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Psychiatry research · Feb 2012
Tract-specific analysis of white matter integrity disruption in schizophrenia.
Several studies have suggested that white matter integrity is disrupted in some brain regions in patients with schizophrenia. The purpose of this study was to assess the white matter integrity of the cingulum, uncinate fasciculus, fornix, and corpus callosum using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Participants comprised 39 patients with schizophrenia (19 males and 20 females) and 40 age-matched normal controls (20 males and 20 females). ⋯ The gender-separated analyses found that the male patients had a significant negative correlation between negative symptom scores and FA in the right fornix, a positive correlation between illness duration and FA in the right anterior cingulum, and a negative correlation between illness duration and FA in the left uncinate fasciculus. Our DTI study showed that the integrity of white matter is disrupted in patients with schizophrenia. The results of our sub-analyses suggest that changes in FA and ADC may be related to negative symptom scores or illness duration.
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Health Informatics J · Jun 2016
Observational StudyThe value of telehealth in the early detection of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations: A prospective observational study.
We aim to establish the value of telemonitoring in the early detection of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations. We followed up patients undergoing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease telemonitoring for 4 months. We studied changes in the telemonitored data in the week prior to admission or to community chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbation. ⋯ Although changes in telehealth data occurred in the majority of exacerbations, most individual symptoms was present in less than half the exacerbations and almost 20 per cent of exacerbations were not preceded by any change in telemonitoring data. Cough created significantly more alerts by those treated in the community (p = 0.008), whereas a drop in oxygen saturation created significantly more alerts pre-hospitalisation (p = 0.049). We conclude that further work is required to develop methods of identifying impending chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations with greater sensitivity and specificity.
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Adjustable-suture techniques are commonly used to decrease the reoperation rate in adults undergoing strabismus surgery, but they are infrequently used in children because of the difficulty of performing adjustments on a conscious child. The purpose of this study is to evaluate a new technique for using adjustable sutures in children, which makes the second stage of the procedure unnecessary if no adjustment is needed. ⋯ This new adjustable-suture technique was associated with excellent short-term eye alignment. It is particularly suited for pediatric surgery because it eliminates the necessity of further manipulation of children who do not require adjustment.