Publications by authors named "Shanti Ganesh"
Objective: To understand the sociodemographic, geographical, and clinical characteristics of rural veterans utilizing home modification (HM) healthcare services under the Home Improvement Structural Alterations (HISA) program, to compare these characteristics between rural and urban veteran users, to estimate the costs of HMs performed, and to present distance that users traveled to HISA-prescribing medical facilities within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
Background: Accessible housing is in short supply. HMs allow veterans with disabilities (VWDs) to remain living at home rather than enter institutional-type settings.
Background: Geospatial analyses illustrating where the Home Improvements and Structural Alterations program (HISA) have been prescribed suggest that home modification (HM) services under US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is not prescribed and used uniformly across the US.
Methods: The objective of this study was to identify county characteristics associated with HISA use rates, such as county-level measures of clinical care and quality of care, variables related to physical environment, and sociodemographic characteristics. Multiple regression analysis was used to predict county-level utilization rate from county-level variables.
Background: Appropriate home modifications (HMs) can make the home environment accessible and relatively safe by reducing the risk of falls. Of special concern are individuals living alone, living in rural communities, and/or living in substandard housing. The Home Improvements and Structural Alterations (HISA) is a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) benefit program providing HMs for veterans with disabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMental imagery of one's body moving through space is important for imagining changing visuospatial perspectives, as well as for determining how we might appear to other people. Previous neuroimaging research has implicated the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) in this process. It is unclear, however, how neural activity in the TPJ relates to the rotation perspectives from which mental spatial transformation (MST) of one's own body can take place, i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- The study analyzed healthcare usage among Veterans with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), focusing on gender differences in the year after diagnosis.
- Women were found to utilize outpatient services significantly more than men, averaging 48 visits compared to 37 visits.
- While gender differences were noted, they only explained a small part of the variation in healthcare utilization, suggesting that other factors also play a role.
Objective: To identify, for patients in states of seriously impaired consciousness, comorbid conditions present during inpatient rehabilitation and their association with function at 1 year.
Design: Abstracted data from a prospective cross-sectional observational study with data collection occurring January 1996 through December 2007.
Setting: Four inpatient rehabilitation facilities in metropolitan areas.
Background And Objectives: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) and spinal cord injury and disorders (SCI/D) are common and costly conditions among Veterans. However, little is known about CKD among adults with SCI/D.
Methods: We conducted cross-sectional analyses of Veterans with SCI/D across all VA facilities in 2006.
Objective: This study examined the accuracy of new wheelchair user predictions about their future wheelchair use.
Design: This was a prospective cohort study of 84 community-dwelling veterans provided a new manual wheelchair.
Results: The association between predicted and actual wheelchair use was strong at 3 mos (ϕ coefficient = 0.
Objective: To compare the prevalence of cardiovascular and metabolic conditions in male veterans aging with spinal cord injury (SCI) with that of older men comparison groups.
Design: Cross-sectional survey.
Setting: National community dwelling.
Millions of people worldwide engage in online role-playing with their avatar, a virtual agent that represents the self. Previous behavioral studies have indicated that many gamers identify more strongly with their avatar than with their biological self. Through their avatar, gamers develop social networks and learn new social-cognitive skills.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe the relationship between lower extremity physical performance, self-reported mobility difficulty, and self-reported use of compensatory strategies (CSs) for mobility inside the home.
Design: Cross-sectional exploratory study.
Setting: Community-dwelling elders.
The ability to detect and process errors made by others plays an important role is many social contexts. The capacity to process errors is typically found to rely on sites in the medial frontal cortex. However, it remains to be determined whether responses at these sites are driven primarily by action errors themselves or by the affective consequences normally associated with their commission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To describe the characteristics of the wheelchairs, the users, and their wheelchair use among persons newly prescribed a manual wheelchair.
Design: Cohort study.
Setting: Veterans Affairs teaching hospital.
Objectives: To compare measured lower extremity physical performance in the clinic with the methods used to carry out mobility tasks at home and to identify key factors influencing day-to-day task performance.
Design: Cross-sectional analysis of the Women's Health and Aging Study I.
Setting: Community-dwelling female residents of Baltimore, Maryland.
Background: Ankle fracture is one of the most common injuries treated by orthopaedic surgeons, and the presence of diabetes complicates treatment and recovery from this injury. Although a higher prevalence of adverse postoperative events has been found in small series of diabetic patients with an ankle fracture, we are not aware of any large national series with specific documentation of the outcomes following ankle fracture in patients with diabetes.
Methods: We analyzed data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample database for the years 1988 through 2000.