Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are often used in pediatrics to treat common gastrointestinal disorders, and there are growing concerns for infectious adverse events. Because CYP2C19 inactivates PPIs, ...genetic variants that increase CYP2C19 function may decrease PPI exposure and infections. We tested the hypothesis that CYP2C19 metabolizer phenotypes are associated with infection event rates in children exposed to PPIs.
This retrospective biorepository cohort study included individuals aged 0 to 36 months at the time of PPI exposure. Respiratory tract and gastrointestinal tract infection events were identified by using
codes in the year after the first PPI mention. Variants defining
,
,
,
,
, and
were genotyped, and all individuals were classified as CYP2C19 poor or intermediate, normal metabolizers (NMs), or rapid or ultrarapid metabolizers (RM/UMs). Infection rates were compared by using univariate and multivariate analyses.
In all, 670 individuals were included (median age 7 months; 44% girls). CYP2C19 NMs (
= 267; 40%) had a higher infection rate than RM/UMs (
= 220; 33%; median 2 vs 1 infections per person per year;
= .03). There was no difference between poor or intermediate (
= 183; 27%) and NMs. In multivariable analysis of NMs and RM/UMs adjusting for age, sex, PPI dose, and comorbidities, CYP2C19 metabolizer status remained a significant risk factor for infection events (odds ratio 0.70 95% confidence interval 0.50-0.97 for RM/UMs versus NMs).
PPI therapy is associated with higher infection rates in children with normal CYP2C19 function than in those with increased CYP2C19 function, highlighting this adverse effect of PPI therapy and the relevance of
genotypes to PPI therapeutic decision-making.
Background Emergency department (ED) visits for hypertension are rising, but the importance of elevated blood pressure (BP) measured during the ED visit is controversial. We evaluated the ...relationship between ED BP and mean BP over the subsequent year. Methods and Results We performed a retrospective cohort study from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2013 of 8105 adult patients who made 1 visit to an academic medical center ED with ≥2 ED BPs and ≥2 BPs measured in the subsequent year. The primary exposure was lowest ED systolic BP. The primary outcome was mean systolic BP ≥140 mm Hg over the year following the index ED visit. Diastolic BP was examined as a secondary exposure and outcome. Multiple logistic regression was performed adjusting for several covariates, with interaction terms for hypertension diagnosis, ED disposition, pain-related ED chief complaint, and sex. Patients whose lowest ED systolic BP was 140 to 159 mm Hg had an adjusted odds ratio of having a mean SBP ≥140 mm Hg in the subsequent year of 10.9 (95% CI, 7.6-15.6). Patients without diagnosed hypertension and ED BP 140/90 to 159/99 mm Hg were more likely to have elevated BP in the following year. Hospitalization increased the likelihood of persistently elevated systolic BP but not diastolic BP. There was no effect modification by pain-related ED complaint. Conclusions When ED BP is consistently elevated, BP is highly likely to remain elevated in the subsequent year, regardless of pain, and particularly among patients without diagnosed hypertension. Further research is needed to determine the optimal management of elevated ED BP.
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is associated with roughly 10% of gastric carcinomas worldwide (EBVaGC). Although previous investigations provide a strong link between EBV and gastric carcinomas, these ...studies were performed using selected EBV gene probes. Using a cohort of gastric carcinoma RNA-seq data sets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we performed a quantitative and global assessment of EBV gene expression in gastric carcinomas and assessed EBV associated cellular pathway alterations. EBV transcripts were detected in 17% of samples but these samples varied significantly in EBV coverage depth. In four samples with the highest EBV coverage (hiEBVaGC - high EBV associated gastric carcinoma), transcripts from the BamHI A region comprised the majority of EBV reads. Expression of LMP2, and to a lesser extent, LMP1 were also observed as was evidence of abortive lytic replication. Analysis of cellular gene expression indicated significant immune cell infiltration and a predominant IFNG response in samples expressing high levels of EBV transcripts relative to samples expressing low or no EBV transcripts. Despite the apparent immune cell infiltration, high levels of the cytotoxic T-cell (CTL) and natural killer (NK) cell inhibitor, IDO1, was observed in the hiEBVaGCs samples suggesting an active tolerance inducing pathway in this subgroup. These results were confirmed in a separate cohort of 21 Vietnamese gastric carcinoma samples using qRT-PCR and on tissue samples using in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Lastly, a panel of tumor suppressors and candidate oncogenes were expressed at lower levels in hiEBVaGC versus EBV-low and EBV-negative gastric cancers suggesting the direct regulation of tumor pathways by EBV.
