Third Proceedings of The North American Airway Collaborative (NoAAC): Consensus Statement on Trial Design for Airway Stenosis.

Importance: Airway stenosis is a rare but debilitating disorder that significantly degrades the quality of life in affected patients. Treatments are primarily surgical, and disease management lacks established medical therapies. The North American Airway Collaborative held its third symposium at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 15, 2024, focused on strategies to advance the care of these patients.

Mortality and Function After Hip Fracture or Pneumonia in People With and Without Dementia.

Background: The extent to which disruptive surgical or medical events impact mortality and function is critical for anticipatory planning and informing goal-aligned care.

Methods: Using Health and Retirement Study data (2008-2018), we employed propensity score matching to compare the impact of hospitalization for hip fracture (a surgical event) or pneumonia (a medical event) among people with dementia to two groups: (1) people with dementia who did not experience these events; and (2) people without dementia who experienced an event. Dementia status was determined using validated cognitive assessments (Hurd method); hip fracture and pneumonia were identified from Medicare claims.

Do Physical Activities Prevent the Occurrence of Bothersome Pain?

We examined the associations between physical activity (PA)-measured through self-reported walking and vigorous activities-and pain occurrence (self-reported bothersome pain or frequent pain medication use), and persistent pain (pain occurring for two consecutive years). This analysis used a large, nationally representative sample of 2279 older adults from the National Health and Aging Trends Study of 2015-2018, and applied generalized estimating equation regression with propensity score weighting. Approximately 70% and 50% of the participants reported walking and vigorous activities respectively at baseline.

Neuromuscular junction visualization in paraffin-embedded thyroarytenoid muscle sections: Expanding options beyond frozen section analysis.

Objectives: The current gold standard for immunofluorescent (IF) visualization of neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) in muscle utilizes frozen tissue sections with fluorescent conjugated antibodies to demarcate neurons and IF alpha-bungarotoxin (α-BTX) to demarcate motor endplates. Frozen tissue sectioning comes with inherent inescapable limitations, including cryosectioning artifact and limited sample shelf-life. However, a parallel approach to identify NMJs in paraffin-embedded tissue sections has not been previously described.

Building evidence-based interventions to improve staff well-being in paediatric critical care using the behaviour change wheel.

Background: Research has demonstrated that staff working in Paediatric Critical Care (PCC) experience high levels of burnout, post-traumatic stress and moral distress. There is very little evidence of how this problem could be addressed.

Aim: To develop evidence-based, psychologically informed interventions designed to improve PCC staff well-being that can be feasibility tested on a large scale.