Mortality probability

As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an urgent need to understand patient factors that may be used to predict the occurrence of severe cases and patient mortality. Approximately 20% of SARS-CoV-2 infections lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by the harmful actions of inflammatory mediators. Patients with severe COVID-19 are often afflicted with neurologic symptoms, and individuals with pre-existing neurodegenerative disease have an increased risk of severe COVID-19. Although collectively, these observations point to a bidirectional relationship between severe COVID-19 and neurologic disorders, little is known about the underlying mechanisms...

PURPOSE: Physicians may administer Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir to patients who have been symptomatic for more than 5 days. There is currently no clear evidence to support this approach. METHODS: A real-world study was conducted to investigate the potential relationship between the administration of Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir and the rates of intubation or in-hospital mortality among COVID-19 patients who experienced symptoms for more than 5 days. The end point was a composite event of intubation or in-hospital mortality...

INTRODUCTION: Peritoneal carcinomatosis is considered a late-stage manifestation of neoplastic diseases. Cytoreductive surgery with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (CRS-HIPEC) can be an effective treatment for these patients. However, the procedure is associated with significant morbidity. Our aim was to develop a machine learning model to predict the probability of achieving textbook outcome (TO) after CRS-HIPEC using only preoperatively known variables. METHODS: Adult patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis and who underwent CRS-HIPEC were included from a large, single-center, prospectively maintained dataset (2001-2020)...

Dear Editor, Ticks carry many diseases, bacteria, and viruses and represent a very important healthcare issue both in Croatia and globally. Although most ticks are not infected with pathogens dangerous to humans, some ticks can transmit infectious diseases with significant morbidity and mortality. This is caused by the increasing incidence of many tick-borne diseases over a growing geographical area. Many factors influence which species of ticks are present in a given geographical area, as well as the density of their population and the risk of human exposure to infected ticks...

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Of these, approximately 25% will have liver metastasis. We performed 394 microwave ablations (MWA) and analyzed outcomes for survival and ablation failure. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective review of patients who underwent a surgical microwave ablation at a single center high-volume institution from October 2006 through September 2022 using a prospectively maintained database...

OBJECTIVE: Precautions taken before an earthquake are of vital importance. When buildings collapse, the weight of the ceiling crushes objects such as furniture, leaving a space or void within the rubble. This area is called the "triangle of life." The larger and stronger the object, the more it will maintain its volume; the more the object maintains its volume, the larger the void will be, and the less likely it is that the person who uses this void will be injured. METHODS: Durable, solid furniture such as beds and tables that can be tipped over during an earthquake in appropriate areas in the building can form a living triangle...

BACKGROUND: Land uses such as crop production, livestock grazing, mining, and urban development have contributed to degradation of drylands worldwide. Loss of big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) on disturbed drylands across the western U.S. has prompted massive efforts to re-establish this foundational species. There has been growing interest in avoiding the severe limitations experienced by plants at the seed and seedling stages by instead establishing plants from containerized greenhouse seedlings ("tubelings")...

OBJECTIVE: Chemoradiation followed by esophagectomy is a standard treatment option for locally advanced esophageal cancer (LAEC) patients. Esophagectomy is a high-risk procedure, and recent evidence suggests select patients may benefit from omitting or delaying surgery. This study aims to compare surgery versus active surveillance for LAEC patients with complete clinical response (cCR) after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT). METHODS: Decision analysis with Markov modelling was utilized...

BACKGROUND: Diabetes mellitus (DM) increases the probability of presenting atrial fibrillation (AF) and it is a predictor of its ischemic stroke. There is limited information of the association between glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels and ischemic, embolic or bleeding events in patients with pre-DM and AF. METHODS: To investigate whether the presence of pre-DM in patients with AF predicts ischemic or bleeding events, myocardial infarction or mortality, we performed a retrospective study with a final cohort of 2993 non-diabetic patients with AF and data of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c)...

BACKGROUND OBJECTIVES: Bangladesh is afflicted with periodic dengue outbreak every few years and one of the worst upsurges was recorded in 2019 during which there was an increasing trend of dengue with unusual symptoms which were not so common before. This study aims to describe the experience of three tertiary care centres of Dhaka regarding the clinical and laboratory, hospital outcome and management profile of the Expanded Dengue Syndrome (EDS) cases admitted from the 2019 outbreak...

