Life Course Stressors, Latent Coping Strategies, Alcohol Use, and Adherence among People with HIV.

People with HIV (PWH) have often experienced chronic stressors across their lifespan, including adverse childhood experiences (ACES), lifetime economic hardship (LEH), and concurrent stressors associated with living in urban areas (urban stress). Prolonged exposure to stressors might result in differential coping patterns among PWH that can impact care trajectories. We utilized a life course-informed approach to examine chronic stressors as antecedents of latent coping strategies among PWH in care.

Preoperative Computed Tomography Scan in Distal Radius Fractures and the Effect on Preoperative Planning.

Purpose: It is unclear whether computed tomography (CT) scans alter the surgical plan when ordered before surgery for fixation of intra-articular distal radius fractures (DRFs). The purpose of this study was to determine whether a preoperative CT scan alters the planned approach (PA) or planned fixation strategy (PFS) for open reduction internal fixation of intra-articular DRFs.

Methods: Radiology records were retrospectively reviewed by one trauma surgeon and two hand surgeons for 33 intra-articular DRFs that met the inclusion criteria and previously underwent open reduction internal fixation.

High prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection among incarcerated persons: Results from the Louisiana Hepatitis C Elimination Plan's opt-out testing program in prisons.

In the United States, modelling studies suggest a high prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in incarcerated populations. However, limited HCV testing has been conducted in prisons. Through the Louisiana Hepatitis C Elimination Plan, persons incarcerated in the eight state prisons were offered HCV testing from 20 September 2019 to 14 July 2022, and facility entry/exit HCV testing was introduced.

The Effect of Minority Stress Processes on Smoking for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Individuals: A Systematic Review.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals are more likely to smoke than non-LGBTQ individuals. Smoking has been posited as a coping mechanism for LGBTQ individuals facing minority stress. However, the exact relationship between minority stress and smoking behaviors among LGBTQ individuals is unclear.

Demographic and Clinical Factors Associated With Health-Related Quality-of-Life Profiles Among Prostate Cancer Survivors.

Purpose: Our purpose was to describe the prevalence and predictors of symptom and function clusters related to physical, emotional, and social components of general health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in a population-based sample of prostate cancer (PCa) survivors.

Methods: Participants (N = 1,162) completed a baseline survey at a median of 9 months after diagnosis to ascertain the co-occurrence of eight symptom and functional domains that are common across all cancers and not treatment-specific. We used latent profile analysis (LPA) to identify subgroup profiles of survivors with low, moderate, or high HRQOL levels.

The Effect of Minority Stress Processes on Stage of Change and Nicotine Dependence Level for Sexual and Gender Minority Smokers in the Deep South.

Minority stress has been posited as a cause for sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals to smoke as a coping mechanism. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the relationship between minority stress processes and nicotine dependence level and stage of change for SGM smokers living in the Deep South region of the United States. A one-time, cross-sectional online survey was administered to SGM smokers living in the Deep South.

Using ensembles and distillation to optimize the deployment of deep learning models for the classification of electronic cancer pathology reports.

Objective: We aim to reduce overfitting and model overconfidence by distilling the knowledge of an ensemble of deep learning models into a single model for the classification of cancer pathology reports.

Materials And Methods: We consider the text classification problem that involves 5 individual tasks. The baseline model consists of a multitask convolutional neural network (MtCNN), and the implemented ensemble (teacher) consists of 1000 MtCNNs.

Determining Fitness for Use of SEER Cause-Specific Cause of Death in Analyses of Cause-Specific Survival.

Background: Net and crude cancer survival statistics can be calculated using cause of death or expected survival from life tables. In some instances, using cause of death information may be advantageous. The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program cause-specific cause of death variable (North American Association of Central Cancer Registries [NAACCR] item #1914) designates that a patient died of their cancer.

Psychosocial factors associated with genetic testing status among African American women with ovarian cancer: Results from the African American Cancer Epidemiology Study.

Background: Racial disparities in the uptake of cancer genetic services are well documented among African American (AA) women. Understanding the multiple social and psychological factors that can influence the uptake of genetic testing among AA women is needed.

Methods: Data came from 270 AA women diagnosed with ovarian cancer and participating in a population-based, case-control study of ovarian cancer who were asked about genetic testing.

Privacy-Preserving Deep Learning NLP Models for Cancer Registries.

Population cancer registries can benefit from Deep Learning (DL) to automatically extract cancer characteristics from the high volume of unstructured pathology text reports they process annually. The success of DL to tackle this and other real-world problems is proportional to the availability of large labeled datasets for model training. Although collaboration among cancer registries is essential to fully exploit the promise of DL, privacy and confidentiality concerns are main obstacles for data sharing across cancer registries.

Cervical cancer incidence stratified by age in women with HIV compared with the general population in the United States, 2002-2016.

Objective: Recommendations for the age of initiating screening for cervical cancer in women with HIV (WWH) in the United States have not changed since 1995 when all women (regardless of immune status) were screened for cervical cancer from the age of onset of sexual activity, which often occurs in adolescence. By 2009, recognizing the lack of benefit as well as harms in screening young women, guidelines were revised to initiate cervical cancer screening for the general population at age 21 years. By comparing cervical cancer incidence in young WWH to that of the general population, we assessed the potential for increasing the recommended age of initiating cervical cancer screening in WWH.

Psychometric Properties of the POAGTS: A Tool for Understanding Parents' Perceptions Regarding Autism Spectrum Disorder Genetic Testing.

Due to the increased prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), more children with ASD may be referred for genetic testing. It is important to develop a tool to help parents consider the benefits and drawbacks of genetic testing for ASD before pursuing genetic testing for children with ASD. We developed the first theory-based survey-Perceptions of ASD Genetic Testing Survey (POAGTS), as a tool to assist healthcare providers to better understand parents' perceptions and concerns regarding ASD genetic testing.

