Publications by authors named "Sitaram Vangala"

Objectives: Before the Amsterdam Placental Workshop Group Consensus Statement, standardization in placental pathology assessment did not exist. This study evaluated the Amsterdam criteria's utility in correlating ischemic placental disease (IPD) with placental pathologic lesions in a cohort of largely unsubmitted term placentas with favorable outcomes.

Methods: In this prospective case-controlled study at a single institution, all placentas were examined using Amsterdam protocols for gross sampling and microscopic review by 2 reviewers who were blinded to clinical history.

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Objectives: We assessed whether proactive care management for artificial intelligence (AI)-identified at-risk patients reduced preventable emergency department (ED) visits and hospital admissions (HAs).

Study Design: Stepped-wedge cluster randomized design.

Methods: Adults receiving primary care at 48 UCLA Health clinics and determined to be at risk based on a homegrown AI model were included.

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Characterizing the value and equity of care delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial to uncovering health system vulnerabilities and informing postpandemic recovery. We used insurance claims to evaluate low-value (no clinical benefit, potentially harmful) and clinically indicated utilization of a subset of 11 ambulatory services within a cohort of ∼2 million Virginia adults during the first 2 years of the pandemic (March 1, 2020-December 31, 2021). In 2020, low-value and clinically indicated utilization decreased similarly, while in 2021, low-value and clinically indicated utilization were 7% higher and 4% lower, respectively, than prepandemic rates.

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Background: While telemedicine has been beneficial in oncology by reducing infectious exposure and improving access for patients with poor functional status, it also has intrinsic limitations, including the inability to perform a physical exam, which could lead to increased downstream utilization in this population at high risk of medical decompensation. We conducted a retrospective cohort study investigating the relationship between telemedicine use in oncology and subsequent outpatient oncology encounters, emergency department (ED) visits, and hospitalizations.

Methods: We included outpatient oncology encounters, including telemedicine and in-person visits, occurring between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2022 at a large academic health system.

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Background: Communication and collaboration among health care professionals during bedside rounds improve patient outcomes and nurses' and physicians' satisfaction.

Objectives: To determine barriers to nurse-physician communication during bedside rounds and identify opportunities to improve nurse-physician collaboration at an academic medical center.

Methods: A survey with Likert-scale and open-ended questions regarding professional attitudes toward nurse-physician communication was administered to 220 nurses and physicians in medical-surgical units to assess perceptions of participation in bedside rounds.

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COVID-19 highlighted the importance of schools for child health, as emerging data suggest that pandemic-related school closures may have led to worsening child health and exacerbated health disparities. This study examines school-aged children's well-being, and characterizes changes in school-related needs, from 2021 to 2022. This is a secondary analysis of a longitudinal cohort study, where a nationally representative sample of parents of school-aged children were surveyed in June 2021 and 2022.

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Background: No standardized, evidence-based surveillance practices exist to guide and optimize recurrence detection in patients with cutaneous melanoma.

Objective: To determine the most high-yield positive review of systems for signaling recurrence in patients with cutaneous melanoma.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study assessed patients with a history of cutaneous melanoma and compared demographic and clinical characteristics, including a comprehensive review of systems, among those who experienced recurrence and those who did not.

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Background And Objectives: Early intervention services can improve outcomes for children with developmental delays. Health care providers, however, often struggle to ensure timely referrals and services. We tested the effectiveness of telephone-based early childhood developmental care coordination through 211 LA, a health and human services call center serving Los Angeles County, in increasing referral and enrollment in services.

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Background: Understanding the characteristics of multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) in patients from different racial/ethnic backgrounds is important for reducing the observed gaps in clinical outcomes.

Purpose: To investigate the diagnostic performance of mpMRI and quantitative MRI parameters of prostate cancer (PCa) in African American (AA) and matched White (W) men.

Study Type: Retrospective.

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Early motor delays and differences are common among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Yet, little work has shown whether there are early atypical motor signs that differentiate these groups. Quantitative measures of movement variability hold promise for improving the identification of subtle and specific differences in motor function among infants and toddlers at high likelihood for ASD and ADHD.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to compare the effectiveness of electronic health record (EHR)-based portal reminders and text message reminders in increasing influenza vaccination rates in a health system.
  • Conducted as a randomized clinical trial from September 2022 to April 2023 at UCLA, the trial included over 262,000 patients across different reminder strategies.
  • Results showed differences in vaccination rates based on the type of reminder sent, indicating that tailored reminders could enhance public health efforts to improve flu vaccination participation.
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As behavioural science is increasingly adopted by organizations, there is a growing need to assess the robustness and transferability of empirical findings. Here, we investigate the transferability of insights from various sources of behavioural science knowledge to field settings. Across three pre-registered randomized controlled trials (RCTs, N = 314,824) involving a critical policy domain-COVID-19 booster uptake-we field tested text-based interventions that either increased vaccinations in prior field work (RCT1, NCT05586204), elevated vaccination intentions in an online study (RCT2, NCT05586178) or were favoured by scientists and non-experts (RCT3, NCT05586165).

