PeerJ
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Older adults have been reported to be a population with high-risk of death in the COVID-19 outbreak. Rapid detection of high-risk patients is crucial to reduce mortality in this population. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognositc accuracy of the Modified Early Warning Score (MEWS) for in-hospital mortality in older adults with COVID-19. ⋯ MEWS is an efficient tool for rapid assessment of elderly COVID-19 patients. MEWS has promising performance in predicting in-hospital mortality and identifying the high-risk group in elderly patients with COVID-19.
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Breast surgery for stage IV breast cancer remains controversial. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of breast surgery on survival of stage IV breast cancer patients based on the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database from 2010 to 2015. ⋯ Our study provided additional evidence that patients with stage IV breast cancer could benefit from breast surgery and it might play a more important role in multimodality therapy.
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People with chronic neck pain have impaired proprioception (i.e., sense of neck position). It is unclear whether this impairment involves disruptions to the proprioceptive representation in the brain, peripheral factors, or both. Implicit motor imagery tasks, namely left/right judgements of body parts, assess the integrity of the proprioceptive represention. Previous studies evaluating left/right neck judgements in people with neck pain are conflicting. We conducted a large online study to comprehensively address whether people with neck pain have altered implicit motor imagery performance. ⋯ There is evidence of impaired implicit motor imagery performance in people with chronic neck pain, which may suggest disruptions to proprioceptive representation of the neck. These disruptions seem specific to the neck (performance on hand images intact) but non-specific to the exact location of neck pain.
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Knee arthroplasty (KA) is a typically successful surgical procedure commonly performed to alleviate painin participants with end-stage knee osteoarthritis. Despite its beneficial effects, a significant proportion of individuals with KA continue experiencing persistent pain and functional limitations. The purpose of this study was to assess the postoperative outcomes after KA in relation to postoperative pain catastrophizing. ⋯ The results of the present study suggest that participants with high postoperative pain catastrophizing might have poorer outcomes during the rehabilitation process after KA. Future work should seek to clarify if this relationship is causal.
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Assessment of preparedness of weaning has been recommended before extubation for mechanically ventilated patients. We aimed to understand the association of a structured assessment of weaning preparedness with successful liberation. ⋯ Assessing the pre-extubation status of intubated patients in a checklist-based approach using the WEANSNOW score might provide valuable insights into extubation failure in patients in a medical ICU for acute respiratory failure. Further prospective studies are warranted to elucidate the practice of assessing weaning preparedness.