Background: Diagnosis of Kawasaki disease (KD) can be challenging in the absence of a confirmatory test or pathognomonic finding, especially when clinical criteria are incomplete. We recently proposed serum N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) as an adjunctive diagnostic test.
Methods: We retrospectively tested a new algorithm to help KD diagnosis based on NT-proBNP, coronary artery dilation (CAD) at onset, and abnormal serum albumin or C-reactive protein (CRP). The goal was to assess the performance of the algorithm and compare its performance with that of the 2004 American Heart Association (AHA)/American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) algorithm.
Results: The algorithm was tested on 124 KD patients with NT-proBNP measured on admission at the present institutions between 2007 and 2013. Age at diagnosis was 3.4 ± 3.0 years, with a median of five diagnostic criteria; and 55 of the 124 patients (44%) had incomplete KD. CA complications occurred in 64 (52%), with aneurysm in 14 (11%). Using this algorithm, 120/124 (97%) were to be treated, based on high NT-proBNP alone for 79 (64%); on onset CAD for 14 (11%); and on high CRP or low albumin for 27 (22%). Using the AHA/AAP algorithm, 22/47 (47%) of the eligible patients with incomplete KD would not have been referred for treatment, compared with 3/55 (5%) with the NT-proBNP algorithm (P < 0.001).
Conclusion: This NT-proBNP-based algorithm is efficient to identify and treat patients with KD, including those with incomplete KD. This study paves the way for a prospective validation trial of the algorithm.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ped.13154 | DOI Listing |
Biometrics
October 2024
RAND Corporation, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, United States.
Health care decisions are increasingly informed by clinical decision support algorithms, but these algorithms may perpetuate or increase racial and ethnic disparities in access to and quality of health care. Further complicating the problem, clinical data often have missing or poor quality racial and ethnic information, which can lead to misleading assessments of algorithmic bias. We present novel statistical methods that allow for the use of probabilities of racial/ethnic group membership in assessments of algorithm performance and quantify the statistical bias that results from error in these imputed group probabilities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Transl Med
January 2025
Department of Hematology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu Province Hospital, Nanjing, China.
Precision medicine in less-defined subtype diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) remains a challenge due to the heterogeneous nature of the disease. Programmed cell death (PCD) pathways are crucial in the advancement of lymphoma and serve as significant prognostic markers for individuals afflicted with lymphoid cancers. To identify robust prognostic biomarkers that can guide personalized management for less-defined subtype DLBCL patients, we integrated multi-omics data derived from 339 standard R-CHOP-treated patients diagnosed with less-defined subtype DLBCL from three independent cohorts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultivariate Behav Res
December 2024
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
We present the R package MIIVefa, designed to implement the MIIV-EFA algorithm. This algorithm explores and identifies the underlying factor structure within a set of variables. The resulting model is not a typical exploratory factor analysis (EFA) model because some loadings are fixed to zero and it allows users to include hypothesized correlated errors such as might occur with longitudinal data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVestn Oftalmol
December 2024
Krasnov Research Institute of Eye Diseases, Moscow, Russia.
This lecture-format review presents a summary of methods for assessing the condition of corneal nerve fibers (CNF), their clinical significance, and an overview of their anatomy and physiology. It briefly analyzes the structural and functional characteristics of CNF in various ocular diseases, following eye surgeries, and in patients with systemic diseases accompanied by systemic polyneuropathy. The article describes in detail the management algorithm that involves a comprehensive analysis of CNF and Langerhans inflammatory cells, identifies the at-risk groups for developing structural nerve impairments, and outlines the main criteria for CNF assessment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Ophthalmol
December 2024
Department of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Purpose: The relationship between retinal morphology, as assessed by optical coherence tomography (OCT), and retinal function in microperimetry (MP) has not been well studied, despite its increasing importance as an essential functional endpoint for clinical trials and emerging therapies in retinal diseases. Normative databases of healthy ageing eyes are largely missing from literature.
Methods: Healthy subjects above 50 years were examined using two MP devices, MP-3 (NIDEK) and MAIA (iCare).
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