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Background: Hypertension is a major contributor to various adverse health outcomes. Although previous studies have shown the benefits of home blood pressure (BP) monitoring over office-based measurements, there is limited evidence comparing the effectiveness of whether a BP monitor integrated into the electronic health record is superior to a nonintegrated BP monitor.

Objective: In this paper, we describe the protocol for a pragmatic multisite implementation of a quality improvement initiative directly comparing integrated to nonintegrated BP monitors for hypertension improvement.

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Objectives: Physician pay-for-performance (P4P) programs frequently target inappropriate antibiotics. Yet little is known about P4P programs' effects on antibiotic prescribing among safety-net populations at risk for unintended harms from reducing care. We evaluated effects of P4P-motivated interventions to reduce antibiotic prescriptions for safety-net patients with acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates whether biochemical recurrence (BCR) can predict overall survival (OS) in localized prostate cancer by analyzing patient data from 11 clinical trials focused on various treatment methods.* -
  • Results showed that while treatment methods like short-term androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) improved cancer outcomes, there was no significant treatment impact on OS when adjusting for BCR after 48 months.* -
  • The correlation between BCR-free survival and OS was moderate, with Kendall's tau values demonstrating a range between 0.59 and 0.69, indicating a potential relationship but underscoring the complexity of predicting overall survival based on BCR.*
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Objectives: Tertiary and quaternary (TQ) care refers to complex cases requiring highly specialized health services. Our study aimed to compare the ability of a natural language processing (NLP) model to an existing human workflow in predictively identifying TQ cases for transfer requests to an academic health center.

Materials And Methods: Data on interhospital transfers were queried from the electronic health record for the 6-month period from July 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020.

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Background: Effective team communication during interdisciplinary rounds (IDRs) is a hallmark of safe, efficient, patient-centered care. However, there is limited understanding of optimal IDR structures and procedures.

Objective: This study aimed to analyze direct observations of physician and nurse interactions during bedside IDR to identify behaviors associated with increased interprofessional communication.

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Introduction: To characterize early-gestation changes in placental structure, perfusion, and oxygenation in the context of ischemic placental disease (IPD) as a composite outcome and in individual sub-groups.

Methods: In a single-center prospective cohort study, 199 women were recruited from antenatal clinics between February 2017 and February 2019. Maternal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of the placenta were temporally conducted at two timepoints: 14-16 weeks gestational age (GA) and 19-24 weeks GA.

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The success of personal non-pharmaceutical interventions as a public health strategy requires a high level of compliance from individuals in private social settings. Strategies to increase compliance in these hard-to-reach settings depend upon a comprehensive understanding of the patterns and predictors of protective social behavior. Social cognitive models of protective behavior emphasize the contribution of individual-level factors while social-ecological models emphasize the contribution of environmental factors.

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Influenza vaccination rates are low. Working with a large US health system, we evaluated three health system-wide interventions using the electronic health record's patient portal to improve influenza vaccination rates. We performed a two-arm RCT with a nested factorial design within the treatment arm, randomizing patients to usual-care control (no portal interventions) or to one or more portal interventions.

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The risk of prostate cancer (PCa) is strongly influenced by race and ethnicity. The purpose of this study is to investigate differences in the diagnostic performance of multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) in African American (AA) and white (W) men. 111 patients (37 AA and 74 W men) were selected from the study's initial cohort of 885 patients after matching age, prostate-specific antigen, and prostate volume.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study investigated why many U.S. adults remain unvaccinated against COVID-19, highlighting behavioral and social factors that influence vaccine uptake across different regions.
  • Among over 255,000 respondents, 76% reported receiving at least one vaccine dose, with higher rates in older adults, females, and Asian non-Hispanic individuals.
  • Key drivers for vaccination included feelings of regret about not getting vaccinated, perceived risks of COVID-19, and confidence in vaccine safety, indicating that targeted interventions could improve vaccination rates.
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Among patients with Alzheimer's disease and its related dementias (ADRD) with behavioral disturbances, antipsychotic prescriptions have limited efficacy and increase the risk of death. Yet, physicians continue to routinely prescribe low-value antipsychotic medications for behavioral disturbances among patients with ADRD. We designed a pragmatic randomized-controlled trial to measure the impact of a behavioral economic electronic health record (EHR) clinical decision support (CDS) intervention to reduce physician prescriptions of new antipsychotic medications among patients with ADRD.

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Importance: For patients discharged from the emergency department (ED), timely outpatient in-person follow-up is associated with improved mortality, but the effectiveness of telehealth as follow-up modality is unknown.

Objective: To evaluate whether the rates of ED return visits and hospitalization differ between patients who obtain in-person vs telehealth encounters for post-ED follow-up care.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective cohort study included adult patients who presented to either of 2 in-system EDs of a single integrated urban academic health system from April 1, 2020, to September 30, 2021; were discharged home; and obtained a follow-up appointment with a primary care physician within 14 days of their index ED visit (15 total days).

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