PURPOSE: Medication non-adherence in dialysis patients is associated with increased mortality and higher healthcare costs. We assessed whether medication adherence is influenced by specific psychometric constructs measuring beliefs about the necessity for medication and concerns about them. We also tested whether medication knowledge, health literacy, and illness perceptions influenced this relationship. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This study is based on data from a cross-sectional in-person questionnaire, administered to a random sample of all adult dialysis patients at a teaching hospital...

BACKGROUND: The optimal strategy for initial respiratory support in patients with respiratory failure associated with COVID-19 is unclear, and the initial strategy may affect outcomes. RESEARCH QUESTION: Which initial respiratory support strategy is associated with improved outcomes in patients with COVID-19 with acute respiratory failure? STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: All patients with COVID-19 requiring respiratory support and admitted to a large health care network were eligible for inclusion...

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women worldwide. The relationship between remnant cholesterol (RC) and the prognosis of patients with breast cancer has not been clearly reported. This study investigated the prognostic value of RC in predicting mortality in patients with breast cancer. METHODS: This study prospectively analysed 709 women patients with breast cancer from the Investigation on Nutrition Status and Clinical Outcome of Common Cancers (INSCOC) project...

Recently, resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) had been introduced as an innovative procedure for severe hemorrhage in the abdomen or pelvis. We aimed to investigate risk factors associated with mortality after REBOA and construct a model for predicting mortality. This multicenter retrospective study collected data from 251 patients admitted at five regional trauma centers across South Korea from 2015 to 2022. The indications for REBOA included patients experiencing hypovolemic shock due to hemorrhage in the abdomen, pelvis, or lower extremities, and those who were non-responders (systolic blood pressure (SBP) < 90 mmHg) to initial fluid treatment...

INTRODUCTION: An increase in plan robustness leads to a higher dose to adjacent organs-at-risk (OARs), and an increased chance of post-treatment toxicities. In contrast, more conformal plans lead to sparing of healthy surrounding tissue at the expense of a higher sensitivity to anatomical changes, requiring costly adaptations. In this study, we assess the trade-off and impact of treatment plan robustness on the adaptation rate. METHOD: Treatment planning was performed for 40 lung cancer patients, each having a planning 4DCT and up to eight weekly repeated 4DCTs (reCTs)...

BACKGROUND: The effects of bempedoic acid in the secondary prevention setting have not been examined. METHODS: We used data from the overall and primary prevention reports of CLEAR - Outcomes to reconstruct data for the secondary prevention population. A Bayesian analyses was employed to calculate the posterior probability of benefit or harm for the outcomes of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE). Relative effect sizes are presented as risk ratios (RR) with 95% credible intervals (CrI), which represent the intervals that true effect sizes are expected to fall in with 95% probability, given the priors and model...

BACKGROUND Economic evaluation of the testing strategies to control transmission and monitor the severity of COVID-19 after the pandemic is essential. This study aimed to review the economic evaluation of COVID-19 tests and to construct a model with outcomes in terms of cost and test acceptability for surveillance in the post-pandemic period in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries. MATERIAL AND METHODS We performed the systematic review following PRISMA guidelines through MEDLINE and EMBASE databases...

BACKGROUND: U.S.-focused studies have reported decreasing dementia prevalence in recent decades, but have not yet focused on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for trends. METHODS: We use the 2011-2021 National Health and Aging Trends Study (N=48,065) to examine dementia prevalence, incidence and mortality trends among adults ages 72 and older, and the contribution to prevalence trends of changes in the distribution of characteristics of the older population ("compositional shifts") during the full and pre-pandemic periods...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The outcomes of patients with atypical subtrochanteric fractures (ASFs) remain unclear. Data from a large international geriatric trauma registry were analysed to examine the outcome of patients with ASFs compared to patients with typical osteoporotic subtrochanteric fractures (TSFs). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data from the Registry for Geriatric Trauma of the German Trauma Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Unfallchirurgie [DGU]) (ATR-DGU) were analysed...

Emerging mycoses are an increasing concern in wildlife and human health. Given the historical rarity of fungal pathogens in warm-bodied vertebrates, there is a need to better understand how to manage mycoses and facilitate recovery in affected host populations. We explore challenges to host survival and mechanisms of host recovery in three bat species (Myotis lucifugus, Perimyotis subflavus, and M. septentrionalis) threatened with extinction by the mycosis, White-nose Syndrome (WNS) as it continues to spread across North America...