Audio alert

STUDY OBJECTIVE: Binaural audio induces sedation and reduces pain and anxiety in surgical patients. This study tested the hypothesis that dexmedetomidine requirement for adequate sedation during spinal anesthesia would be lower in patients listening to music with binaural sound than that in patients listening to plain or no music. DESIGN: A triple-arm, assessor-blind, randomized controlled study. SETTING: Operating room. PATIENTS: One hundred and eighty-nine patients undergoing orthopedic surgery under spinal anesthesia...

Importance: Contextualizing care is a process of incorporating information about the life circumstances and behavior of individual patients, termed contextual factors, into their plan of care. In 4 steps, clinicians recognize clues (termed contextual red flags), clinicians ask about them (probe for context), patients disclose contextual factors, and clinicians adapt care accordingly. The process is associated with a desired outcome resolution of the presenting contextual red flag. Objective: To determine whether contextualized clinical decision support (CDS) tools in the electronic health record (EHR) improve clinician contextual probing, attention to contextual factors in care planning, and the presentation of contextual red flags...

Honey bees (Apis spp.) are often used as biological indicators of environmental changes. Recently, bees have been explored to monitor air contaminants by listening to the beehive sound. The beehive sound is believed to encode information on bee responses to chemicals outside their hives. Here we conducted an experiment to address this. First, we randomly fed colonies with pure syrup (PS), acetone-laced syrup (AS), or ethyl acetate-laced syrup (ES) in front of the beehives and collect the beehive sound. Based on the audio data, we build machine learning (ML) models to identify the types of syrup...

Multisensory stimulation is associated with behavioural benefits, including faster processing speed, higher detection accuracy, and increased subjective awareness. These effects are most likely explained by multisensory integration, alertness, or a combination of the two. To examine changes in subjective awareness under multisensory stimulation, we conducted three experiments in which we used Continuous Flash Suppression to mask subthreshold visual targets for healthy observers. Using the Perceptual Awareness Scale, participants reported their level of awareness of the visual target on a trial-by-trial basis...

BACKGROUND: Virtual reality (VR) devices are increasingly being used in medicine and other areas for a broad spectrum of applications. One of the possible applications of VR involves the creation of an environment manipulated in a way that helps patients with disturbances in the spatial allocation of visual attention (so-called hemispatial neglect). One approach to ameliorate neglect is to apply cross-modal cues (ie, cues in sensory modalities other than the visual one, eg, auditory and tactile) to guide visual attention toward the neglected space...

In recent years, speech emotion recognition (SER) has emerged as one of the most active human-machine interaction research areas. Innovative electronic devices, services and applications are increasingly aiming to check the user emotional state either to issue alerts under some predefined conditions or to adapt the system responses to the user emotions. Voice expression is a very rich and noninvasive source of information for emotion assessment. This paper presents a novel SER approach based on that is a hybrid of a time-distributed convolutional neural network (TD-CNN) and a long short-term memory (LSTM) network...

BACKGROUND: Unrecognised changes in a hospitalised patient's clinical course may lead to a preventable adverse event. Early warning systems (EWS) use patient data, such as vital signs, nursing assessments and laboratory values, to aid in the detection of early clinical deterioration. In 2018, an EWS programme was deployed at an academic hospital that consisted of a commercially available EWS algorithm and a centralised virtual nurse team to monitor alerts. Our objective was to understand the nursing perspective on the use of an EWS programme with centralised monitoring...

Studies with cannabidiol (CBD) suggest that this compound has anxiolytic properties and may mediate the reconsolidation and extinction of aversive memories. The objective of this study was to test whether the administration of CBD 300 mg before the recall of traumatic events attenuated symptoms usually induced by recall in subjects diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and if its potential effects interfere with the reconsolidation of aversive memories. The double-blind trial included 33 participants of both sexes, aged between 18 and 60 years, diagnosed with PTSD according to the SCID-5 and randomly allocated to two groups treated with CBD (n = 17) and placebo (n = 16)...

BACKGROUND: Automated vehicles (AVs) hold potential promise in sustaining the safe mobility of older adults whose driving is compromised due to cognitive impairments. However, current AVs have an operational limit and when this limit is reached, the driver is expected to promptly take over driving control. The timely performance of takeover task draws upon cognitive resources that can be compromised in people with dementia (PwD) and people with Mild Cognitive Impairments (PwMCI). Therefore, this study investigates the abilities of PwD and PwMCI to perform an AV driving takeover task...

