1,677 results match your criteria: "San Francisco VA Medical Center.[Affiliation]"

Building Climate Change into Medical Education: A Society of General Internal Medicine Position Statement.

J Gen Intern Med

October 2024

Division of Hospital Medicine, Department of Medicine, San Francisco VA Medical Center, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 94121, USA.

Building expertise in climate and planetary health among healthcare professionals cannot come with greater urgency as the threats from climate change become increasingly apparent. Current and future healthcare professionals-particularly internists-will increasingly need to understand the interconnectedness of natural systems and human health to better serve their patients longitudinally. Despite this, few national medical societies and accreditation bodies espouse frameworks for climate change and planetary health-related education at the undergraduate (UME), graduate (GME), and continuing (CME) medical education level.

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Mapping the Discharge Process After Surgery.

JAMA Surg

April 2024

Department of General Surgery, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Menlo Park, California.

Importance: Care transition models are structured approaches used to ensure the smooth transfer of patients between health care settings or levels of care, but none currently are tailored to the surgical patient. Tailoring care transition models to the unique needs of surgical patients may lead to significant improvements in surgical outcomes and reduced care fragmentation. The first step to developing surgical care transition models is to understand the surgical discharge process.

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Clinical studies have shown that α1-adrenergic receptor antagonists (α-blockers) are associated with increased heart failure risk. The mechanism underlying that hazard and whether it arises from direct inhibition of cardiomyocyte α1-ARs or from systemic effects remain unclear. To address these issues, we created a mouse with cardiomyocyte-specific deletion of the α1A-AR subtype and found that it experienced 70% mortality within 7 days of myocardial infarction driven, in part, by excessive activation of necroptosis.

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Background: Aging beyond 65 years is associated with increased prevalence of urinary incontinence (UI), frailty, and increased complication rate with UI treatments. To investigate this relationship, we examined frailty as a predictor of procedure-based UI treatment patterns and urologic complications in Medicare-eligible women.

Methods: We identified women undergoing procedures for UI between 2011 and 2018 in the 5% limited Medicare data set.

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Background: Binge eating is a relatively common disordered eating behavior among children, and is associated with poor health outcomes. Executive function (EF)-higher order cognitive abilities related to planning and impulse control-may be implicated in both binge eating and pediatric obesity. Although EF deficits are evident among individuals with obesity and/or binge eating, findings are mixed across the lifespan.

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Drugs acting as positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) to enhance the activation of the calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) and to suppress parathyroid hormone (PTH) secretion can treat hyperparathyroidism but suffer from side effects including hypocalcemia and arrhythmias. Seeking new CaSR modulators, we docked libraries of 2.7 million and 1.

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Introduction: Our simulation-based mastery learning (SBML) curriculum, delivered in person, has been shown to successfully train novices in structured esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD). SBML with virtual coaching (VC) has the potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of endoscopy training and expand access to trainees from around the world. We share our observations conducting an EGD training course using SBML with VC.

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Regional cortical brain volumes at treatment entry relates to post treatment WHO risk drinking levels in those with alcohol use disorder.

Drug Alcohol Depend

February 2024

Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND), San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, USA; Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Background: Abstinence following treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) is associated with significant improvements in psychiatric and physical health, however, recent studies suggest resumption of low risk levels of alcohol use can also be beneficial. The present study assessed whether post-treatment levels of alcohol use were associated with cortical brain volumedifferences at treatment entry.

Methods: Individuals seeking treatment for AUD (n=75) and light/non-drinking controls (LN, n=51) underwent 1.

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Background: Plasma proenkephalin A (PENK-A) is a precursor of active enkephalins. Higher blood concentrations have been associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) decline in European populations. Due to the significant disparity in incident chronic kidney disease (CKD) between White and Black people, we evaluated the association of PENK-A with incident CKD and other kidney outcomes among a biracial cohort in the U.

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Background: Older men frequently develop lower urinary tract symptoms attributed to benign prostatic hyperplasia (LUTS/BPH). Risk factors for LUTS/BPH include sedentary lifestyle, anxiety/depression, obesity, and frailty, which all increase with age. Although physical exercise may reduce the progression and/or severity of LUTS/BPH, the age-related mechanisms responsible remain unknown.

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Article Synopsis
  • Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) in older men are linked to higher risks of mobility issues, with thigh muscle quality potentially playing a crucial role.
  • In a study of 352 men aged 60 and older, specific measures of thigh muscle strength and quality were found to be inversely related to LUTS severity, indicating that stronger thigh muscles may lead to fewer urinary symptoms.
  • However, while baseline muscle strength correlated with lower LUTS severity, changes in muscle measures over time did not predict changes in LUTS severity, suggesting that the relationship may not be straightforward.
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Article Synopsis
  • - The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on Veterans, who often have higher health risks, prompting a need for targeted predictive models using synthetic electronic health record (EHR) data to overcome access restrictions in traditional datasets.
  • - The precisionFDA COVID-19 Risk Factor Modeling Challenge was initiated by the FDA and VHA to create diagnostic models specific to Veterans, using synthetic data to increase participation and replace the limited access to real data.
  • - Results indicated that models trained on synthetic data yielded similar, albeit slightly inflated, performance metrics compared to those using real data, with major risk factors from both sources largely overlapping and validated by existing research.
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Accelerometer-assessed sleep and decline in physical function in older men.

