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Krogsgaard Andreasen posted an update 12 hours, 29 minutes ago
In the absence of guidelines recommending routine total-body skin examination, patient concern remains the main factor in seeking consultation regarding suspicion of skin cancer. This study explores gaps in patients’ understanding of malignant skin lesions, through the factors associated with incidental skin cancer. Included patients had a confirmed histological diagnosis of basal cell carci-noma, squamous cell carcinoma or melanoma. Tumour characteristics, patient demographics and other risk factors related to the development of skin cancer were obtained from each participant. The main measure was incidental skin cancer detection, using both binary logistic regression and Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID) algorithm. Of the total tumours, 26.6% were detected incidentally. The following variables male sex, living alone, long-axis diameter, tumour location, symptoms and time of disease evolution were independent predictors of incidental skin cancer. According to the CHAID algorithm, the most significant risk factor for incidental skin cancer was the absence of symptoms at diagnosis.Parenting a child on the autism spectrum can be rewarding and enriching, but it may also increase risk of parental fatigue, stress, anxiety, and depression. Parent-mediated interventions contribute to increase family satisfaction and child social communication while helping to decrease parental stress and fatigue. Parent coaching, the education of parents in evidence-based strategies, has become common in the autism field. However, parent coaching in music therapy has only recently emerged and has limited research with families with an autistic member. In this study, we attempted to improve a previously published model of parent coaching, adapting only one aspect of the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM), the sensory social routine (SSR) to create a music intervention. Four parents participated in this 6-session parent coaching study. We compared the SSR-based intervention with and without music, in an alternating treatment design. Measures included parental responsiveness, child receptive and initiation joint attention, parent-child similar affect and synchronized gaze, and the Parent Coaching-ESDM (PC-ESDM) parent fidelity rating system. Results from these observational measures were mixed, with better parental responses in the no-music condition, but improved child responses and parent-child synchrony in the music condition for 3 out of the 4 participants. Parent learning increased for all participants, and 3 out of the 4 reached fidelity (a score of at least 80%), according to the PC-ESDM. Although mixed results were observed across participants, implications for practice are possible. Better outcome measures of this complex intervention are needed.
An established finding suggests that, in balancing variability in patient demand and length of stay, an average bed occupancy of 85% should be targeted for acute hospital wards. The notion is that higher figures result in excessive capacity breaches, while anything lower fails to make economic use of available resources. Although concerns have previously been raised regarding the generic use of the 85% target, there has been little research interest into alternative derivations that may better represent the diverse range of conditions that exist in practice.
To quantify a continuum of average occupancy targets for use within the acute hospital setting.
Computer simulation is used to model the process of acute patient admission and discharge. Patient arrivals are assumed to be independent of one another (i.e. random) with length of stay distributions obtained through fitting to patient-level data from all of England.
Target average occupancy increases with ward size, ranging from 45% to 79% for a relat of bed occupancy requirements. This study provides hospital planners with a means to reliably assess the operational performance and readily calculate optimal capacity requirements.We examined whether the association between emotionally demanding work and risk of register-based long-term sickness absence (LTSA, ≥6 weeks) was buffered by high leadership quality among 25 416 Danish employees during 52-week follow-up. Emotional demands were measured at the job group level, whereas leadership quality was measured by workers rating their closest manager. Emotionally demanding work was associated with a higher risk of LTSA, regardless if leadership quality was high or low, with neither multiplicative nor additive interaction. We conclude that we found no evidence for high leadership quality buffering the effect of emotionally demanding work on risk of LTSA.Mass media campaigns are an effective population-level intervention for preventing tobacco use. However, little evidence exists for whether these campaigns similarly influence demographic subgroups. This study examined the effects of the truth® campaign to reduce tobacco use among demographic subgroups. We used data from a national, continuous, cross-sectional tracking survey of 15-24-year-olds (n = 32 331). We used a measure of weekly aggregated campaign exposure to assess whether cigarette smoking intentions and current cigarette use varied by race/ethnicity, financial situation and population density subgroups, controlling for factors known to be associated with tobacco use. Examining estimates across subgroup categories in light of the overall model estimates revealed that the effects of week-level campaign exposure on cigarette smoking intentions and current cigarette use were similar across subgroups. b-AP15 DUB inhibitor Wald tests of equality across estimates in each subgroup suggested that the estimates did not differ from one another in any given instance. The truth campaign does not differ significantly in its capacity to prompt declines in tobacco use across a broad spectrum of US youth and young adults. Mass media tobacco prevention campaigns can be an effective and critical component of a comprehensive tobacco control program, particularly with respect to reducing tobacco-related disparities among demographic subgroups.
To study the dynamics, mechanisms and fitness cost of resistance selection to cefepime, zidebactam and cefepime/zidebactam in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
WT P. aeruginosa PAO1 and its ΔmutS derivative (PAOMS) were exposed to stepwise increasing concentrations of cefepime, zidebactam and cefepime/zidebactam. Selected mutants were characterized for change in susceptibility profiles, acquired mutations, fitness, virulence and in vivo susceptibility to cefepime/zidebactam. Mutations were identified through WGS. In vitro fitness was assessed by measuring growth in minimal medium and human serum-supplemented Mueller-Hinton broth. Virulence was determined in Caenorhabditis elegans and neutropenic mice lung infection models. In vivo susceptibility to a human-simulated regimen (HSR) of cefepime/zidebactam was studied in neutropenic mice lung infection.
Resistance development was lower for the cefepime/zidebactam combination than for the individual components and high-level resistance was only achieved for PAOMS. Cefepime resistance development was associated with mutations leading to the hyperexpression of AmpC or MexXY-OprM, combined with PBP3 mutations and/or large chromosomal deletions involving galU.