BACKGROUND: Communication skills (CS) are important and teachable, however, many Asian medical schools' curricula do not incorporate them. Patan Academy of Health Sciences in Nepal identifies CS within its' aims and curriculum. CS are taught from commencement of medical school and re-emphasised throughout preclinical learning (first 2 years). There is no explicit CS teaching in clinical years but placements allow students to learn through observation. These 'role-modelling' interactions form part of CS learning and development...

The use of total intravenous anaesthesia (TIVA) is limited by concerns of disconnections of the tubing, resulting in accidental awareness. We designed a sensor device to detect leakages at the patient end and notify the medical personnel, thereby allowing immediate intervention in preventing awareness. For moisture detection, resistive sensing was selected as the working principle. The prototype was in proximity to the tubing from the TIVA pump and the patient's intravenous cannula, and able to detect leakages in all potential leakage sites and activate an alarm...

We introduce a new audio-visual illusion revealing the interplay between audio-visual integration and selective visual attention. This illusion involves two simultaneously moving objects that change their motion trajectory occasionally, but only the direction changes of one object are accompanied by spatially uninformative tones. We observed a selective increase in perceived object speed of the audio-visually synchronized object by measuring the point of subjective equality in a forced-choice paradigm. The illusory increase in perceived speed of the audio-visually synchronized object persisted when preventing eye movements...

BACKGROUND: Antenatal care (ANC) prevents perinatal morbidity and mortality, but use of these services in Uganda remains low and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world. There is growing evidence that mobile health (mHealth) approaches improve timely communication of health-related information and produce positive health behavior change as well as health outcomes. However, there are limited data to guide development of such interventions in settings where ANC attendance and uptake of skilled maternity care are low...

AIMS: High plantar pressure is a major risk factor in the development of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) and recent evidence shows plantar pressure feedback reduces DFU recurrence. This study investigated whether continued use of an intelligent insole system by patients at high-risk of DFUs causes a reduction in plantar pressures. METHODS: Forty-six patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy and previous DFU were randomised to intervention (IG) or control groups (CG)...

The safety of distracted pedestrians presents a significant public health challenge in the United States and worldwide. An estimated 6,704 American pedestrians died and over 200,000 pedestrians were injured in traffic crashes in 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [1]. This number is increasing annually and many researchers posit that distraction by smartphones is a primary reason for the increasing number of pedestrian injuries and deaths. One strategy to prevent pedestrian injuries and death is to use intrusive interruptions that warn distracted pedestrians directly on their smartphones...

IMPORTANCE: Epilepsy can be associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Seizure detection devices could be invaluable tools for both people with epilepsy, their caregivers, and clinicians as they could alert caretakers about seizures, reduce the risk of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, and provide objective and more reliable seizure tracking to guide treatment decisions or monitor outcomes in clinical trials. OBJECTIVE: To synthesize the characteristics of commercial seizure detection tools/devices currently available...

OBJECTIVES: To identify pregnant women's views and attitudes towards maternal immunisation in Panama based on in-depth interviews and focus groups. SETTING: Two main urban centres in Panama (San Miguelito and Panama City). PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-six pregnant women from Panama City (n=29) and San Miguelito (n=27). METHODS: In-depth interviews and focus groups were conducted, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using a deductive-inductive approach...

RATIONALE: It is estimated that about 6 million people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year (73 cases per 100,000 people). TBI may affect emotional, sensory-motor, cognitive, and psychological functions with a consequent worsening of both patient and his/her caregiver's quality of life. In recent years, technological innovations allowed the development of new, advanced sensory stimulation systems, such as Neurowave, to further stimulate residual cognitive abilities and, at the same time, evaluate residual cognition...

Background: The growing prevalence of schizophrenia in Indonesia requires the consideration of the families, caregivers, health care professionals, and the entire society, to serve as a support and coping resource for the patients. The process of recovery is rather difficult, especially in the absence of a decent place to live. Hence, there is the need to provide a supportive environment that facilitates recuperation from psychotic symptoms, enhances interaction with others, promotes self-expression of thoughts and feelings, and helps deal with daily stress and challenges...

BACKGROUND: As new diabetes technologies improve to better manage glucose levels, users' priorities for future technologies may shift to prioritize burden reduction and ease of use. We used qualitative methods to explore youth and parent desired features of an "ideal" artificial pancreas (AP) system. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 39 youth, ages 10-25 years, and 44 parents. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and coded using thematic analysis...