The Cost-Effectiveness of a Telemedicine Screening Program for Diabetic Retinopathy in New York City.

Background: A telemedicine screening initiative was implemented by the Montefiore Health System to improve access to eyecare for a multi-ethnic, at-risk population of diabetic patients in a largely underserved urban community in the Bronx, New York. This retrospective, cross-sectional analysis evaluates the societal benefit and financial sustainability of this program by analyzing both cost and revenue generation based on current standard Medicare reimbursement rates.

Methods: Non-mydriatic fundus cameras were placed in collaboration with a vendor in eight outpatient primary care sites throughout the Montefiore Health Care System, and data was collected between June 2014 and July 2016.

Anal cytology screening in men who have sex with men with HIV at a university hospital in Bogotá, Colombia.

Background: Risk of anal squamous cell carcinoma (anal cancer) is greater among men who have sex with men (MSM) living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). We describe the frequency of and factors associated with abnormal anal cytology results in Colombian MSM living with HIV.

Methods: This retrospective observational cohort study included MSM ≥18 years old living with HIV screened with anal cytology at Hospital Universitario San Ignacio in Bogotá, Colombia between January 2019 and February 2020.

Passive Immunotherapy Against SARS-CoV-2: From Plasma-Based Therapy to Single Potent Antibodies in the Race to Stay Ahead of the Variants.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now approaching 2 years old, with more than 440 million people infected and nearly six million dead worldwide, making it the most significant pandemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic. The severity and significance of SARS-CoV-2 was recognized immediately upon discovery, leading to innumerable companies and institutes designing and generating vaccines and therapeutic antibodies literally as soon as recombinant SARS-CoV-2 spike protein sequence was available. Within months of the pandemic start, several antibodies had been generated, tested, and moved into clinical trials, including Eli Lilly's bamlanivimab and etesevimab, Regeneron's mixture of imdevimab and casirivimab, Vir's sotrovimab, Celltrion's regdanvimab, and Lilly's bebtelovimab.

Resuscitative Endovascular Balloon Occlusion of the Aorta in Penetrating Trauma.

Background: Resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) achieves temporary hemorrhage control via aortic occlusion. Existing REBOA literature focuses on blunt trauma without a clearly defined role in penetrating trauma. This study compared clinical/injury data and outcomes after REBOA in penetrating vs blunt trauma.

Regulation of Aging and Longevity by Ion Channels and Transporters.

Despite significant advances in our understanding of the mechanisms that underlie age-related physiological decline, our ability to translate these insights into actionable strategies to extend human healthspan has been limited. One of the major reasons for the existence of this barrier is that with a few important exceptions, many of the proteins that mediate aging have proven to be undruggable. The argument put forth here is that the amenability of ion channels and transporters to pharmacological manipulation could be leveraged to develop novel therapeutic strategies to combat aging.

Value in acute care surgery, part 2: Defining and measuring quality outcomes.

The prior article in this series delved into measuring cost in acute care surgery, and this subsequent work explains in detail how quality is measured. Specifically, objective quality is based on outcome measures, both from administrative and clinical registry databases from a multitude of sources. Risk stratification is key in comparing similar populations across diseases and procedures.

Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Patients With Gynecological Cancer: Machine Learning-Augmented Propensity Score Mortality and Cost Analysis for 383,760 Patients.

Background: Despite the growing number of patients with both coronary artery disease and gynecological cancer, there are no nationally representative studies of mortality and cost effectiveness for percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) and this cancer type.

Methods: Backward propagation neural network machine learning supported and propensity score adjusted multivariable regression was conducted for the above outcomes in this case-control study of the 2016 National Inpatient Sample (NIS), the United States' largest all-payer hospitalized dataset. Regression models were fully adjusted for age, race, income, geographic region, cancer metastases, mortality risk, and the likelihood of undergoing PCI (and also with length of stay [LOS] for cost).

Pearls and Pitfalls of Imaging in Pediatric Brain Tumors.

The central nervous system (CNS) tumors constitute the most common type of solid tumors in the pediatric population. The cerebral and cerebellar parenchyma are the most common site of pediatric CNS neoplasms. Imaging plays an important role in detection, characterization, staging and prognostication of brain tumors.

Patterning of Oncogenic Ras Clustering in Live Cells Using Vertically Aligned Nanostructure Arrays.

As a dominant oncogenic protein, Ras is well-known to segregate into clusters on the plasma membrane for activating downstream signaling. However, current technologies for direct measurements of Ras clustering are limited to sophisticated high-resolution techniques like electron microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging. To further promote fundamental investigations and the related drug development, we hereby introduce a nanobar-based platform which effectively guides Ras clusters into quantifiable patterns in live cells that is resolvable under conventional microscopy.

Artificial Intelligence in Diagnostic Radiology: Where Do We Stand, Challenges, and Opportunities.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most revolutionizing development in the health care industry in the current decade, with diagnostic imaging having the greatest share in such development. Machine learning and deep learning (DL) are subclasses of AI that show breakthrough performance in image analysis. They have become the state of the art in the field of image classification and recognition.

The amniotic fluid proteome changes with gestational age in normal pregnancy: a cross-sectional study.

The cell-free transcriptome in amniotic fluid (AF) has been shown to be informative of physiologic and pathologic processes in pregnancy; however, the change in AF proteome with gestational age has mostly been studied by targeted approaches. The objective of this study was to describe the gestational age-dependent changes in the AF proteome during normal pregnancy by using an omics platform. The abundance of 1310 proteins was measured on a high-throughput aptamer-based proteomics platform in AF samples collected from women during midtrimester (16-24 weeks of gestation, n = 15) and at term without labor (37-42 weeks of gestation, n = 13).

