Publications by authors named "Rachel Weber"
Background: Imaging both electrical and mechanical cardiac function can better characterize cardiac disease and improve patient care. Currently, there is no noninvasive technique that can simultaneously image both electrical and mechanical function of the whole heart at the point of care. Here, our aim is to demonstrate that high volume-rate echocardiography can simultaneously map cardiac electromechanical activation and end-systolic cardiac strain of the whole heart in a single heartbeat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFErratum: Stenting of the Patent Ductus Arteriosus: A Meta-analysis and Literature Review.
J Soc Cardiovasc Angiogr Interv
July 2023
Article Synopsis
- The text indicates that it is providing corrections to two specific articles related to the Journal of Scientific Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
- The first correction pertains to an article with the DOI 10.1016/j.jscai.2022.100392, addressing potential inaccuracies in that publication.
- The second correction is for an article with the DOI 10.1016/j.jscai.2023.101051, which also requires revisions or clarifications in its findings or content.
Article Synopsis
- Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common heart condition with an irregular rhythm, and traditional diagnostic methods have limitations in guiding treatment, leading to the development of electromechanical cycle length mapping (ECLM) as a promising non-invasive approach.
- In a case series involving two patients, ECLM was effectively used to monitor treatment responses after procedures like cardioversion and ablation, showing improvements in identifying arrhythmic triggers.
- The study suggests that ECLM can serve as a valuable imaging tool for both immediate and long-term monitoring of AF, potentially enhancing clinical decision-making and patient care outcomes.
COVID-19 outbreak and genomic investigation in an inpatient behavioral health unit.
Antimicrob Steward Healthc Epidemiol
April 2024
Article Synopsis
- - The study focused on identifying how COVID-19 spread in an inpatient behavioral health unit (BHU) during the Omicron surge, noting the unique challenges of social interaction in these settings.
- - Investigators found multiple transmission routes, discovering 35 healthcare workers and 8 inpatients tested positive, with origins traced to both staff and visitors.
- - An effective outbreak control plan was implemented, which included increased personal protective measures and limited socialization, helping to reduce further transmission while minimizing disruptions to care.
Article Synopsis
- The American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma (ACS-CoT) requires trauma centers to implement mental health screening for PTSD by 2023, leading to a study comparing the effectiveness of two screening tools: the Injured Trauma Survivor Screen (ITSS) and the Automated Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Screen.
- This analysis involved 255 trauma patients, comparing the predictive accuracy of both screens for PTSD, with about 57.7% screening positive on the ITSS and 67.8% on the Automated EMR Screen; both screens showed similar effectiveness in identifying PTSD risk.
- The study concluded that since both tools are comparably effective, trauma centers can choose the screening method that best fits their
Article Synopsis
- Tuberculosis (TB) is a significant health threat for people living with HIV, and TB Preventive Treatment (TPT) is an effective way to reduce serious health complications and deaths.
- A survey conducted in 2020 with 2,419 participants revealed that only 38% had ever taken TPT, and just 15% were currently on it, highlighting inadequate TPT coverage.
- Factors that increased the likelihood of TPT uptake included having been screened for TB during HIV visits, visiting a TB clinic recently, and achieving HIV viral load suppression, indicating that more targeted strategies are needed to improve access to TPT for this vulnerable population.
HIV-associated wasting (HIVAW) is an underappreciated AIDS-defining illness, despite highly effective antiretroviral therapy (ART). We (a) assessed the association between incident HIVAW/low weight and all-cause mortality and (b) described virologic outcomes after people with HIV (PWH) experienced HIVAW/low weight while on ART. In the Observational Pharmaco-Epidemiology Research & Analysis (OPERA) cohort, PWH without prior HIVAW/low weight who were active in care in 2016-2020 were followed through the first of the following censoring events: death, loss to follow-up, or study end (October 31, 2021).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Effective services for HIV care, from testing to antiretroviral therapy (ART), are essential for better health outcomes in people living with HIV.
- A study in Bukoba, Tanzania, assessed the costs and effectiveness of various HIV testing and linkage programs to optimize resource allocation for achieving UNAIDS goals.