A challenge in reducing unwanted care variation is effectively managing the wide variety of performed surgical procedures. While an organization may perform thousands of types of cases, privacy and ...logistical constraints prevent review of previous cases to learn about prior practices. To bridge this gap, we developed a system for extracting key data from anesthesia records. Our objective was to determine whether usage of the system would improve case planning performance for anesthesia residents.
Randomized, cross-over trial.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
We developed a web-based, data visualization tool for reviewing de-identified anesthesia records. First year anesthesia residents were recruited and performed simulated case planning tasks (e.g., selecting an anesthetic type) across six case scenarios using a randomized, cross-over design after a baseline assessment. An algorithm scored case planning performance based on care components selected by residents occurring frequently among prior anesthetics, which was scored on a 0–4 point scale. Linear mixed effects regression quantified the tool effect on the average performance score, adjusting for potential confounders.
We analyzed 516 survey questionnaires from 19 residents. The mean performance score was 2.55 ± SD 0.32. Utilization of the tool was associated with an average score improvement of 0.120 points (95% CI 0.060 to 0.179; p < 0.001). Additionally, a 0.055 point improvement due to the “learning effect” was observed from each assessment to the next (95% CI 0.034 to 0.077; p < 0.001). Assessment score was also significantly associated with specific case scenarios (p < 0.001).
This study demonstrated the feasibility of developing of a clinical data visualization system that aggregated key anesthetic information and found that the usage of tools modestly improved residents' performance in simulated case planning.
•Deidentified anesthetic records can serve as the basis for anesthetic plans.•Anesthetic data aggregated by surgical case type is loaded into a planning tool.•Having access to the tool improves resident case planning.
Background
Estimating the extent of affected skin is an important unmet clinical need both for research and practical management in many diseases. In particular, cutaneous burden of chronic ...graft‐vs‐host disease (cGVHD) is a primary outcome in many trials. Despite advances in artificial intelligence and 3D photography, progress toward reliable automated techniques is hindered by limited expert time to delineate cGVHD patient images. Crowdsourcing may have potential to provide the requisite expert‐level data.
Materials and methods
Forty‐one three‐dimensional photographs of three cutaneous cGVHD patients were delineated by a board‐certified dermatologist. 410 two‐dimensional projections of the raw photos were each annotated by seven crowd workers, whose consensus performance was compared to the expert.
Results
The consensus delineation by four of seven crowd workers achieved the highest agreement with the expert, measured by a median Dice index of 0.7551 across all 410 images, outperforming even the best worker from the crowd (Dice index 0.7216). For their internal agreement, crowd workers achieved a median Fleiss's kappa of 0.4140 across the images. The time a worker spent marking an image had only weak correlation with the surface area marked, and very low correlation with accuracy. Percent of pixels selected by the consensus exhibited good correlation (Pearson R = 0.81) with the patient's affected surface area.
Conclusion
Crowdsourcing may be an efficient method for obtaining demarcations of affected skin, on par with expert performance. Crowdsourced data generally agreed with the current clinical standard of percent body surface area to assess cGVHD severity in the skin.
Background Emergency department (ED) visits can be opportunities to address uncontrolled hypertension. We sought to compare short-term blood pressure measures between the Vanderbilt Emergency Room ...Bundle (VERB) intervention and usual care plus education. Methods and Results We conducted a randomized trial of 206 adult patients with hypertension and elevated systolic blood pressure (SBP) presenting to 2 urban emergency departments in Tennessee, USA. The VERB intervention included educational materials, a brief motivational interview, pillbox, primary care engagement letter, pharmacy resources, and 45 days of informational and reminder text messages. The education arm received a hypertension pamphlet. After 78 participants were enrolled, text messages requested confirmation of receipt. The primary clinical outcome was 30-day SBP. The median 30-day SBP was 122 and 126 mm Hg in the VERB and education arms, respectively. We estimated the mean 30-day SBP to be 3.98 mm Hg lower in the VERB arm (95% CI, -2.44 to 10.4;
=0.22). Among participants enrolled after text messages were adapted, the respective median SBPs were 121 and 130 mm Hg, and we estimated the mean 30-day SBP to be 8.57 mm Hg lower in the VERB arm (95% CI, 0.98‒16.2;
=0.027). In this subgroup, the median response rate to VERB text messages was 56% (interquartile range, 26%‒80%). Conclusions This pilot study demonstrated feasibility and found an improvement in SBP for the subgroup for whom interactive messages were featured. Future studies should evaluate the role of interactive text messaging as part of a comprehensive emergency department intervention to improve blood pressure control. Registration URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT02672787.
