Publications by authors named "Sarah Sim"

Introduction: Frailty has an important impact on the health outcomes of older patients, and frailty screening is recommended as part of perioperative evaluation. The Hospital Frailty Risk Score (HFRS) is a validated tool that highlights frailty risk using 109 International Classification of Diseases, 10th revision (ICD-10) codes. In this study, we aim to compare HFRS to the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and validate HFRS as a predictor of adverse outcomes in Asian patients admitted to surgical services.

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Objective: The objective of this review was to describe how health service and delivery systems in high-income countries define and operationalize health equity. A secondary objective was to identify implementation strategies and indicators being used to integrate and measure health equity.

Introduction: To improve the health of populations, a population health and health equity approach is needed.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Victims of MSbP can suffer severe long-term effects, and the condition can also affect siblings, adults, and even pets, often leading to serious consequences, including neglect and potential fatalities.
  • * Timely identification of MSbP involves recognizing caregiver deception, reviewing health records meticulously, and collaborating with other healthcare providers, highlighting the necessity for increased awareness among dentists and other medical professionals.
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Land use is a major cause of biodiversity decline worldwide. Agricultural and forestry diversification measures, such as the inclusion of natural elements or diversified crop types, may reduce impacts on biodiversity. However, the extent to which such measures may compensate for the negative impacts of land use remains unknown.

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In the last three decades, global production of oil palm has boomed, which has partly come at the expense of tropical rainforests. Recognizing this, many companies operating in the palm oil industry have committed to eliminate deforestation from their operations, often referred to as zero-deforestation commitments (ZDCs). Here, we estimate that if ZDCs are fully adopted and enforced across all sectors and geographies, the global extent of oil palm plantations may be 11 M ha or 40% smaller in 2030 than in a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario that assumes no compliance with ZDCs.

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Environmental rating ecolabels are a new generation of ecolabels. They are intended to enable consumers to compare the environmental impacts of multiple products and make more sustainable consumption choices. Falling outside of the three types defined in the ISO 14020 environmental label and declarations series, the recent proliferation of these business-to-consumer communication instruments has resulted in the creation of a plethora of methodologies to derive product performance ratings.

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Sclerosing extramedullary hematopoietic tumour is a rare tumour which can occur in certain myeloproliferative diseases, typically myelofibrosis. Typically these tumours present as a discrete retroperitoneal mass or masses, however they can occur in other sites within the body. In this case report we describe a 61-year old woman who underwent stealth guided bi-temporal craniotomy for resection of what was expected to be a large falx meningioma, however histopathology revealed the lesion to be a sclerosing extramedullary hematopoietic tumour.

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Purpose: Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) among health professionals is well-recognised to enhance care delivery and patient outcomes. Emerging evidence suggests that the early socialisation of students in health professional programmes to teamwork may have a positive impact on their future as collaborative practitioners. With a purpose of contributing to growing evidence on the processes of professional identity construction, and to explore how early expectations and perceptions of IPC develop during professional socialisation and pre-licensure education, our study examined the early professional socialisation experiences among five groups of health professional students.

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Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from direct land use change (LUC) in GHG footprint studies of crops are often estimated using national land use change statistics, as in many cases the exact location of crop cultivation and land use history is unknown. As such, these studies neglect spatial variability in land use change (amount and configuration) at the sub-national level as well as spatial variability in natural carbon stocks. For this reason, a spatial approach that enables consistent implementation of LUC emissions of crop production at different locations is developed and applied in this study.

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Objective: The objectives of this review are to identify, appraise, and synthesize the qualitative evidence on the breastfeeding experiences of mothers living with food insecurity in high-resource, Western countries.

Introduction: Breastfeeding and food insecurity are inter-related health issues. Globally, breastfeeding augments food security at individual, household, and community levels, but a growing body of evidence from high-resourced countries also suggests that a mother's breastfeeding practice may be negatively impacted by the additional experience of food insecurity.

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Cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4 induction is an important cause of drug-drug interactions, making early identification of drug candidates with CYP3A4 induction liability in drug development a prerequisite. Here, we present three-dimensional (3D) spheroid cultures of primary human hepatocytes (PHHs) as a novel CYP3A4 induction screening model. Screening of 25 drugs (12 known CYP3A4 inducers in vivo and 13 negative controls) at physiologically relevant concentrations revealed a 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity of the system.

