Automated AI-based image analysis for quantification and prediction of interstitial lung disease in systemic sclerosis patients.

Background: Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a rare connective tissue disease associated with rapidly evolving interstitial lung disease (ILD), driving its mortality. Specific imaging-based biomarkers associated with the evolution of lung disease are needed to help predict and quantify ILD.

Methods: We evaluated the potential of an automated ILD quantification system (icolung) from chest CT scans, to help in quantification and prediction of ILD progression in SSc-ILD.

Medicaid Spending in Coordination-Only Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans.

Importance: More than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries have enrolled in dual-eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs), and coordination-only D-SNPs are common. Little is known about the impact of coordination-only D-SNPs on Medicaid-covered services and spending, including long-term services and supports, which are financed primarily by Medicaid.

Objective: To evaluate changes in Medicaid fee-for-service (FFS) spending before and after new enrollment in coordination-only D-SNPs vs new enrollment in non-D-SNP Medicare Advantage (MA) plans among community-living beneficiaries enrolled in both Medicare and North Carolina Medicaid.

Geriatrics-Focused vs Traditional Primary Care in the Veterans Affairs Health Care System.

Importance: Older adults often require specialized health care expertise, but the effects of geriatrics-focused models of primary care have not been fully evaluated.

Objective: To compare the effects of geriatrics-focused primary care vs traditional primary care for older patients in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this cohort study, geriatrics-focused primary care and traditional primary care patient dyads matched on variables associated with geriatrics-focused primary care entry and outcomes were enrolled from VA medical centers with operational geriatrics-focused primary care clinics serving 500 or more patients annually in fiscal year 2016.

The burden of illness of the organ manifestations of systemic sclerosis: a pragmatic, targeted review.

Objectives: This structured, targeted literature review aimed to assess the mortality, humanistic and economic burden of eight organ manifestations which are commonly experienced by systemic sclerosis patients.

Methods: Identification of relevant literature was carried out by searching in Ovid MEDLINE and EMBASE, PubMed, and NHS Economic Evaluation Database in August 2023. Studies reporting original data on patients with systemic sclerosis with at least one of eight organ manifestations (interstitial lung disease and/or pulmonary hypertension, skin, peripheral vascular, musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, cardiac or renal involvement) published within the last 15 years were included.

F-PI-2620 Tau PET is associated with cognitive and motor impairment in Lewy body disease.

Co-pathology is frequent in Lewy body disease, which includes clinical diagnoses of both Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Measuring concomitant pathology can improve clinical and research diagnoses and prediction of cognitive trajectories. Tau PET imaging may serve a dual role in Lewy body disease by measuring cortical tau aggregation as well as assessing dopaminergic loss attributed to binding to neuromelanin within substantia nigra.