Abstract
Objective
This study examines the validity of optical mark recognition, a novel user interface, and crowdsourced data validation to rapidly digitize and extract data from paper COVID-19 ...assessment forms at a large medical center.
Methods
An optical mark recognition/optical character recognition (OMR/OCR) system was developed to identify fields that were selected on 2,814 paper assessment forms, each with 141 fields which were used to assess potential COVID-19 infections. A novel user interface (UI) displayed mirrored forms showing the scanned assessment forms with OMR results superimposed on the left and an editable web form on the right to improve ease of data validation. Crowdsourced participants validated the results of the OMR system. Overall error rate and time taken to validate were calculated. A subset of forms was validated by multiple participants to calculate agreement between participants.
Results
The OMR/OCR tools correctly extracted data from scanned forms fields with an average accuracy of 70% and median accuracy of 78% when the OMR/OCR results were compared with the results from crowd validation. Scanned forms were crowd-validated at a mean rate of 157 seconds per document and a volume of approximately 108 documents per day. A randomly selected subset of documents was reviewed by multiple participants, producing an interobserver agreement of 97% for documents when narrative-text fields were included and 98% when only Boolean and multiple-choice fields were considered.
Conclusion
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be challenging for health care workers wearing personal protective equipment to interact with electronic health records. The combination of OMR/OCR technology, a novel UI, and crowdsourcing data-validation processes allowed for the efficient extraction of a large volume of paper medical documents produced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is a significant cause of long-term morbidity and mortality in patients after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation. Skin is the most commonly ...affected organ, and visual assessment of cGVHD can have low reliability. Crowdsourcing data from nonexpert participants has been used for numerous medical applications, including image labeling and segmentation tasks.
This study aimed to assess the ability of crowds of nonexpert raters-individuals without any prior training for identifying or marking cGHVD-to demarcate photos of cGVHD-affected skin. We also studied the effect of training and feedback on crowd performance.
Using a Canfield Vectra H1 3D camera, 360 photographs of the skin of 36 patients with cGVHD were taken. Ground truth demarcations were provided in 3D by a trained expert and reviewed by a board-certified dermatologist. In total, 3000 2D images (projections from various angles) were created for crowd demarcation through the DiagnosUs mobile app. Raters were split into high and low feedback groups. The performances of 4 different crowds of nonexperts were analyzed, including 17 raters per image for the low and high feedback groups, 32-35 raters per image for the low feedback group, and the top 5 performers for each image from the low feedback group.
Across 8 demarcation competitions, 130 raters were recruited to the high feedback group and 161 to the low feedback group. This resulted in a total of 54,887 individual demarcations from the high feedback group and 78,967 from the low feedback group. The nonexpert crowds achieved good overall performance for segmenting cGVHD-affected skin with minimal training, achieving a median surface area error of less than 12% of skin pixels for all crowds in both the high and low feedback groups. The low feedback crowds performed slightly poorer than the high feedback crowd, even when a larger crowd was used. Tracking the 5 most reliable raters from the low feedback group for each image recovered a performance similar to that of the high feedback crowd. Higher variability between raters for a given image was not found to correlate with lower performance of the crowd consensus demarcation and cannot therefore be used as a measure of reliability. No significant learning was observed during the task as more photos and feedback were seen.
Crowds of nonexpert raters can demarcate cGVHD images with good overall performance. Tracking the top 5 most reliable raters provided optimal results, obtaining the best performance with the lowest number of expert demarcations required for adequate training. However, the agreement amongst individual nonexperts does not help predict whether the crowd has provided an accurate result. Future work should explore the performance of crowdsourcing in standard clinical photos and further methods to estimate the reliability of consensus demarcations.
Clinical documentation in the pre-hospital setting is challenged by limited resources and fast-paced, high-acuity. Military and civilian medics are responsible for performing procedures and ...treatments to stabilize the patient, while transporting the injured to a trauma facility. Upon arrival, medics typically give a verbal report from memory or informal source of documentation such as a glove or piece of tape. The development of an automated documentation system would increase the accuracy and amount of information that is relayed to the receiving physicians. This paper discusses the 12-week deployment of an Automated Sensing Clinical Documentation (ASCD) system among the Nashville Fire Department EMS paramedics. The paper examines the data collection methods, operational challenges, and perceptions surrounding real-life deployment of the system. Our preliminary results suggest that the ASCD system is feasible for use in the pre-hospital setting, and it revealed several barriers and their solutions.
PDF
