J Formos Med Assoc
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Yunlin County, Taiwan, faces healthcare challenges given its super-aged population, limited medical accessibility, and a rise in chronic wounds. To address these issues, we introduced the "Fight Out to CARE" project, dispatching wound nurses to patients' locations to perform Cleansing, Avoidance, Removal, and Enhancement (CARE) under tele-supervision from a plastic surgeon. The program was conducted weekly in 2018 and twice monthly in 2019 for 53 weeks. ⋯ Pressure injuries (PIs) comprised 67% of all wounds, with 96% of PIs categorized as full-thickness (FTPIs), including Stage 3, Stage 4, and Unstageable. Overall, 174 wounds healed, with 43% of PIs and 41% of FTPIs healed; 37% of PIs healed within 12 weeks. This innovative approach improved accessibility to chronic wound care and demonstrates promising healing outcomes, providing a valuable reference for chronic wound care policy.
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This multi-institutional study was aimed to analyze prognostic factors of completely resected early stage thymoma. ⋯ In Masaoka stage I thymoma, preoperative NLR and extrathymic malignancies are independently associated with DFS and OS. In Masaoka stage II thymoma, age, extent of surgery, and NLR are independently associated with DFS, and age, surgical approach, and extrathymic malignancies are associated with OS.
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Case Reports
Hematopoietic cell transplantation for blood cancer patients living with HIV in Taiwan - A case series.
People living with HIV (PLWH) have an increased risk of developing cancers, especially hematologic malignancies (HM). Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been an important treatment modality for patients with HM. ⋯ In these PLWH patients, HSCT procedures, either autologous (auto-HSCT) or allogeneic (allo-HSCT), were feasible with acute toxicity profiles comparable to those in non-HIV patients. However, auto-HSCT seemed unable to lead toward durable remission in PLWH with relapsed/refractory lymphoma, implicating that allo-HSCT might warrant early considerations for consolidation purposes in this distinct patient group.
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We aimed to evaluate the effects of folate and vitamin B12 on psychopathology in patients with schizophrenia and low serum folate levels. ⋯ Our finding suggested that the extent of increased folate levels did not exert a notable impact on the changes of psychotic symptoms severity or cognitive function in our patients. It may also due to the relatively stable condition in our recruited patients, so supplementation of folate cannot show its effectiveness. Whether folate can improve psychopathology in moderate to severe patients with schizophrenia should be evaluated with a larger sample size in the future.