Trends in initial pharmacological COPD treatment in primary care (2010-2021): a population-based study using the PHARMO Data Network.

Background: Pharmacological treatment is a cornerstone of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) management, with general practitioners providing the most care. However, the lack of data on prescribing trends in initial pharmacotherapy in primary care hinders the understanding of how scientific and technical developments impact patient care and may also perpetuate suboptimal practices. Hence, this study aims to analyze trends in the initial pharmacological treatment of newly diagnosed COPD patients in Dutch primary care from 2010 to 2021.

Clinical importance of patient-reported outcome measures in severe asthma: results from U-BIOPRED.

Rationale: Knowledge about the clinical importance of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) in severe asthma is limited.

Objectives: To assess whether and to what extent asthma exacerbations affect changes in PROMS over time and asthma-specific PROMs can predict exacerbations in adult patients with severe asthma in usual care.

Methods: Data of 421 patients with severe asthma (62% female; mean age 51.

GOLD COPD Exacerbation History Categories and Disease Outcomes.

Importance: Previous exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (ECOPD) are associated with future events. For more than a decade, patients at high risk have been defined as individuals with a history of 2 or more moderate ECOPD, 1 or more severe ECOPD, or both within 12 months, and treatments have been allocated accordingly, but these cutoffs lack validation.

Objectives: To validate ECOPD history categories by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) and explore alternative cutoffs to estimate moderate and severe ECOPD and all-cause mortality in COPD.

Metabolic Changes After Bronchoscopic Lung Volume Reduction With Endobronchial Valves in COPD Patients.

Objectives: Little is known about the effect of bronchoscopic lung volume reduction using endobronchial valves (BLVR-EBV) on extrapulmonary manifestations like body composition, muscle function or metabolism. Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) clearly addresses extrapulmonary manifestations of COPD, including physical inactivity and low muscle mass. However, the added impact of BLVR-EBV+PR remains unknown.

Reproducibility of three 6-min walk tests in patients with COPD referred for pulmonary rehabilitation.

Introduction And Objectives: The 6-min walk test (6MWT) is used to assess functional capacity in patients with COPD. A significant number of studies have shown that most patients walk further in a second 6MWT. Research on a further increase in the 6-min walk distance (6MWD) during a 3rd test performed in accordance with current guidelines has not been done.

Business intelligence systems for population health management: a scoping review.

Objective: Population health management (PHM) is a promising data-driven approach to address the challenges faced by health care systems worldwide. Although Business Intelligence (BI) systems are known to be relevant for a data-driven approach, the usage for PHM is limited in its elaboration. To explore available scientific publications, a systematic review guided by PRISMA was conducted of mature BI initiatives to investigate their decision contexts and BI capabilities.

Multimodal machine learning for language and speech markers identification in mental health.

Background: There are numerous papers focusing on diagnosing mental health disorders using unimodal and multimodal approaches. However, our literature review shows that the majority of these studies either use unimodal approaches to diagnose a variety of mental disorders or employ multimodal approaches to diagnose a single mental disorder instead. In this research we combine these approaches by first identifying and compiling an extensive list of mental health disorder markers for a wide range of mental illnesses which have been used for both unimodal and multimodal methods, which is subsequently used for determining whether the multimodal approach can outperform the unimodal approaches.

A Novel Taxonomy for Navigating and Classifying Synthetic Data in Healthcare Applications.

Data-driven technologies have improved the efficiency, reliability and effectiveness of healthcare services, but come with an increasing demand for data, which is challenging due to privacy-related constraints on sharing data in healthcare contexts. Synthetic data has recently gained popularity as potential solution, but in the flurry of current research it can be hard to oversee its potential. This paper proposes a novel taxonomy of synthetic data in healthcare to navigate the landscape in terms of three main varieties.

Education for people with serious chronic respiratory diseases and their informal caregivers: how to address challenges that impact learning.

Purpose Of Review: Shared decision making is crucial in palliative care for people with serious chronic respiratory diseases and their informal caregivers. Patient education is a critical component in this process, as it provides patients and their informal caregivers the necessary knowledge for informed decisions regarding symptom management, coping with breathlessness, and advance care planning. However, education does not automatically lead to acquiring knowledge.

Alternative Modes of Delivery in Pulmonary Rehabilitation: A Critical Appraisal of the Literature.

