A retrospective evaluation of seroconversion after COVID-19 during the early Omicron wave in fully vaccinated multiple sclerosis patients receiving anti-CD20 therapies.

Background: Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are commonly treated with anti-CD20 therapies. Reduced seroconversion following COVID-19 vaccination in patients receiving certain anti-CD20 therapies has been reported; however, the immune response following natural infection is poorly characterised. This study aimed to retrospectively evaluate COVID-19 antibody responses after vaccination and natural infection in patients treated with anti-CD20 therapies.

Trends In Treat-And-Release Emergency Care Visits With High-Intensity Billing In The US, 2006-19.

Clinicians' billing practices for professional services in the emergency department (ED) have come under scrutiny as the proportion of expensive high-intensity visits has grown in recent decades. Clinicians respond to payers' criticism by citing the worsening health status of undifferentiated patients alongside increasing expectations of ED care, with few data available to disentangle these phenomena from coding practices. We performed an observational study of US treat-and-release ED visits using data from the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample.

Method of determining technique from weight and height to achieve targeted detector exposures in portable chest and abdominal digital radiography.

This study presents a methodology to develop an X-ray technique chart for portable chest and abdomen imaging which utilizes patient data available in the modality worklist (MWL) to reliably achieve a predetermined exposure index (EI) at the detector for any patient size. The method assumes a correlation between the patients' tissue equivalent thickness and the square root of the ratio of the patient's weight to height. To assess variability in detector exposures, the EI statistics for 75 chest examinations and 99 abdominal portable X-ray images acquired with the new technique chart were compared to those from a single portable unit (chest: 3877 images; abdomen: 200 images) using a conventional technique chart with three patient sizes, and to a stationary radiography room utilizing automatic exposure control (AEC) (chest: 360 images; abdomen: 112 images).

Practice Patterns for the Treatment of Uveal Melanoma with Iodine-125 Plaque Brachytherapy: Ocular Oncology Study Consortium Report 5.

Background: Treatment planning for I-125 plaque therapy for uveal melanoma has advanced significantly since the Collaborative Ocular Melanoma Study trial, with more widely available image-guided planning and improved dosimetry.

Objective: We evaluated real-world practice patterns for I-125 plaque brachytherapy in the United States by studying practice patterns at centers that comprise the Ocular Oncology Study Consortium (OOSC).

Methods: The OOSC database and responses to a treatment practice survey were evaluated.

The Evolving Management of Aortic Valve Disease: 5-Year Trends in SAVR, TAVR, and Medical Therapy.

Aortic stenosis (AS) and regurgitation (AR) may be treated with surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR), transcatheter AVR (TAVR), or medical therapy (MT). Data are lacking regarding the usage of SAVR, TAVR, and MT for patients hospitalized with aortic valve disease and the characteristics of the patients and hospitals associated with each therapy. From the Nationwide Readmissions Database, we determined utilization trends for SAVR, TAVR, and MT in patients with aortic valve disease admitted from 2012 to 2016 for valve replacement, heart failure, unstable angina, non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or syncope.

National Trends and Geographic Variation in Availability of Home Health Care: 2002-2015.

Objectives: To evaluate national trends and geographic variation in the availability of home health care from 2002 to 2015 and identify county-specific characteristics associated with home health care.

Design: Observational study.

Setting: All counties in the United States.

Cerebral Microhemorrhages and Meningeal Siderosis in Infective Endocarditis.

Objective: Patients with infective endocarditis (IE) frequently experience cerebral insults, and neurological involvement in IE has been reported to herald a worse prognosis. In this manuscript, we describe a distinctive pattern of findings on susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) sequences in subjects with IE.

Methods: Patients with IE who underwent SWI MRI at an academic hospital from 2009 to 2014 were retrospectively analyzed.

Clinical associations of cerebral microbleeds on magnetic resonance neuroimaging.

Susceptibility-weighted and gradient-recalled echo T2* magnetic resonance imaging have enabled the detection of very small foci of blood within the brain, which have been termed "cerebral microbleeds." These petechial intraparenchymal hemorrhages have begun to emerge as diagnostically and prognostically useful markers in a variety of disease states. Severe hypertension and cerebral amyloid angiopathy are perhaps the best established microhemorrhagic conditions from neuroimaging literature; however, many others are also recognized including cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy, subcortical infarcts, and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), moyamoya disease, fat embolism, cerebral malaria, and infective endocarditis.