Sleep Health

February 2024

Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Objectives: Assess the prospective association of actigraphically measured sleep with self-report and objective measures of physical function among community-dwelling older men.

Methods: Participants were (n = 1496) men aged ≥65 years from the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study and ancillary sleep study who were followed up at 4 years for physical function outcomes. Sleep predictors included baseline total sleep time (<6, 6-8 hours [reference], >8 hours), sleep efficiency (<80% or ≥80% [reference]), wake after sleep onset (<90 [reference] or ≥90 minutes), and sleep onset latency (<30 [reference] or ≥30 minutes), measured by wrist actigraphy.

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Background: Potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) in older adults are medications in which risks often outweigh benefits and are suggested to be avoided. Worldwide, many distinct guidelines and tools classify PIMs in older adults. Collating these guidelines and tools, mapping them to a medication classification system, and creating a crosswalk will enhance the utility of PIM guidance for research and clinical practice.

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Inquiries into properties of brain structure and function have progressed due to developments in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). To sustain progress in investigating and quantifying neuroanatomical details , the reliability and validity of brain measurements are paramount. Quality control (QC) is a set of procedures for mitigating errors and ensuring the validity and reliability of brain measurements.

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There is a need for integrated treatment approaches that address heavy alcohol use and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) concurrently among Veterans as interactions between heavy drinking and PTSD are frequent. Veteran engagement in specialty mental health services after referral is limited with poorer outcomes following empirically-supported, exposure-based PTSD treatments that do not explicitly address alcohol use. The current project aimed to incorporate two evidenced-based interventions: Brief Motivational Intervention (BMI) with Prolonged Exposure for Primary Care (PE-PC) for Veterans with heavy drinking and PTSD.

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Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) increases the risk of neurological diseases, yet how brain oscillations change as age and T2DM interact is not well characterized. To delineate the age and diabetic effect on neurophysiology, we recorded local field potentials with multichannel electrodes spanning the somatosensory cortex and hippocampus (HPC) under urethane anesthesia in diabetic and normoglycemic control mice, at 200 and 400 days of age. We analyzed the signal power of brain oscillations, brain state, sharp wave associate ripples (SPW-Rs), and functional connectivity between the cortex and HPC.

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Trends in Prevalence of Cannabis Use Disorder Among U.S. Veterans With and Without Psychiatric Disorders Between 2005 and 2019.

Am J Psychiatry

February 2024

New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York (Livne, Olfson, Wall, Fink, Hasin); Department of Psychiatry (Livne, Olfson, Wall, Hasin) and Department of Emergency Medicine (Mannes), Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York; Health Services Research and Development, Seattle Center of Innovation for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care (Malte, Saxon, McDowell) and Center of Excellence in Substance Addiction Treatment and Education (Malte, Saxon), VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle; Department of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York (Keyes, Martins, Mannes, Gutkind, Hasin); Department of Health Systems and Population Health, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle (Maynard); Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, and Department of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston (Gradus); Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle (Saxon); San Francisco VA Medical Center and Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco (Keyhani).

Article Synopsis
  • Cannabis use disorder diagnoses are rising among U.S. adults, especially those with psychiatric disorders, and recent changes in cannabis laws and availability may be contributing factors.
  • A study analyzed Veterans Health Administration data from 2005 to 2019, showing that patients with psychiatric disorders experienced greater increases in cannabis use disorder diagnoses compared to those without such disorders, particularly among younger adults and older adults during specific periods.
  • The results indicate significant disparities in the prevalence of cannabis use disorder among veterans with common psychiatric conditions, with the most notable increases seen in those with bipolar and psychotic spectrum disorders.
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Reduced hippocampal volume (HV) is an established brain morphological feature of psychiatric conditions. HV is associated with brain connectivity in humans and non-human animals and altered connectivity is associated with risk for psychiatric illness. Associations between HV and connectivity remain poorly characterized in humans, and especially in phases of psychiatric illness that precede disease onset.

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Navigating Promotion in Thoracic Surgery.

Thorac Surg Clin

February 2024

Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of California San Francisco and San Francisco VA Medical Center, 500 Parnassus Avenue, MUW 405, Box 0118, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA. Electronic address:

The academic promotion process in thoracic surgery can appear nebulous to many young surgeons. However, at most institutions, clear promotion criteria exist for specific academic tracks, and they are based on factors such as clinical excellence, research/investigation, funding, education/teaching, service, health policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), ethics, quality and safety, and health care delivery. A thorough understanding of the promotion process is the key to successful advancement in academia.

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Article Synopsis
  • Current multivariable equations for assessing cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk have limitations, prompting the development of the AHA PREVENT equations aimed at adults aged 30 to 79 without known CVD.
  • The study analyzed data from over 6.6 million adults across 25 datasets, utilizing traditional risk factors and additional predictors like social deprivation, to create sex-specific models with strong predictive capabilities.
  • The external validation showed solid performance with median C-statistics of 0.794 for women and 0.757 for men, indicating good distinction between individuals at different risk levels for CVD.
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