Publications by authors named "Serena Wong"

Social connections not only contribute to psychological and emotional well-being but also positively impact physical health, with social isolation and loneliness linked to early mortality and detrimental health outcomes. This study aims to evaluate an online Awareness, Courage, and Love (ACL) group intervention designed to enhance social connectedness and subjective well-being while reducing loneliness, depression, and anxiety among older adults. This randomised controlled trial (RCT) will involve an intervention group receiving a 2 h ACL session via videoconferencing.

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Despite practice guidelines for multiculturally competent care, including spiritual/religious diversity, most mental health graduate training programs do not formally address spiritual/religious competencies. Thus, we enhanced the Spiritual Competency Training in Mental Health (SCT-MH) course curriculum to train graduate students in foundational attitudes, knowledge, and skills for addressing clients' spirituality and/or religion (S/R). The hybrid (online and in-person) SCT-MH course curriculum was integrated into existing required graduate clinical courses (replacing 15% of a course's curriculum) and taught to 309 students by 20 instructors in 20 different graduate training programs across counseling, psychology, and social work disciplines.

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Critically ill children are vulnerable to acute kidney injury (AKI) and are often exposed to nephrotoxic medications. We aimed to investigate the association between nephrotoxic medications and the risk of AKI in critically ill children admitted to our paediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Patients aged > 1 month to ≤18 years old were prospectively recruited from 6/2020 to 6/2021.

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Medical complications are a notable source of in-hospital death following aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). However, there is a paucity of literature examining medical complications on a national scale. This study uses a national dataset to analyze the incidence rates, case fatality rates, and risk factors for in-hospital complications and mortality following aSAH.

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Infective Endocarditis (IE) patients are known to have a variety of complications with one of the rarest, but serious being cerebral mycotic aneurysm, which can result in subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Using the National In-Patient Sample database, we sought to determine the rate of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) and outcomes in IE- patients with and without SAH. In total, we identified 82,844 IE-patients from 2010 to 2016, of which 641 had a concurrent diagnosis of SAH.

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Background: The risks of oversimplification of the symptomatology of Complex PTSD (CPTSD) have been highlighted in the literature.

Objective: To re-examine 10 items representing disturbances in self-organization (DSO) that were deleted from the original 28-item version of the International Trauma Questionnaire (ITQ) when creating the current 12-item version.

Participants And Setting: An online convenience sample of 1235 MTurk users.

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The HercepTest was approved 20+ years ago as the companion diagnostic test for trastuzumab in human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) or ERBB2 gene-amplified/overexpressing breast cancers. Subsequent HER2 immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays followed, including the now most common Ventana 4B5 assay. Although this IHC assay has become the clinical standard, its reliability, reproducibility, and accuracy have largely been approved and accepted on the basis of concordance among small numbers of pathologists without validation in a real-world setting.

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Purpose: Chemotherapy with or without immunotherapy remains the mainstay of treatment for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). A subset of TNBCs express the androgen receptor (AR), representing a potential new therapeutic target. This study assessed the feasibility of adjuvant enzalutamide, an AR antagonist, in early-stage, AR-positive (AR +) TNBC.

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Girls with obesity are at increased risk of early puberty. Obesity is associated with insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. We hypothesized that insulin plays a physiological role in pubertal transition, and super-imposed hyperinsulinemia due to childhood obesity promotes early initiation of puberty in girls.

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Article Synopsis
  • Delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) is a serious complication of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) that significantly impacts patient outcomes, and inflammation may play a role in its development.
  • In a study analyzing data from 276 aSAH patients, those with low serum albumin levels (<3.4 g/dL) showed a higher likelihood of experiencing DCI and in-hospital mortality compared to those with normal levels.
  • The findings suggest that low serum albumin could be a useful indicator for identifying aSAH patients at higher risk for DCI, potentially guiding monitoring and treatment strategies.
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Background: In the last few decades, standardized letters of recommendation have seen increasing popularity among various medical specialties and have been shown to demonstrate score inflation and gender bias in some select specialties. Through analysis of standardized letter of recommendation scoring patterns, this study evaluated the impact of race and gender on performance in standardized letters of recommendation and provides suggestions for programs to optimally interpret standardized letters of recommendation and minimize bias when writing letters of recommendation.

Methods: Available standardized letters of recommendation were those from interviewed applicants to the integrated plastic surgery program between 2015 and 2018 (82 total applicants) and all applicants in the year of 2019 (241 total applicants).

