Medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A comparative study between transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and pulsed electromagnetic field therapy in the management of post-herpetic neuralgia of the sciatic nerve.
To compare the efficacy of pulsed electromagnetic field therapy (PEMFT) versus transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) in the treatment of post-herpetic neuralgia of the sciatic nerve. ⋯ Both TENS and PEMFT were effective and nearly equivalent in improving the post-herpetic neuralgia of the sciatic nerve as measured by in VAS and CMI. Clinical recommendations should be highlighted to instigate the using of TENS and PEMFT in the management of post-herpetic neuralgia of the sciatic nerve.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Development of convolutional neural network model for diagnosing tear of anterior cruciate ligament using only one knee magnetic resonance image.
Deep learning is an advanced machine learning approach used in diverse areas such as image analysis, bioinformatics, and natural language processing. In the current study, using only one knee magnetic resonance image of each patient, we attempted to develop a convolutional neural network (CNN) to diagnose anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. We retrospectively recruited 164 patients who had knee injury and underwent knee magnetic resonance imaging evaluation. ⋯ Of the included subjects, 79% were assigned randomly to the training set and the remaining 21% were assigned to the test set to measure the model performance. The area under the curve was 0.941 (95% CI, 0.862-1.000) for the classification of intact and tears of the ACL. We demonstrated that a CNN model trained using one knee magnetic resonance image of each patient could be helpful in diagnosing ACL tear.
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Hypothermia has been shown to be associated with a high mortality rate among patients with sepsis. However, the relationship between hypothermia and body mass index (BMI) with respect to mortality remains to be elucidated. We conducted this study to assess the association between hypothermia and survival outcomes of patients with sepsis according to BMI categories. ⋯ Patients with body temperature < 36 °C (hypothermia) had a higher in-hospital mortality rate than that had by those without hypothermia in the normal BMI group (25/63, 39.7% vs. 107/549, 19.5%); however, this was not true for patients in the low or high BMI groups. A significant interaction was observed between hypothermia and normal BMI for in-hospital mortality (odds ratio, 1.56; 95% confidence interval, 1.00-3.41; P value for interaction = .04); however, such an interaction was not found between hypothermia and low or high BMIs. Patients with sepsis and hypothermia in the normal BMI subgroup may have a higher mortality risk than that of those in the low or high BMI subgroups and, therefore, require more attention.
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The oxidant/antioxidant status balance is a process that begins before birth and premature infants are particularly susceptible to oxidative stress. According to the mechanisms of oxidative stress and lack of study in this field, in this prospective study, we aimed to compare the levels of serum pro-oxidant/antioxidant balance (PAB) in preterm versus term babies. This was a prospective cross-sectional study that was performed in Ghaem hospital, a university tertiary hospital, in Mashhad, Iran. ⋯ Serum PAB level was significantly lower in preterm neonates rather than in term neonates (21.86 ± 21.01 vs 50.33 ± 31.69; P = .001). There was also a significant negative correlation between PAB levels and gestational age. According to previous investigations, we showed for the first time in our study that PAB is lower in preterm newborns rather than in term ones.
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Development of delirium during hospitalization impairs the activities of daily living in elderly hospitalized patients. In clinical practice, early mobilization from bed is recommended to reduce delirium incidence and hospitalization stay. However, the effects of early mobilization on elderly inpatients with delirium have not been established yet. ⋯ Moreover, the duration of delirium significantly positively moderate correlated with the time until the start of sitting on the bed and wheelchair use (Spearman r = 0.527; P = .012, Spearman r = 0.630; P = .002, respectively). The results of this study suggest that early mobilization from sitting on the bed or wheelchair use after hospitalization or surgery may shorten the duration of delirium. Because the sample size of this pilot study is small, careful interpretation is needed, and further research is warranted.