The Relationship Between Social Vulnerability and COVID-19 Incidence Among Louisiana Census Tracts.

To examine the association between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and COVID-19 incidence among Louisiana census tracts. An ecological study comparing the CDC SVI and census tract-level COVID-19 case counts was conducted. Choropleth maps were used to identify census tracts with high levels of both social vulnerability and COVID-19 incidence.

Age difference in the combined effect of soda drinks consumption and body adiposity on hyperuricaemia in US adults.

Objective: To evaluate age-related differences in the independent/combined association of added sugar intake from soda and body adiposity with hyperuricaemia in gender-stratified US adults.

Design: Consumption of added sugar from soda was calculated from 24-h dietary interviews and categorised into none, regular and excessive consumption. Hyperuricaemia was defined as serum uric acid levels >417 mmol/l in men and >357 mmol/l in women.

Examining the relationship of immunotherapy and wound complications following flap reconstruction in patients with head and neck cancer.

Background: Immunotherapy agents are used to treat advanced head and neck lesions. We aim to elucidate relationship between immunotherapy and surgical wound complications.

Methods: Retrospective multi-institutional case series evaluating patients undergoing ablative and flap reconstructive surgery and immunotherapy treatment.

Rural-urban disparities in the distribution of dental caries among children in south-eastern Louisiana: a cross-sectional study.

Introduction: The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to assess the prevalence of dental caries among elementary school-aged children in rural compared to urban communities within south-eastern Louisiana that have participated in a school-based dental screening and sealant program.

Methods: The authors utilized de-identified Sealant Efficiency Assessment for Locals and States screening data for 2007-2014 provided by The Health Enrichment Network oral health program. The screening was conducted throughout 46 elementary schools in Louisiana.

Utilizing SEER Cancer Registries for Population-Based Cancer Survivor Epidemiologic Studies: A Feasibility Study.

Background: While the primary role of central cancer registries in the United States is to provide vital information needed for cancer surveillance and control, these registries can also be leveraged for population-based epidemiologic studies of cancer survivors. This study was undertaken to assess the feasibility of using the NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program registries to rapidly identify, recruit, and enroll individuals for survivor research studies and to assess their willingness to engage in a variety of research activities.

Methods: In 2016 and 2017, six SEER registries recruited both recently diagnosed and longer-term survivors with early age-onset multiple myeloma or colorectal, breast, prostate, or ovarian cancer.

Using case-level context to classify cancer pathology reports.

Individual electronic health records (EHRs) and clinical reports are often part of a larger sequence-for example, a single patient may generate multiple reports over the trajectory of a disease. In applications such as cancer pathology reports, it is necessary not only to extract information from individual reports, but also to capture aggregate information regarding the entire cancer case based off case-level context from all reports in the sequence. In this paper, we introduce a simple modular add-on for capturing case-level context that is designed to be compatible with most existing deep learning architectures for text classification on individual reports.

Cardiometabolic comorbidities and epithelial ovarian cancer risk among African-American women in the African-American Cancer Epidemiology Study (AACES).

Background: Studies that have examined the association between cardiovascular comorbidities and epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have yielded inconsistent results. It remains unknown whether cardiometabolic disease is associated with EOC in African American (AA) women, who have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease and lower risk of EOC than White women. Here, we estimate the effect of cardiovascular comorbid conditions and EOC risk among AA women.

Development of a Common Clinical Assessment Tool for Evaluation in Nurse Anesthesia Education.

There is a lack of standardization among evaluations completed by clinical educators of student registered nurse anesthetists (SRNAs) during their clinical education as reported by nurse anesthesia program administrators and students. To address this issue, the Council on Accreditation of Nurse Anesthesia Educational Programs (COA) Board created the Common Clinical Assessment Tool (CCAT) Special Interest Group to develop a standardized clinical evaluation instrument. The goal was to improve the consistency of clinical evaluation across nurse anesthesia programs while assisting program administrators to make programmatic changes to ensure compliance with COA standards.

Classifying cancer pathology reports with hierarchical self-attention networks.

We introduce a deep learning architecture, hierarchical self-attention networks (HiSANs), designed for classifying pathology reports and show how its unique architecture leads to a new state-of-the-art in accuracy, faster training, and clear interpretability. We evaluate performance on a corpus of 374,899 pathology reports obtained from the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Each pathology report is associated with five clinical classification tasks - site, laterality, behavior, histology, and grade.

Automatic extraction of cancer registry reportable information from free-text pathology reports using multitask convolutional neural networks.

Objective: We implement 2 different multitask learning (MTL) techniques, hard parameter sharing and cross-stitch, to train a word-level convolutional neural network (CNN) specifically designed for automatic extraction of cancer data from unstructured text in pathology reports. We show the importance of learning related information extraction (IE) tasks leveraging shared representations across the tasks to achieve state-of-the-art performance in classification accuracy and computational efficiency.

Materials And Methods: Multitask CNN (MTCNN) attempts to tackle document information extraction by learning to extract multiple key cancer characteristics simultaneously.

Perceived discrimination, trust in physicians, and prolonged symptom duration before ovarian cancer diagnosis in the African American Cancer Epidemiology Study.

Background: Discrimination and trust are known barriers to accessing health care. Despite well-documented racial disparities in the ovarian cancer care continuum, the role of these barriers has not been examined. This study evaluated the association of everyday discrimination and trust in physicians with a prolonged interval between symptom onset and ovarian cancer diagnosis (hereafter referred to as prolonged symptom duration).