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Importance: Trastuzumab deruxtecan (T-DXd) has shown efficacy in patients with breast cancer with ERBB2 immunohistochemistry (IHC) scores of 1+ or 2+ but not 0 as read in central pathology laboratories. The drug is currently being tested in large randomized clinical trials with registration intent for this patient population.

Objective: To determine the suitability of the current standard ERBB2 IHC assays to select patients with low ERBB2 positivity for treatment with T-DXd.

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Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast is able to induce stromal changes, which likely reflect the crosstalk between DCIS and its microenvironment. These changes harbor prognostic information, although the interobserver variability of scoring stromal changes is moderate. A more robust evaluation of the DCIS-associated stroma is therefore needed.

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This review summarizes best practices for the perioperative care of older adults as recommended by the American Geriatrics Society, American Society of Anesthesiologists, and American College of Surgeons, with practical implementation strategies that can be readily implemented in busy preoperative or primary care clinics. In addition to traditional cardiopulmonary screening, older patients should undergo a comprehensive geriatric assessment. Rapid screening tools such as the Mini-Cog, Patient Health Questionnaire-2, and Frail Non-Disabled Survey and Clinical Frailty Scale, can be performed by multiple provider types and allow for quick, accurate assessments of cognition, functional status, and frailty screening.

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High stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (sTILs) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) are associated with pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). Histopathological assessment of sTILs in TNBC biopsies is characterized by substantial interobserver variability, but it is unknown whether this affects its association with pCR. Here, we aimed to investigate the degree of interobserver variability in an international study, and its impact on the relationship between sTILs and pCR.

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All life acquires energy through metabolic processes and that energy is subsequently allocated to life-sustaining functions such as survival, growth and reproduction. Thus, it has long been assumed that metabolic rate is related to the life history of an organism. Indeed, metabolic rate is commonly believed to set the pace of life by determining where an organism is situated along a fast-slow life-history continuum.

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Brain size varies dramatically, both within and across species, and this variation is often believed to be the result of trade-offs between the cognitive benefits of having a large brain for a given body size and the energetic cost of sustaining neural tissue. One potential consequence of having a large brain is that organisms must also meet the associated high energetic demands. Thus, a key question is whether metabolic rate correlates with brain size.

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Targeted anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) therapy has recently been proven to improve progression-free and overall survival of patients with advanced stage or recurrent endometrial serous carcinoma. To date, no specific pathology HER2 testing or scoring guidelines exist for endometrial cancer. However, based on evidence from the recent successful clinical trial and comprehensive pre-trial pathologic studies, a new set of HER2 scoring criteria have been proposed for endometrial serous carcinoma-distinct from the existing breast and gastric cancer-specific criteria.

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Accurate and timely transmission of medical records between skilled nursing facilities and acute care settings has been logistically problematic. Often people are sent to the hospital with a packet of paper records, which is easily misplaced. The COVID-19 pandemic has further magnified this problem by the possibility of viral transmission via fomites.

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This article explores the role of prevention in healthy aging from the perspective of individualized prevention in the clinic and population-based prevention with system-level support. The traditional medical model has significant limitations to effectively target impactful outcomes related to geriatric syndromes that encompass debility, frequent hospitalizations, loss of independence, and disease progression. This article reviews aspects of the clinic visit and subsequent interventions, such as immunizations and screenings, that promote disease and disability prevention.

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Background: Geriatric collaborative care models improve postoperative outcomes for older adults. However, there are limited data exploring how preoperative geriatric assessment may affect surgical cancellations.

Methods: This is a single-center retrospective cohort analysis.

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A recent clinical trial showed prolonged progression-free survival in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive advanced stage and recurrent endometrial serous carcinomas when trastuzumab was added to traditional chemotherapy. Approximately one third of these tumors are HER2-positive and have been described to show unique characteristics of HER2 protein expression and gene amplification, including significant intratumoral heterogeneity, in recent studies. However, currently, there are no standard protocols for the selection of optimal specimen type or algorithm for HER2 testing in endometrial serous carcinomas.

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In adults, both immature and mature ovarian teratomas show frequent genetic homozygosity consistent with tumorigenesis involving germ cells after meiosis I. Investigation into genetic zygosity of various teratomas in children has been limited. Thirteen sacrococcygeal, 12 ovarian, and 3 testicular teratomas in children 18 years or younger were retrieved from our departmental archives and histologically reviewed.

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