Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA
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Electrotherapy or electrical stimulation (ES) is a part of clinical intervention in the rehabilitation field. With rehabilitation intervention, electrotherapy may be provided as a treatment for pain relief, strengthening, muscle education, wound recovery, or functional training. Although these interventions may not be considered as the primary therapy for patients, the advantages of the ease of operation, lower costs, and lower risks render ES to be applied frequently in clinics. ⋯ The most common at-home applications in previous studies showed positive effects on pain relief, functional ES, muscle establishment, and motor training. Currently, there is a lack of certain products for at-home brain modulation; however, transcranial direct current stimulation has shown the potential of future home-based rehabilitation due to its relatively small and simple design. We have organized the features and applications of ES tools and expect the future potential of remote therapy during the viral pandemic.
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Unfavorable prognoses are often accompanied for hyperglycemic stroke patients. This study aimed to construct a hyperglycemia/diabetes-derived polygenic risk score (PRS) to improve the predictive performance for poor outcome risks after a stroke and to evaluate its potential clinical application. ⋯ The hyperglycemia/diabetes-derived PRS was associated with poor outcomes after an AIS, but further studies are needed to validate its use for clinical applications.
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Carotid blowout syndrome (CBS) is a catastrophic complication after aggressive head and neck cancer treatment. Endovascular embolization is an effective modality to manage CBS. However, some CBS may have recurrent CBS (rCBS) after endovascular management. This study aims to report the potential rCBS risk and endovascular management strategy. ⋯ rCBS may result from DP or IE. The common location of IE-related rCBS usually occurred in the carotid branches. It occurred within two weeks of CBS largely because of the underestimation of the extension of the affected carotid artery. In addition, DP is natural in head and neck cancer after aggressive treatment. Thus, endovascular management remained an effective method to manage rCBS.
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Recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) is currently the most standard treatment for patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). However, rtPA treatment may further enhance the immune response poststroke. This study is to investigate the clinical utility of white blood-based inflammatory biomarkers in predicting neurologic outcomes among AIS patients receiving rtPA. ⋯ For AIS patients treated with rtPA, both lower baseline and post-rtPA NLR levels were independently associated with a favorable neurologic outcome in serial mid- and long-term follow-up. Post-rtPA NLR was superior to baseline NLR in discriminative performance for neurologic prognosis.