Head and neck cancer mortality in the United States: Regional differences in hospice use and place of death.

Background: With more than 15,000 annual deaths from head and neck cancer (HNC), an important aspect of end-of-life care for these patients is place of death. Recent evidence suggests an increasing preference for home/hospice at end of life; however, it is unclear whether there is variation in home/hospice use based on region or urban status. We described differences in the place of death of HNC patients based on their region and urban status.

Assessing Affective Dimensions of the Interpersonal Circumplex: Development and Validation of the Interpersonal Emotion Inventory.

are feelings distinctively associated with real or imagined interpersonal situations. We propose that interpersonal emotions can be organized within the same circumplex used by contemporary integrative interpersonal theory to organize other aspects of interpersonal functioning. Our research explores the affective dimensions underpinning the interpersonal circumplex (IPC) and maps distinct emotional dispositions using coordinates for agentic and communal affect.

A summary of the main themes and findings presented at the ASM Intermountain Branch meeting (2024).

The annual meeting for the Intermountain Branch was held in April 2024 on the campus of Brigham Young University. There were 127 branch members from Utah, Idaho, and Nevada who attended the meeting and were composed of undergraduate students, graduate or medical students, and faculty. This report highlights the diversity of, and the emerging trends in, the research conducted by American Society for Microbiology members in the Intermountain Branch.

Illness perceptions, experiences of stigma and engagement in functional neurological disorder (FND): exploring the role of multidisciplinary group education sessions.

Background: A critical first step in managing functional neurological disorder (FND) is a positive diagnosis and clear explanation using an understandable illness model. Multidisciplinary group education sessions are one way to achieve this, with some evidence they improve understanding, confidence in diagnosis and outcomes with further treatment. In many conditions, illness perceptions and stigma affect distress, functioning, quality of life and engagement.

No client left behind: A meta-analysis of premature termination from psychotherapy in U.S. service members and veterans.

Dropout has been identified as a significant problem among military populations seeking psychotherapy (Goetter et al., 2015; Hoge et al., 2014), yet an overall estimate of its exact prevalence and predictors does not exist.

Nationwide Genomic Surveillance and Response to COVID-19: The VA SeqFORCE and SeqCURE Consortiums.

Background: The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has dedicated significant resources toward countering the COVID-19 pandemic. Sequencing for Research Clinical and Epidemiology (SeqFORCE) and Sequencing Collaborations United for Research and Epidemiology (SeqCURE) were developed as clinical and research consortiums, respectively, focused on the genetic COVID-19 surveillance.

Observations: Through genetic sequencing, VA SeqFORCE and SeqCURE collaborations contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic response and scientific understanding.

Neural correlates of bilateral proprioception and adaptation with training.

Bilateral proprioception includes the ability to sense the position and motion of one hand relative to the other, without looking. This sensory ability allows us to perform daily activities seamlessly, and its impairment is observed in various neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy and stroke. It can undergo experience-dependent plasticity, as seen in trained piano players.

Airway inflammation accelerates pulmonary exacerbations in cystic fibrosis.

Airway inflammation underlies cystic fibrosis (CF) pulmonary exacerbations. In a prospective multicenter study of randomly selected, clinically stable adolescents and adults, we assessed relationships between 24 inflammation-associated molecules and the future occurrence of CF pulmonary exacerbation using proportional hazards models. We explored relationships for potential confounding or mediation by clinical factors and assessed sensitivities to treatments including CF transmembrane regulator (CFTR) protein synthesis modulators.

Cholinergic signaling via muscarinic M1 receptor confers resistance to docetaxel in prostate cancer.

Docetaxel is the most commonly used chemotherapy for advanced prostate cancer (PC), including castration-resistant disease (CRPC), but the eventual development of docetaxel resistance constitutes a major clinical challenge. Here, we demonstrate activation of the cholinergic muscarinic M1 receptor (CHRM1) in CRPC cells upon acquiring resistance to docetaxel, which is manifested in tumor tissues from PC patients post- vs. pre-docetaxel.

ICU Utilization After Implementation of Minor Severe Pneumonia Criteria in Real-Time Electronic Clinical Decision Support.

Objectives: To determine if the implementation of automated clinical decision support (CDS) with embedded minor severe community-acquired pneumonia (sCAP) criteria was associated with improved ICU utilization among emergency department (ED) patients with pneumonia who did not require vasopressors or positive pressure ventilation at admission.

Design: Planned secondary analysis of a stepped-wedge, cluster-controlled CDS implementation trial.

Setting: Sixteen hospitals in six geographic clusters from Intermountain Health; a large, integrated, nonprofit health system in Utah and Idaho.

Engagement with Preventive Health Behaviors and Safe Firearm Storage Practices Using the 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

Purpose: "Behavioral bundling" is a theory that explains how some health behaviors reinforce one another. This study aims to investigate the relationship between preventive health behaviors (PHBs) and safe firearm storage.

Design: This study used a cross-sectional design using 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey data.

Identifying patients with opioid use disorder using International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes: Challenges and opportunities.

Background And Aims: International Classification of Diseases (ICD) diagnosis codes are often used in research to identify patients with opioid use disorder (OUD), but their accuracy for this purpose is not fully evaluated. This study describes application of ICD-10 diagnosis codes for opioid use, dependence and abuse from an electronic health record (EHR) data extraction using data from the clinics' OUD patient registries and clinician/staff EHR entries.