- Provider-initiated testing was found to be the most cost-effective, and targeting high positivity rate populations could enhance testing efficiency, alongside expanded ART eligibility and high linkage rates improving overall service effectiveness.
Article Synopsis
- - The study analyzed HIV-associated wasting (HIVAW) and low weight in people with HIV in the U.S. using data from the OPERA cohort, finding a consistent prevalence rate of 12% over two time periods (2012-2015 and 2016-2020).
- - Among a large cohort of adults with HIV who had not previously experienced low weight, 7% developed HIVAW over a median of 64 months post-diagnosis, with demographic factors like age, sex, and race influencing odds of weight issues.
- - The findings highlight that advanced HIV and comorbid conditions are strong predictors of HIVAW, suggesting a need for increased awareness among healthcare providers, particularly for older and fra
Article Synopsis
- - The text discusses a severe disease that rapidly spreads and causes tree mortality, focusing on how it affects the expression of specific genes related to lignin biosynthesis.
- - Researchers studied the changes in lignin in trees that showed signs of infection by comparing healthy, infected, and reaction zones using techniques like FTIR, NMR, and acid hydrolysis.
- - Findings revealed that infected areas had higher levels of Klason lignin and distinct chemical profiles compared to healthy regions, indicating significant alterations in wood characteristics due to the disease.
Article Synopsis
- Direct current cardioversion (DCCV) is used to treat atrial fibrillation (AF), but many patients revert to AF after treatment; Electromechanical Cycle Length Mapping (ECLM) is a new method that analyzes heart activity to understand AF better.
- In a study with 45 subjects, including AF patients and healthy controls, ECLM was used to track heart electrical activity before and after DCCV, and the data helped predict which patients would respond to the treatment.
- ECLM proved effective in identifying the irregular electrical activity in AF and differentiating between short-term and long-term treatment responses, offering a potential noninvasive tool for clinicians to personalize AF treatment plans.
Article Synopsis
- Non-invasive monitoring of atherosclerosis is difficult, but Pulse Wave Imaging (PWI) can measure local arterial stiffness and blood flow dynamics without invasive procedures.
- This study aimed to determine PWI's effectiveness in tracking changes in local stiffness and blood flow in hypercholesterolemic swine over nine months, particularly after inducing hemodynamic disturbance by carotid ligation.
- Results showed that PWI could effectively monitor changes in wall shear stress and differentiate between two types of plaque progression, revealing distinct compliance changes based on the severity of the ligation.
Article Synopsis
- In the period from June 2020 to July 2021, 3172 out of 6989 newborns exposed to HIV were tested, resulting in a diagnosis of 59 infants (2%) with HIV, of which only 27 (46%) started RAL treatment.
- The COVID-19 pandemic worsened issues with supply chains and the availability of trained providers, leading to decreased rates of birth testing, RAL treatment initiation, and follow-up viral load testing at 6 months.
Article Synopsis
- The study aims to identify and estimate U.S. workplace COVID-19 outbreaks from August to October 2021, particularly in sectors with essential workers like healthcare and education.
- Data was collected from 23 health departments, revealing a total of 12,660 workplace outbreaks, with a significant portion occurring in healthcare (35.9%) and educational settings (33.4%).
- The findings highlight the ongoing issue of COVID-19 transmission at work, indicating a need for comprehensive prevention strategies, as many health departments provided assistance mainly in mitigation consultations (80.1%).
Myocardial elastography (ME) is a cardiac strain imaging technique that has been found capable of detecting a decrease in radial strain caused by ischemia or infarction in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) as well as in a canine model. Prior studies have focused on rest imaging, but stress testing can reveal functional deficits caused by stenoses that are asymptomatic at rest. Therefore, it has been proposed that stress ME (S-ME) improves the detection of CAD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study assessed whether identifying people with HIV (PWH) at risk of falling out of care, along with automated outreach prompts, improved retention in care across 20 healthcare centers in the U.S.