Identification of epidemic scarlet fever group A strains in the paediatric population of Houston, TX, USA.

Scarlet fever (SF) has recently been associated with group A streptococcal (GAS) strains possessing multidrug resistance and specific streptococcal exotoxins. We screened a local surveillance collection of GAS strains in Houston, TX, USA for antimicrobial resistance and identified a single isolate matching the antimicrobial resistance pattern previously reported for SF clones. Using whole-genome sequencing and combining genome sequence data derived from national surveillance databases, we identified additional GAS clones similar to those associated with prior SF outbreaks, emphasizing the need for continued surveillance for epidemic emergence in the USA.

Physiological roles of mammalian transmembrane adenylyl cyclase isoforms.

Adenylyl cyclases (ACs) catalyze the conversion of ATP to the ubiquitous second messenger cAMP. Mammals possess nine isoforms of transmembrane ACs, dubbed AC1-9, that serve as major effector enzymes of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The transmembrane ACs display varying expression patterns across tissues, giving the potential for them to have a wide array of physiological roles.

Stress cardiomyopathy in hospitalized patients with cancer: machine learning analysis by primary malignancy type.

Aims: Previous studies have shown that patients with stress (Takotsubo) cardiomyopathy (SC) and cancer have higher in-hospital mortality than patients with SC alone. No studies have examined outcomes in patients with active cancer and SC compared to patients with active cancer without SC. We aimed to assess the potential association between primary malignancy type and SC and their shared interaction with inpatient mortality.

Characterization of Peptides Targeting Metastatic Tumor Cells as Probes for Cancer Detection and Vehicles for Therapy Delivery.

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths, and metastatic cancers remain largely incurable due to chemoresistance. Biomarkers of metastatic cells are lacking, and probes that could be used to detect and target metastases would be highly valuable. Here we hypothesize that metastatic cancer cells express cell-surface receptors that can be harnessed for identification of molecules homing to metastases.

Readability, Quality, and Timeliness of Patient Online Health Resources for Contact Dermatitis and Patch Testing.

Background: Contact dermatitis (CD) causes significant impact on patient quality of life. It is the most common occupational skin disease, accounting for more than US $1 billion of medical costs. Patch testing (PT) is the criterion standard for diagnosis of allergic CD.

Amniotic Fluid Volume Assessment: Eight Lessons Learned.

Actual AFV can be determined by a dye-dilution technique or be directly measured at cesarean. This allows investigators to correlate estimated and actual AFVs. Lessons learned by assessing the relationship of estimated to actual AFVs.

Utilization and outcomes of metastasectomy for patients with metastatic urothelial cancer: An analysis of the national cancer database.

Background: Surgical resection of oligometastatic disease has been shown to be associated with an improved survival in other malignancies, though its role is not established in metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC). We sought to examine utilization trends of metastasectomy in mUC and associated outcomes using the NCDB database.

Methods: We queried the NCDB from 2004 to 2016 for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma who had undergone metastasectomy.

Perianal Plasmablastic Lymphoma Masquerading as a Buschke-Löwenstein-like Tumour in an HIV-infected Patient with Recurrent Anal Condyloma.

Unlabelled: Plasmablastic lymphoma (PBL) commonly presents as a primary (de novo) oral or extraoral mucocutaneous or nodal mass lesion in patients with HIV/AIDS. PBL developing as a secondary malignancy at the same location as a pre-existing tumour is extremely rare and has never been reported in association with longstanding or recurrent anal condyloma. A Buschke-Löwenstein tumour is a rare gigantic, locally destructive condyloma that is usually located in the anogenital region.

Predicting COVID-19 cases with unknown homogeneous or heterogeneous resistance to infectivity.

We present a restricted infection rate inverse binomial-based approach to better predict COVID-19 cases after a family gathering. The traditional inverse binomial (IB) model is inappropriate to match the reality of COVID-19, because the collected data contradicts the model's requirement that variance should be larger than the expected value. Our version of an IB model is more appropriate, as it can accommodate all potential data scenarios in which the variance is smaller, equal, or larger than the mean.

p53 mitigates the effects of oncogenic HRAS in urothelial cells via the repression of .

Inhibition of TRPML1, which is encoded by , is known to deter cell proliferation in various malignancies. Here, we report that the tumor suppressor, p53, represses in the urothelium such that either the constitutive loss or ectopic knockdown of -in both healthy and bladder cancer cells-increased expression. Conversely, nutlin-mediated activation of p53 led to the repression of .

Screening with Anal Cytology in Colombia: Initial Experience and Need for High-Resolution Anoscopy.

Background: Men who have sex with men (MSM) living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are at increased risk of anal cancer. Anal cytology can be used to screen for dysplasia, with high-resolution anoscopy (HRA) required for diagnostic confirmation. We describe the impact lack of HRA had on management of abnormal screening results in Bogotá, Colombia.

Undergraduate nursing students' perceptions on nursing education during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: A national sample.

Background: In 2020, nursing educational programs were abruptly interrupted and largely moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Purpose: To explore nursing students' perspectives about the effects of the pandemic on their education and intention to join the nursing workforce.

Methods: Undergraduate nursing students from 5 universities across 5 United States regions were invited to participate in an online survey to elicit both quantitative and qualitative data.

TAVR and cancer: machine learning-augmented propensity score mortality and cost analysis in over 30 million patients.

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer are the top mortality causes globally, yet little is known about how the diagnosis of cancer affects treatment options in patients with hemodynamically compromising aortic stenosis (AS). Patients with cancer often are excluded from aortic valve replacement (AVR) trials including trials with transcatheter AVR (TAVR) and surgical AVR (SAVR). This study looks at how cancer may influence treatment options and assesses the outcome of patients with cancer who undergo SAVR or TAVR intervention.