pay for performance

The most common cause of severe cognitive impairment in adults is Alzheimer's disease (AD). Depending on the age of onset, AD is divided into early (<65 years) and late (≥65 years) forms. Early-onset AD (EOAD) is significantly less common than later-onset AD (LOAD) and accounts for only about 5-10% of cases. However, its medical and social significance, as a disease leading to loss of ability to work and legal capacity, as well as premature death in patients aged 40-64 years, is extremely high. Patients with EOAD compared with LOAD have a greater number of atypical clinical variants - 25% and 6-12...

INTRODUCTION: Undifferentiated sarcoma is considered a rare and aggressive type of soft tissue sarcoma with the lower extremity reported as the common site for soft tissue sarcomas. CASE PRESENTATION: We present a rare incidental finding of undifferentiated sarcoma during lower limb Doppler ultrasound with a presenting symptom of right thrombotic-like calf pain in a 49-year-old female. DISCUSSION: On ultrasound, the presented undifferentiated sarcoma appeared as a large heterogeneous, oval-shaped, soft tissue mass deeply seated in the right calf with involvement of the soleus muscle...

The misuse of antitussives preparations is a continuing problem in the world, and imply that they might have potential new psychoactive substances (NPS) activity. However, few study focus on their ecological toxicity towards fish. In the present study, the machine learning (ML) methods gcForest and random forest (RF) were employed to predict NPS activity in 30 antitussives. The potential toxic target, mode of action (MOA), acute toxicity and chronic toxicity to fish were further investigated. The results showed that both gcForest and RF achieved optimal performance when utilizing combined features of molecular fingerprint (MF) and molecular descriptor (MD), with area under the curve (AUC) = 0...

The ability to rapidly provide examinees with detailed and effective diagnostic information is a critical topic in psychology. Knowing what diagnostic criteria the examinees have met enables the practitioner to seek the solution to help them in a timely manner, and this can be achieved by cognitive diagnostic computerized adaptive testing (CD-CAT). However, the pervasive challenge of replenishing items in the CD-CAT item bank limits its practical application. Online calibration is a means to address item replenishment, but in CD-CAT, most existing online calibration methods that jointly calibrate the Q-matrix and item parameters of the new items are developed only for dichotomous responses and are time-consuming...

Recently, deep learning-based brain segmentation methods have achieved great success. However, most approaches focus on supervised segmentation, which requires many high-quality labeled images. In this paper, we pay attention to one-shot segmentation, aiming to learn from one labeled image and a few unlabeled images. We propose an end-to-end unified network that joints deformation modeling and segmentation tasks. Our network consists of a shared encoder, a deformation modeling head, and a segmentation head...

AIMS: To assess the level of mental workload (MWL) of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses in performing different human-machine tasks and examine the predictors of the MWL. DESIGN: A cross-sectional questionnaire study. METHODS: Between January and February 2021, data were collected from ICU nurses (n = 427) at nine tertiary hospitals selected from five (east, west, south, north, central) regions in China through an electronic questionnaire, including sociodemographic questions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Task Load Index, General Self-Efficacy Scale, Difficulty-assessing Index System of Nursing Operation Technique, and System Usability Scale...

Depth images and thermal images contain the spatial geometry information and surface temperature information, which can act as complementary information for the RGB modality. However, the quality of the depth and thermal images is often unreliable in some challenging scenarios, which will result in the performance degradation of the two-modal based salient object detection (SOD). Meanwhile, some researchers pay attention to the triple-modal SOD task, namely the visible-depth-thermal (VDT) SOD, where they attempt to explore the complementarity of the RGB image, the depth image, and the thermal image...

This work introduces the concept of Variable Size Game Theory (VSGT), in which the number of players in a game is a strategic decision made by the players themselves. We start by discussing the main examples in game theory: dominance, coexistence, and coordination. We show that the same set of pay-offs can result in coordination-like or coexistence-like games depending on the strategic decision of each player type. We also solve an inverse problem to find a d-player game that reproduces the same fixation pattern of the VSGT...

BACKGROUND: Menstrual-related headache (MRH) is the most prevalent health condition among young females that limits productivity and social life. However, the magnitude of the problem and its characteristics have not been studied in Ethiopia. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the prevalence, characteristics, and treatment of MRH among undergraduate female students at the College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate female students from May to June 2023...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: Thyroid nodules are a common incidental imaging finding and prone to overdiagnosis. Several risk stratification systems have been developed to reduce unnecessary work-up, with two of the most utilized including the American Thyroid Association 2015 (ATA2015) and the newer American College of Radiology Thyroid Imaging, Reporting and Data System (TIRADS) guidelines. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the ATA2015 versus the TIRADS guidelines in the management of incidental thyroid nodules...

