bilingual and English Monolingual Children Who Are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Purpose: This report compares device use in a cohort of Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children who are deaf and hard of hearing, including children fitted with traditional hearing aids, cochlear implants (CIs), and/or bone-conduction hearing devices.

Method: Participants were 84 Spanish-English bilingual children and 85 English monolingual children from clinical sites across the United States. The data represent a subset obtained in a larger clinical trial.

Evaluating Usability and Feasibility of Implementing a Novel Cancer Mapping Tool.

Purpose: Cancer registries are often asked to present cancer data for small geographic areas to inform and facilitate targeted interventions and prevention programs. However, it is challenging to compute and visualize reliable cancer estimates for areas with small case counts and populations to support cancer control planning.

Methods: We used a Bayesian hierarchical model that borrows strength from neighboring areas and over time to produce cancer estimates for small areas.

The relationships between cochlear nerve health and AzBio sentence scores in quiet and noise in postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant users.

Objectives: This study investigated the relationships between the cochlear nerve (CN) health and sentence-level speech perception outcomes measured in quiet and noise in postlingually deafened adult cochlear implant (CI) users.

Design: Study participants included 24 postlingually deafened adult CI users with a Cochlear Nucleus device. For each participant, only one ear was tested.

Linguistic diversity shapes flexible speech perception in school age children.

Every day, listeners encounter a wide range of acoustic signals. Successfully solving this variability problem allows them to interpret these signals accurately. While this mechanism tends to be less effortful for adults, children need to learn stable categories in the face of such variability.

Clinical anemia predicts dermal parasitism and reservoir infectiousness during progressive visceral leishmaniosis.

Dogs represent the primary reservoir for Leishmania infantum human visceral leishmaniasis (VL) transmitted through phlebotomine sand flies. Public health initiatives targeting zoonotic VL commonly focus on dogs with severe clinical disease, often in renal failure, as they have previously been considered the most infectious to sand flies. However, more recent studies suggest that dogs with mild to moderate clinical disease may be more infectious than dogs with severe disease.

Outcomes of Near-Total and Subtotal Resection of Sporadic Vestibular Schwannoma: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Objective: To evaluate tumor control and facial nerve outcomes after gross-total (GTR), near-total (NTR), and subtotal resection (STR) of sporadic vestibular schwannomas (VS).

Data Sources: PubMed, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched in August 2021 through inception following PRISMA guidelines.

Review Methods: English language articles reporting tumor control and facial nerve outcomes of adults (≥18 years) with NTR and STR of VS were evaluated.

Deep Phenotyping the Anterior Urethral Stricture: Characterizing the Relationship Between Inflammation, Fibrosis, Patient History, and Disease Pathophysiology.

Purpose: Anterior urethral stricture disease (aUSD) is a complex, heterogeneous condition that is idiopathic in origin for most men. This gap in knowledge rarely affects the current management strategy for aUSD, as urethroplasty does not generally consider etiology. However, as we transition towards personalized, minimally invasive treatments for aUSD and begin to consider aUSD prevention strategies, disease pathophysiology will become increasingly important.

Size-resolved aerosol at a Coastal Great Lakes Site: Impacts of new particle formation and lake spray.

The quantification of aerosol size distributions is crucial for understanding the climate and health impacts of aerosols, validating models, and identifying aerosol sources. This work provides one of the first continuous measurements of aerosol size distribution from 1.02 to 8671 nm near the shore of Lake Michigan.

A Bayesian hierarchical model for the analysis of visual analogue scaling tasks.

In psychophysics and psychometrics, an integral method to the discipline involves charting how a person's response pattern changes according to a continuum of stimuli. For instance, in hearing science, Visual Analog Scaling tasks are experiments in which listeners hear sounds across a speech continuum and give a numeric rating between 0 and 100 conveying whether the sound they heard was more like word "a" or more like word "b" (i.e.

Peripheral Neural Synchrony in Postlingually Deafened Adult Cochlear Implant Users.

Objectives: This paper reports a noninvasive method for quantifying neural synchrony in the cochlear nerve (i.e., peripheral neural synchrony) in cochlear implant (CI) users, which allows for evaluating this physiological phenomenon in human CI users for the first time in the literature.

Development of the Children's English and Spanish Speech Recognition Test: Psychometric Properties, Feasibility, Reliability, and Normative Data.