Purpose: This review presents an overview of the safety and efficacy of alternative modes of pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Review Methods: We identified recently published systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and guidelines, as well as relevant studies, exploring the safety and effectiveness of community-based PR, home-based PR, telerehabilitation, and web-based rehabilitation in people with COPD. A narrative summary of the main findings is presented.

External validation of SCORE2-Diabetes in the Netherlands across various Socioeconomic levels in native-Dutch and non-Dutch populations.

Aims: Adults with type 2 diabetes have an increased risk of cardiovascular events (CVE), the world's leading cause of mortality. The SCORE2-Diabetes model is a tool designed to estimate the 10-year risk of CVE specifically in individuals with type 2 diabetes. However, the performance of such models may vary across different demographic and socioeconomic groups, necessitating validation and assessment in diverse populations.

Reliability of 24-h measurement of physical activity, sleep, and sedentary time in adult patients with asthma using a triaxial accelerometer.

Objective: Physical activity (PA), sleep, and sedentary time (SST) are important outcomes to monitor and to improve as part of patients' asthma management. This study aimed to assess the number of measurement days needed to reliably measure PA and SST. Secondly, the influence of external factors on the reliability of measuring PA and SST was studied.

End-of-life preferences of people with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Objectives: To identify end-of-life preferences of people with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and to compare characteristics between those who wish to discuss the end-of-life and those who do not.

Methods: An analysis of the baseline data of a randomised controlled trial was performed including people with COPD GOLD stages III-IV or former quadrant D with modified Medical Research Council questionnaire grade ≥2, after hospital discharge following an exacerbation. Participants were interviewed using the End-of-Life Preferences Interview.

Prognostic Factors for Outcome of Fusion Surgery in Patients With Chronic Low Back Pain - A Systematic Review.

Study Design: Systematic review.

Objective: This systematic review aims to identify prognostic factors, encompassing biomedical and psychosocial variables, linked to outcome of fusion surgery for chronic low back pain (CLBP) in single or two-level lumbar degenerative spinal disorders. Identifying these factors is crucial for decision making and therefore long-term treatment outcome.

Improving ED admissions forecasting by using generative AI: An approach based on DGAN.

Background And Objective: Generative Deep Learning has emerged in recent years as a significant player in the Artificial Intelligence field. Synthesizing new data while maintaining the features of reality has revolutionized the field of Deep Learning, proving to be particularly useful in contexts where obtaining data is challenging. The objective of this study is to employ the DoppelGANger algorithm, a cutting-edge approach based on Generative Adversarial Networks for time series, to enhance patient admissions forecasting in a hospital Emergency Department.

INSAFEDARE Project: Innovative Applications of Assessment and Assurance of Data and Synthetic Data for Regulatory Decision Support.

Digital health solutions hold promise for enhancing healthcare delivery and patient outcomes, primarily driven by advancements such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science, which enable the development of integrated care systems. Techniques for generating synthetic data from real datasets are highly advanced and continually evolving. This paper aims to present the INSAFEDARE project's ambition regarding medical devices' regulation and how real and synthetic data can be used to check if devices are safe and effective.

On the evaluation of synthetic longitudinal electronic health records.

Background: Synthetic Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are becoming increasingly popular as a privacy enhancing technology. However, for longitudinal EHRs specifically, little research has been done into how to properly evaluate synthetically generated samples. In this article, we provide a discussion on existing methods and recommendations when evaluating the quality of synthetic longitudinal EHRs.

Symptom burden and its associations with clinical characteristics in patients with COPD: a clustering approach.

Background: Symptom burden in patients with COPD is often under-recognised. In this cross-sectional analysis, we aimed to study the severity of a variety of (non-)respiratory symptoms in patients with and without COPD and to explore the associations between clusters based on symptom severity and other clinical characteristics.

Methods: Characteristics were assessed in 538 patients with COPD from primary, secondary and tertiary care and 116 non-COPD participants.

Prognostic value of the 1-min sit-to-stand test to predict post-operative complications in patients with lung cancer elected for lung resection.

https://bit.ly/3T7pnS9.

Translating the Interplay of Cognition and Physical Performance in COPD and Interstitial Lung Disease: Meeting Report and Literature Review.

Topic Importance: Cognitive and physical limitations are common in individuals with chronic lung diseases, but their interactions with physical function and activities of daily living are not well characterized. Understanding these interactions and potential contributors may provide insights on disability and enable more tailored rehabilitation strategies.

Review Findings: This review summarizes a 2-day meeting of patient partners, clinicians, researchers, and lung associations to discuss the interplay between cognitive and physical function in people with chronic lung diseases.