Medical image segmentation is a key task in computer aided diagnosis. In recent years, convolutional neural network (CNN) has made some achievements in medical image segmentation. However, the convolution operation can only extract features in a fixed size region at a time, which leads to the loss of some key features. The recently popular Transformer has global modeling capabilities, but it does not pay enough attention to local information and cannot accurately segment the edge details of the target area...

INTRODUCTION: Chronic non-infectious uveitis affecting the posterior segment (NIU-PS), which can be recurrent and persistent for numerous years, mainly affects people of working age and significantly increases the risk of visual impairment. This study aimed to investigate the cost-effectiveness of fluocinolone acetonide intravitreal (FAI) implant in the treatment of patients with chronic NIU-PS from the Chinese healthcare perspective. METHODS: A Markov model with a 2-week cycle was constructed from the perspective of the Chinese healthcare system over a lifetime time horizon...

OBJECTIVE: To compare the cost-effectiveness of serial non-echo planar diffusion weighted MRI (non-EP DW MRI) versus planned second look surgery following initial canal wall up tympanomastoidectomy for the treatment of cholesteatoma. METHODS: A decision-analytic model was developed. Model inputs including residual cholesteatoma rates, rates of non-EP DW MRI positivity after surgery, and health utility scores were abstracted from published literature. Cost data were derived from the 2022 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services fee rates...

Several composites based on poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) and mesoporous SBA-15 silica were prepared by solvent-casting followed by a further stage of compression molding. The thermal stability, phase transitions and crystalline details of these composites were studied, paying special attention to the confinement of the PHB polymeric chains into the mesopores of the silica. For that, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and real-time variable-temperature X-ray scattering at small angles (SAXS) were performed...

BACKGROUND: As one of the most famous natural products, salvianolic acid A (SAA) is undergoing clinical trials for the treatments of angina pectoris and coronary heart disorders. However, the in vivo metabolites of SAA have only been tentatively identified, leading to a barrier for precise therapeutical drug monitoring. METHODS: Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time of flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-Qtof-MS/MS) was firstly employed to acquire high-resolution MS1 and MS2 spectra for all metabolites...

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies have revolutionized the treatment of hematological cancers. Production requires a complex logistical process from leukapheresis to patient infusion, the vein-to-vein time (V2VT), during which a patients clinical condition may deteriorate. This study was designed to estimate the benefits of reduced V2VT for third-line+ (3L+) relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma (r/r LBCL) patients treated with CAR T. A mathematical model was developed to estimate the lifetime outcomes of a hypothetical cohort of patients who had either a 'long' or 'short' V2VT...

BACKGROUND: Previous studies usually focused on the separate association of metabolism or genetic factors with lung cancer risk and have largely ignored their combined effect. We aimed to examine the associations between serum lipid levels, genetic risk, and lung cancer risk. METHODS: 426,524 participants of the UK Biobank were included. The Cox proportional hazards models and restricted cubic splines were performed to assess the association between serum lipid and lung cancer risk...

Pay-for-performance (P4P) schemes have been shown to have mixed effects on health care outcomes. A challenge in interpreting this evidence is that P4P is often considered a homogenous intervention, when in practice schemes vary widely in their design. Our study contributes to this literature by providing a detailed depiction of incentive design across municipalities within a national P4P scheme in Brazil (PMAQ) and exploring the association of alternative design typologies with the performance of primary health /care providers...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the surface roughness (SR) and color changes of single-shade and nanohybrid resin-based restorative materials (RBC) after immersion in liquids at different pH values. For RBCs, a total of 120 specimens, 30 for each material, were prepared using 10 mm diameter and 2 mm thick molds. For flowable bulk fill RBC, a total of 40 specimens, 10 for each material, were prepared using 10 mm diameter and 4 mm thick molds (n = 10). After initial color and SR measurements, samples were stored in the liquids for 14 days and all of the measurements were repeated on 14th days...

OBJECTIVE: Currently there are no disease-specific approved therapies for non-alcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH); however, several treatments are under development. This study aimed to estimate the cost-effectiveness of hypothetical innovative therapies compared with lifestyle intervention alone and combined with pioglitazone, and assess the health economic consequences of their future availability for patients. METHODS: A Markov cohort model was developed, considering fourteen disease health states and one absorbing state representing death...