- Results indicated that 56% of PWH in care were flagged, and both the intervention and control groups had similar visit rates after being flagged, but intervention centers slightly outperformed controls.
- The proportion of at-risk PWH achieving viral load suppression improved more significantly in intervention centers, suggesting potential benefits of integrating automated flags into existing care systems.
Article Synopsis
- In 2020, Zimbabwe implemented the WHO's recommendation to use raltegravir granules for treating HIV in newborns, prompting a study on the acceptability among caregivers and healthcare workers.
- Interviews with 15 caregivers and 12 healthcare workers revealed that caregivers noted improvements in their babies' health and some preferred to continue RAL beyond the recommended 28 days.
- Healthcare workers identified challenges in caregiver understanding of dosing and administration, highlighting the need for better training and clearer instructions to ensure proper RAL usage.
Article Synopsis
- * Electromechanical Wave Imaging (EWI) can visualize how the heart's activation changes with different pacing strategies, and this study introduces a new metric to assess these changes.
- * The study found that His-Bundle pacing showed the best efficiency for ventricular activation, and the new EWI dispersion metric effectively differentiated it from BiV and RV pacing in a small group of patients.
Stenting of the Patent Ductus Arteriosus: A Meta-analysis and Literature Review.
J Soc Cardiovasc Angiogr Interv
July 2022
Article Synopsis
- A meta-analysis was conducted to compare outcomes of PDA stent placement versus surgical shunt for infants with duct-dependent pulmonary circulation.
- The study included 1094 patients and found that the PDA stent group had lower mortality and shorter hospital stays, but higher rates of reinterventions.
- Overall, PDA stenting may be a better option for palliation, although more patients in the surgical group had complex heart conditions like single-ventricle physiology.
Adaptive Wall Shear Stress Imaging in Phantoms, Simulations and In Vivo.
IEEE Trans Biomed Eng
January 2023
Article Synopsis
- WSS (Wall Shear Stress) measurement is difficult due to the need for precise flow readings near vessel walls, prompting the development of a new ultrasound imaging technique that uses vector flow imaging and unsupervised data clustering for better estimation.
- The technique was tested in various phantoms and simulations, yielding relative errors of 6.7% and 19.8% for peak and end diastolic WSS in normal conditions, while showing strong correlation in stenotic conditions (R values of 0.89 and 0.85).
- In a study with atherosclerotic pigs, low WSS and high-frequency oscillations linked to atherogenic diets led to significant plaque development, and the technique revealed decreased
Article Synopsis
- - The size of primary care panels, consisting of physicians and advanced practice providers, impacts workload, practice capacity, compensation, and factors like quality of care and provider burnout, with significant variations in reported panel sizes.
- - The study aimed to clarify how primary care panels are defined, the variability in those definitions, and the resulting implications for provider resources and patient management.
- - A systematic review of 1687 articles identified key practices across 29 healthcare systems, revealing common criteria for patient inclusion in panels and varying methods for patient removal, which could affect the reported size of the panels.
Article Synopsis
- Myocardial elastography (ME) is a novel ultrasound technique that tracks heart motion and strain to help diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD) early, which is essential for improving patient outcomes.
- The study involved imaging 86 patients suspected of having CAD, assessing their left ventricular strains in different coronary territories, and determining how well ME strains could differentiate between obstructive, non-obstructive, and no CAD groups.
- Results showed that ME circumferential strain was more effective than radial strain in distinguishing between these groups, suggesting that ME could be a valuable, non-invasive diagnostic tool for early CAD detection.
Compared to their stably housed peers, homeless, and highly mobile (HHM) youth experience disproportionately greater adversity and risk leading to a wide variety of poor developmental outcomes, and targeted interventions have the potential to mitigate such outcomes. A growing literature highlights the need for accurate diagnosis in high-risk populations given the considerable overlap between posttraumatic symptomology and behaviorally based disorders such as ADHD. Objective testing inferring neurobiological and circuit-based abnormalities in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and ADHD may provide a useful clinical tool to aid accurate diagnosis and treatment recommendations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF