Publications by authors named "Wei Chih Liao"

Background And Study Aim: Improvement of adenoma detection rate (ADR) effectively reduces the subsequent incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC). Three-dimensional (3D) colonoscopy provided more anatomical details than standard two-dimensional (2D) colonoscopy and improved ADR in a simulation study. We aimed to compare the ADR between 2D and 3D colonoscopy.

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Purpose Of The Review: Mounting evidence indicates that individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) face a heightened risk of severe outcomes upon contracting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Current medications for COVID-19 often carry side effects, necessitating alternative therapies with improved tolerance. This review explores the biological mechanisms rendering COPD patients more susceptible to severe COVID-19 and investigates the potential of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) in mitigating the severity of COVID-19 in COPD patients.

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  • Cigarette smoking is a major cause of death globally and has been shown to increase the infectivity of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a harmful bacteria that often affects the respiratory system.
  • This study utilized cigarette smoke extract (CSE) to examine how it impacts the innate immune response, specifically in mouse macrophage models.
  • Findings revealed that CSE exposure reduces the production of key immune signaling molecules and disrupts macrophage functions, ultimately weakening the body's defense against pneumococcal infections.
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  • Osimertinib is a third-generation EGFR TKI that is commonly used as a first-line treatment for advanced EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but its effectiveness compared to second-generation TKIs (afatinib and dacomitinib) hasn't been thoroughly studied.
  • The study enrolled 168 patients with stage IIIb-IV EGFR-mutated NSCLC, finding that median progression-free survival (PFS) was not significantly different between those treated with osimertinib and those on second-generation TKIs.
  • Results indicated that while osimertinib showed longer PFS in patients with certain mutations, none of the differences were statistically significant, and the stage of NSCLC was the only strong predictor
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  • A study examined the effectiveness of fluticasone furoate and vilanterol (FF/VIL) compared to budesonide/formoterol (BUD/FOR) in asthma patients classified as step 3 or 4 according to treatment guidelines.
  • After 12 months, those on FF/VIL reported greater improvements in asthma control test (ACT) scores than those on BUD/FOR, who showed no significant change in their fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) levels.
  • Despite variations in ACT and FeNO results, neither treatment group showed meaningful changes in pulmonary function, blood eosinophil count, or acute asthma exacerbation rates.
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Introduction: Fluid resuscitation reduces mortality and morbidity in acute pancreatitis (AP); however, whether glucose-containing fluids negatively impact AP remains uncertain. We aimed to examine the association between glucose-containing fluids and AP outcomes.

Methods: This multicenter retrospective cohort study included patients diagnosed with AP between January 2015 and December 2018.

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The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in an increasing population that is experiencing a wide range of long-lasting symptoms after recovery from the acute infection. Long COVID refers to this specific condition and is associated with diverse symptoms, such as fatigue, myalgias, dyspnea, headache, cognitive impairment, neurodegenerative symptoms, anxiety, depression, and a sense of despair. The potential of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to improve chronic fatigue, cognitive impairments, and neurological disorders has been established; therefore, the use of HBOT to treat long COVID has also been studied.

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  • The study investigates bone metastasis (BoM) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have an EGFR mutation, focusing on clinical characteristics and treatment effectiveness using EGFR-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).
  • It analyzed 247 stage IV EGFR-mutated NSCLC patients, revealing that those with BoM had shorter progression-free and overall survival compared to those without it, along with a higher incidence of T790M mutations and extrathoracic metastases.
  • The findings suggest that the presence of BoM negatively affects prognosis, but using sequential osimertinib, antiangiogenic therapy (AAT), and denosumab can enhance survival rates for these patients.
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Objective: Hemin, a heme oxygenase 1 activator has shown efficacy in the prevention and treatment of acute pancreatitis in mouse models. We conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to assess the protective effect of Hemin administration to prevent post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) pancreatitis (PEP) in patients at risk.

Methods: In this multicenter, multinational, placebo-controlled, double-blind RCT, we assigned patients at risk for PEP to receive a single intravenous dose of Hemin (4 mg/kg) or placebo immediately after ERCP.

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  • The study compared the effectiveness and safety of afatinib and dacomitinib as first-line treatments for EGFR mutation-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) using data from 101 patients treated between September 2020 and March 2023.
  • Both drugs showed similar partial response rates, median progression-free survival (PFS), and time to treatment failure (TTF), indicating comparable efficacy.
  • Significant differences in side effects were noted, with afatinib causing more diarrhea and dacomitinib leading to more cases of paronychia, but both treatments were deemed safe for patients of varying ages.
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Background: The long-term outcome on patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) has not been ideal after standard medical treatment. However, good outcome for patients with CTEPH after interventions such as pulmonary endarterectomy (PEA) and balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) has been reported recently. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of PEA or BPA on long-term outcomes for CTEPH patients in Han-Chinese population.

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Objective: Preterm infants are at high risk of neuromotor disorders. Recent advances in digital technology and machine learning algorithms have enabled the tracking and recognition of anatomical key points of the human body. It remains unclear whether the proposed pose estimation model and the skeleton-based action recognition model for adult movement classification are applicable and accurate for infant motor assessment.

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  • * Data were collected from 1,528 AP patients between 2015 and 2018, with only a small percentage (6.3%) using NSAIDs during a crucial time frame around their diagnosis.
  • * The analysis found no significant link between NSAID use and the rates of OF or persistent OF, suggesting that NSAIDs did not reduce these complications in AP patients.
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Traditionally, the processing of seaweed into jelly was very complicated, and involved repeated washing with water and sun drying for seven rounds. The seaweed, which is originally reddish-purple in color, turns yellow in color after the repeated washing and sun drying cycles. However, the sun drying process can only be used on sunny days.

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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) contributes significantly to the death of people worldwide, especially the elderly. An essential feature of COPD is pulmonary inflammation, which results from long-term exposure to noxious substances from cigarette smoking and other environmental pollutants. Pulmonary inflammatory mediators spill over to the blood, leading to systemic inflammation, which is believed to play a significant role in the onset of a host of comorbidities associated with COPD.

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One of the leading causes of cancer deaths is esophageal cancer (EC) because identifying it in early stage is challenging. Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) could detect the early stages of EC have been developed in recent years. Therefore, in this study, complete meta-analysis of selected studies that only uses hyperspectral imaging to detect EC is evaluated in terms of their diagnostic test accuracy (DTA).

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Background: The patient population with stage III non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is heterogeneous, with varying staging characteristics and diverse treatment options. Despite the potential practice-changing implications of randomized controlled trials evaluating the efficacy of perioperative epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs), concerns have been raised due to conflicting overall survival (OS) results. Few real-world studies have examined the survival outcomes of patients with resected EGFR-mutant stage III adenocarcinoma receiving perioperative chemotherapy and EGFR-TKIs.

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Background: Cancer cachexia, occurring in ~ 80% pancreatic cancer (PC) patients overall, is a paraneoplastic syndrome mediated by cancer-induced systemic inflammation and characterized by weight loss and skeletal muscle wasting. Identifying clinically relevant PC-derived pro-inflammatory factors with cachexigenic potential may provide novel insights and therapeutic strategies.

Methods: Pro-inflammatory factors with cachexigenic potential in PC were identified by bioinformatic analysis.

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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third-leading cause of mortality globally, significantly affecting people over 40 years old. COPD is often comorbid with mood disorders; however, they are frequently neglected or undiagnosed in COPD management, thus resulting in unintended treatment outcomes and higher mortality associated with the disease. Although the exact link between COPD and mood disorders remains to be ascertained, there is a broader opinion that inflammatory reactions in the lungs, blood, and inflammation-induced changes in the brain could orchestrate the onset of mood disorders in COPD.

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Patients with hematologic malignancies (HMs) have a significantly elevated risk of mortality compared to other cancer patients treated in the intensive care unit (ICU). The prognostic impact of numerous poor outcome indicators has changed, and research has yielded conflicting results. This study aims to determine the ICU and hospital outcomes and risk factors that predict the prognosis of critically ill patients with HMs.

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The combination of bevacizumab or ramucirumab with epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) therapy, chemotherapy, or immunotherapy for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with EGFR mutations could have survival benefits. However, no study, to date, has been conducted to compare the efficacy and safety of these two antiangiogenic therapies (AATs). Stage IIIB to IV EGFR-mutated NSCLC patients who received first-line EGFR-TKIs between January 2014 and May 2022 were enrolled.

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Background: CT is the major detection tool for pancreatic cancer (PC). However, approximately 40% of PCs < 2 cm are missed on CT, underscoring a pressing need for tools to supplement radiologist interpretation.

Methods: Contrast-enhanced CT studies of 546 patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma diagnosed by histology/cytology between January 2005 and December 2019 and 733 CT studies of controls with normal pancreas obtained between the same period in a tertiary referral center were retrospectively collected for developing an automatic end-to-end computer-aided detection (CAD) tool for PC using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) radiomic analysis with machine learning.

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  • Researchers conducted a study to evaluate the use of interventional pulmonology (IP) procedures as a method for re-biopsy in patients with T790M-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after failure of EGFR-TKI treatment.
  • The study involved 139 NSCLC patients, where the initial IP re-biopsy had an 81.2% diagnostic yield and found a T790M mutation detection rate of 36%.
  • Results indicated that IP methods are effective for obtaining tissue samples to identify resistance mechanisms in NSCLC, with some patients also showing histologic transformations from lung adenocarcinoma.
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  • - The study assessed the effectiveness of once-daily fixed-dose combinations of LABA and LAMA medications in improving lung function for patients with COPD over a 12-month period.
  • - A total of 198 COPD patients were analyzed, with treatment groups including umeclidinium/vilanterol (UMEC/VIL), indacaterol/glycopyrronium (IND/GLY), and tiotropium/olodaterol (TIO/OLO).
  • - Results showed significant improvements in lung function, particularly with TIO/OLO, which led to better forced vital capacity and reduction in residual volume compared to the other treatments.
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