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Existing methods that apply the planetary boundary for the nitrogen cycle in life cycle assessment are spatially generic and use an indicator with limited environmental relevance. Here, we develop a spatially resolved method that can quantify the impact of nitrogen emissions to air, soil, freshwater or coastal water on "safe operating space" (SOS) for natural soil, freshwater and coastal water. The method can be used to identify potential "planetary boundary hotspots" in the life cycle of products and to inform appropriate interventions.

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Introduction:  Primary spontaneous pneumothorax (PSP) and its high recurrence rate pose a therapeutic challenge to both patients and their managing surgeons. Mechanical or chemical pleurodesis can be used to prevent recurrence, but the optimal treatment often remains a matter of debate. This meta-analysis aims to compare the outcomes between mechanical and chemical pleurodesis following bullectomy for PSP.

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Palm oil, the most widely used vegetable oil, is one of the largest drivers of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from global land use and land cover change. Here, we provide fine-resolution (100 m × 100 m) estimates of GHG footprints of current (2015) and potential future scenarios (2030) of crude palm oil (CPO) production in Indonesia. The current estimated average GHG footprint excluding production on Java is 5.

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Vitellointestinal duct (VID) anomalies have been described extensively in the literature. However, an everted VID with prolapse of ileum arising from an omphalocele is rare, and its appearance at birth can be alarming and can present a diagnostic challenge. We describe a baby born to a teenage diabetic mother who was noted to have a strange exophytic mass arising from the abdominal wall.

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Breast cancer metastasis to gynaecological organs is an understudied pattern of tumour spread. We explored clinico-pathological and molecular features of these metastases to better understand whether this pattern of dissemination is organotropic or a consequence of wider metastatic dissemination. Primary and metastatic tumours from 54 breast cancer patients with gynaecological metastases were analysed using immunohistochemistry, DNA copy-number profiling, and targeted sequencing of 386 cancer-related genes.

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Aim: This study aimed to investigate the effect of CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 genotypes on clinical outcomes of docetaxel treatment.

Patients & Methods: In the PROMIX trial, 150 breast cancer patients received docetaxel preoperatively. CYP3A4 and CYP3A5 genotype combinations were transformed into total CYP 3A phenotypes.

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Aim: We investigated the interaction of CYP2C19 and CYP2D6 genotype on clinical outcome in tamoxifen-treated breast cancer patients.

Materials & Methods: A cohort of 306 patients on tamoxifen treatment for a minimum of 1 year were employed to analyze the effect of genotype-predicted phenotype on relapse-free survival.

Results & Conclusion: We show that the group with worst outcome and highest risk of relapse is that of 2C19↑-2D6↓ (hazard ratio: 2.

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The Planetary Boundaries concept has emerged as a framework for articulating environmental limits, gaining traction as a basis for considering sustainability in business settings, government policy and international guidelines. There is emerging interest in using the Planetary Boundaries concept as part of life cycle assessment (LCA) for gauging absolute environmental sustainability. We tested the applicability of a novel Planetary Boundaries-based life cycle impact assessment methodology on a hypothetical laundry washing case study at the EU level.

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Our study provides an integrated analysis of the variability of greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints of field-grown tomatoes for processing. The global farm-specific data set of 890 observations across 14 countries over a three-year period (2013-2015) was obtained from farms grown under Unilever's sustainable agricultural code. It represents on average 3% of the annual global production of processing tomatoes: insights can be used to help inform corporate sourcing strategies and certification schemes.

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International corporations in an increasingly globalized economy exert a major influence on the planet's land use and resources through their product design and material sourcing decisions. Many companies use life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate their sustainability, yet commonly-used LCA methodologies lack the spatial resolution and predictive ecological information to reveal key impacts on climate, water and biodiversity. We present advances for LCA that integrate spatially explicit modelling of land change and ecosystem services in a Land-Use Change Improved (LUCI)-LCA.

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Background: The adoption of robot-assisted laparoscopic colorectal surgery has been hampered by issues with docking, operative duration, technical difficulties in multi-quadrant access, and cost. The da Vinci® Xi has been designed to overcome some of these limitations. We describe our experience with the system and offer technical insights to its application in left-sided colorectal procedures.

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Carbon stock estimates based on land cover type are critical for informing climate change assessment and landscape management, but field and theoretical evidence indicates that forest fragmentation reduces the amount of carbon stored at forest edges. Here, using remotely sensed pantropical biomass and land cover data sets, we estimate that biomass within the first 500 m of the forest edge is on average 25% lower than in forest interiors and that reductions of 10% extend to 1.5 km from the forest edge.

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