Design: Cross-sectional observational study.

Assessment of bladder filling during prostate cancer radiation therapy with ultrasound and cone-beam CT.

Prostate cancer patients undergoing external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) benefit from a full bladder to decrease bowel and bladder toxicity. Ultrasound may offer a proxy metric for evaluation, sparing CBCT dosing. Patients were prospectively enrolled pre-simulation from January 2017 to February 2018.

Frequency Following Responses to Tone Glides: Effects of Age and Hearing Loss.

Purpose: Speech is characterized by dynamic acoustic cues that must be encoded by the auditory periphery, auditory nerve, and brainstem before they can be represented in the auditory cortex. The fidelity of these cues in the brainstem can be assessed with the frequency-following response (FFR). Data obtained from older adults-with normal or impaired hearing-were compared with previous results obtained from normal-hearing younger adults to evaluate the effects of age and hearing loss on the fidelity of FFRs to tone glides.

A multisociety Delphi consensus statement on new fatty liver disease nomenclature.

The principal limitations of the terms NAFLD and NASH are the reliance on exclusionary confounder terms and the use of potentially stigmatising language. This study set out to determine if content experts and patient advocates were in favor of a change in nomenclature and/or definition. A modified Delphi process was led by three large pan-national liver associations.

A multisociety Delphi consensus statement on new fatty liver disease nomenclature.

The principal limitations of the terms NAFLD and NASH are the reliance on exclusionary confounder terms and the use of potentially stigmatising language. This study set out to determine if content experts and patient advocates were in favour of a change in nomenclature and/or definition. A modified Delphi process was led by three large pan-national liver associations.

A multisociety Delphi consensus statement on new fatty liver disease nomenclature.

The principal limitations of the terms NAFLD and NASH are the reliance on exclusionary confounder terms and the use of potentially stigmatising language. This study set out to determine if content experts and patient advocates were in favor of a change in nomenclature and/or definition. A modified Delphi process was led by three large pan-national liver associations.

Experiences of US Clinicians Contending With Health Care Resource Scarcity During the COVID-19 Pandemic, December 2020 to December 2021.

Importance: The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw periods of dire health care resource limitations in the US, sometimes prompting official declarations of crisis, but little is known about how these conditions were experienced by frontline clinicians.

Objective: To describe the experiences of US clinicians practicing under conditions of extreme resource limitation during the second year of the pandemic.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This qualitative inductive thematic analysis was based on interviews with physicians and nurses providing direct patient care at US health care institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Behavioral responses of terrestrial mammals to COVID-19 lockdowns.

COVID-19 lockdowns in early 2020 reduced human mobility, providing an opportunity to disentangle its effects on animals from those of landscape modifications. Using GPS data, we compared movements and road avoidance of 2300 terrestrial mammals (43 species) during the lockdowns to the same period in 2019. Individual responses were variable with no change in average movements or road avoidance behavior, likely due to variable lockdown conditions.

Care coordination between rural primary care and telemedicine to expand medication treatment for opioid use disorder: Results from a single-arm, multisite feasibility study.

Purpose: The use of telemedicine (TM) has accelerated in recent years, yet research on the implementation and effectiveness of TM-delivered medication treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD) has been limited. This study investigated the feasibility of implementing a care coordination model involving MOUD delivered via an external TM provider for the purpose of expanding access to MOUD for patients in rural settings.

Methods: The study tested a care coordination model in 6 rural primary care sites by establishing referral and coordination between the clinic and a TM company for MOUD.

A qualitative evaluation of frontline clinician perspectives toward antibiotic stewardship programs.

Objective: To examine the perspectives of caregivers that are not part of the antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) leadership team (eg, physicians, nurses, and clinical pharmacists), but who interact with ASPs in their role as frontline healthcare workers.

Design: Qualitative semistructured interviews.

Setting: The study was conducted in 2 large national healthcare systems including 7 hospitals in the Veterans' Health Administration and 4 hospitals in Intermountain Healthcare.

Quality-of-life outcomes and risk prediction for patients randomized to nivolumab plus ipilimumab vs nivolumab on LungMAP-S1400I.

Background: An important issue for patients with cancer treated with novel therapeutics is how they weigh the effects of treatment on survival and quality of life (QOL). We compared QOL in patients enrolled to SWOG S1400I, a substudy of the LungMAP biomarker-driven master protocol.

Methods: SWOG S1400I was a randomized phase III trial comparing nivolumab plus ipilimumab vs nivolumab for treatment of immunotherapy-naïve disease in advanced squamous cell lung cancer.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs Science and Health Initiative to Combat Infectious and Emerging Life-Threatening Diseases (VA SHIELD): A Biorepository Addressing National Health Threats.

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has demonstrated the need to share data and biospecimens broadly to optimize clinical outcomes for US military Veterans.

Methods: In response, the Veterans Health Administration established VA SHIELD (Science and Health Initiative to Combat Infectious and Emerging Life-threatening Diseases), a comprehensive biorepository of specimens and clinical data from affected Veterans to advance research and public health surveillance and to improve diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities.

Results: VA SHIELD now comprises 12 sites collecting de-identified biospecimens from US Veterans affected by SARS-CoV-2.