The detection of hospitalized patients at risk of testing positive to multi-drug resistant bacteria using MOCA-I, a rule-based "white-box" classification algorithm for medical data.

Background: Multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria are a major health concern. In this retrospective study, a rule-based classification algorithm, MOCA-I (Multi-Objective Classification Algorithm for Imbalanced data) is used to identify hospitalized patients at risk of testing positive for multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria, including Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), before or during their stay.

Methods: Applied to a data set of 48,945 hospital stays (including known cases of carriage) with up to 16,325 attributes per stay, MOCA-I generated alert rules for risk of carriage or infection.

Case report: An infantile lethal form of Albright hereditary osteodystrophy due to a mutation.

Germline loss-of-function mutations are associated with multiple phenotypes, depending on the parental origin of the mutant allele. Here, we describe an infantile lethal form of atypical pseudohypoparathyroidism type 1a or 1c with severe Albright's hereditary osteodystrophy phenotype, underlying the extremely variable expressivity of this syndrome.

[Benevolent Lies and Divine Truths: Information-giving Practices in the Era of Medical Paternalism, Brussels (1870-1930)].

Mostly based on Belgian and French-language source material (such as hospital archives, medical ethics, Catholic nursing manuals, etc.), this article sheds light on the way that information around serious illnesses was managed in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is suggested that information-giving practices were largely defined by the paternalistic nature of pre-mid-20th century medicine and although these practices aimed to the same objective, their content varied greatly according to the medical professionals or caregivers involved (doctors, catholic nurses, priests).

Severity of autonomic dysfunction in patients with complete spinal cord injury.

Objective: There is limited information on the relationship between the level and completeness of the spinal cord injury (SCI) lesion and the degree of autonomic dysfunction. We aimed to study the impairment of sympathetic function in chronic SCI patients presenting with a motor and sensory complete lesion above T6.

Method: 26 consecutive traumatic SCI patients were enrolled (14 tetraplegics and 12 paraplegics).