Cross-sectional and Correlational Examination of Patients' Preoperative Anxiety, Information Need, and Health Literacy in a Presurgical Consultation.

Purpose: This study elucidates the preoperative anxiety (PA), information need (IN), and health literacy (HL) levels of an elective preoperative sample in Switzerland and examines the possible associations between PA and the patients' characteristics. By knowing these patient dimensions, which can influence perioperative outcomes, one can tailor individualized nursing interventions to improve patients' surgical experience.

Design: This was a cross-sectional and correlational study.

In vivo microscopic diffusional kurtosis imaging with symmetrized double diffusion encoding EPI.

Purpose: Diffusional kurtosis imaging (DKI) measures the deviation of the displacement probability from a normal distribution, complementing the data commonly acquired by diffusion MRI. It is important to elucidate the sources of kurtosis contrast, particularly in biological tissues where microscopic kurtosis (intrinsic kurtosis) and diffusional heterogeneity may co-exist.

Methods: We have developed a technique for microscopic kurtosis MRI, dubbed microscopic diffusional kurtosis imaging (µDKI), using a symmetrized double diffusion encoding (s-DDE) EPI sequence.