Objectives: The Children's English and Spanish Speech Recognition (ChEgSS) test is a computer-based tool for assessing closed-set word recognition in English and in Spanish, with a masker that is either speech-shaped noise or competing speech. The present study was conducted to (1) characterize the psychometric properties of the ChEgSS test, (2) evaluate feasibility and reliability for a large cohort of Spanish/English bilingual children with normal hearing, and (3) establish normative data.

Design: Three experiments were conducted to evaluate speech perception in children (4-17 years) and adults (19-40 years) with normal hearing using the ChEgSS test.

Explaining Brain-Behavior Relations: Inhibitory Control as an Intermediate Phenotype Between the N2 ERP and the Externalizing Spectrum in Childhood.

Identifying neural and cognitive mechanisms in externalizing problems in childhood is important for earlier and more targeted intervention. Meta-analytic findings have shown that smaller N2 event-related potential (ERP) amplitudes, thought to reflect inhibitory control, are associated with externalizing problems in children. However, it is unclear how (i.

Combining Intraoperative Electrocochleography with Robotics-Assisted Electrode Array Insertion.

Objective: To describe the use of robotics-assisted electrode array (EA) insertion combined with intraoperative electrocochleography (ECochG) in hearing preservation cochlear implant surgery.

Study Design: Prospective, single-arm, open-label study.

Setting: All procedures and data collection were performed at a single tertiary referral center.

Evaluation of Real-Time Intracochlear Electrocochleography for Guiding Cochlear Implant Electrode Array Position.

This study evaluates intracochlear electrocochleography (ECochG) for real-time monitoring during cochlear implantation. One aim tested whether adjusting the recording electrode site would help differentiate between atraumatic and traumatic ECochG amplitude decrements. A second aim assessed whether associations between ECochG amplitude decrements and post-operative hearing loss were weaker when considering hearing sensitivity at the ECochG stimulus frequency compared to a broader frequency range.

Contribution of macrophages to neural survival and intracochlear tissue remodeling responses following cochlear implantation.

Background: Cochlear implants (CIs) restore hearing to deafened patients. The foreign body response (FBR) following cochlear implantation (post-CI) comprises an infiltration of macrophages, other immune and non-immune cells, and fibrosis into the scala tympani, a space that is normally devoid of cells. This FBR is associated with negative effects on CI outcomes including increased electrode impedances and loss of residual acoustic hearing.

Introduction to Bayesian Analyses for Clinical Research.

Bayesian analyses are becoming more popular as a means of analyzing data, yet the Bayesian approach is novel to many members of the broad clinical audience. While Bayesian analyses are foundational to anesthesia pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling, they also can be used for analyzing data from clinical trials or observational studies. The traditional null hypothesis significance testing (frequentist) approach uses only the data collected from the current study to make inferences.

Predicting speech-in-speech recognition: Short-term audibility and spatial separation.

Quantifying the factors that predict variability in speech-in-speech recognition represents a fundamental challenge in auditory science. Stimulus factors associated with energetic and informational masking (IM) modulate variability in speech-in-speech recognition, but energetic effects can be difficult to estimate in spectro-temporally dynamic speech maskers. The current experiment characterized the effects of short-term audibility and differences in target and masker location (or perceived location) on the horizontal plane for sentence recognition in two-talker speech.

Story Generation and Narrative Retells in Children Who Are Hard of Hearing and Hearing Children.

Purpose: The primary goal for this study was to compare story generation and narrative retell performance in children who are hard of hearing (CHH) and hearing children. A secondary goal was to determine factors that influence narrative performance. Research on this topic is important because narrative language competency is an essential communication function.

Peripheral neural synchrony in post-lingually deafened adult cochlear implant users.

Objective: This paper reports a noninvasive method for quantifying neural synchrony in the cochlear nerve (i.e., peripheral neural synchrony) in cochlear implant (CI) users, which allows for evaluating this physiological phenomenon in human CI users for the first time in the literature.

Causal decomposition maps: An exploratory tool for designing area-level interventions aimed at reducing health disparities.

Methods for decomposition analyses have been developed to partition between-group differences into explained and unexplained portions. In this paper, we introduce the concept of causal decomposition maps, which allow researchers to test the effect of area-level interventions on disease maps before implementation. These maps quantify the impact of interventions that aim to reduce differences in health outcomes between groups and illustrate how the disease map might change under different interventions.