Medicine
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Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and is associated with increased morbidity, especially stroke and heart failure. There is also increasing awareness that atrial fibrillation is a major cause of embolic events which in 75% of cases are complicated by cerebrovascular accidents. ⋯ Our case demonstrated how AF has high risk of thromboembolic complications, not only in terms of stroke but also of myocardial infarction and death.The use of direct oral anticoagulants in AF patients with bioprosthetic heart valves is still debated due to an unclear definition of "nonvalvular" AF.
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The incidence rate of gestational diabetes is high. In the long run, it harms the health of both the mother and child. In order to understand the distribution of hematological cells with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), a longitudinal cohort study was conducted from 2012 to 2018. ⋯ Peripheral blood leukocytes, platelets, and erythrocytes were significantly different during gestation between GDM and normal controls. Inflammation may also be involved in GMD.
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We assessed the performance characteristics of the Fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) score in a veteran population with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and used vibration controlled transient elastography (VCTE) as the gold standard. All VCTE studies were performed by a single operator on United States veterans with HCV infection presenting for care at the Atlanta VA Medical Center (AVAMC) over a 2 year period. VCTE liver stiffness measurements (LSM) were categorized as cirrhotic if LSM was >12.5 kPa and non-cirrhotic if LSM was ≤12.5 kPa. ⋯ When indeterminate FIB-4 scores were excluded from the analysis, sensitivity was 95%, specificity was 61%, PPV was 62%, and NPV was 94.4%. In a veteran population with chronic HCV infection, we found the sensitivity of the FIB-4 score to be unacceptably low for ruling out liver cirrhosis when using a binary cutoff at 3.25. Using a second staging method like VCTE may be an effective way to screen for liver cirrhosis in persons with chronic HCV, especially when the FIB-4 score is in the indeterminate range.
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Minute clear cell renal cell carcinoma (MccRCC) has a diameter of <1.5 cm and can be diagnosed using multi-slice spiral CT (MSCT). Recently, the role of the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in the development of MccRCC has attracted attention. This study aimed to further explore the relationship between the NLR and MccRCC. ⋯ A receiver operator characteristic curve was plotted to examine specificity and sensitivity between NLR and MccRCC (area under curve = 0.958, P < .001). The level of the NLR plays a crucial role in the survival of patients with MccRCC, as diagnosed with MSCT. The higher the NLR, the worse the prognosis for patients with MccRCC.
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Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is the most common and fatal nosocomial infection in intensive care units (ICUs). Existing methods for identifying VAP display low accuracy, and their use may delay antimicrobial therapy. VAP diagnostics derived from machine learning (ML) methods that utilize electronic health record (EHR) data have not yet been explored. ⋯ The most important features for the best-performing model were the length of time on mechanical ventilation, the presence of antibiotics, sputum test frequency, and the most recent Glasgow Coma Scale assessment. Supervised ML using patient EHR data is promising for VAP diagnosis and warrants further validation. This tool has the potential to aid the timely diagnosis of VAP.