Medicine
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This study aimed to quantify and evaluate the knowledge and awareness toward liver health and diseases as well as explore the attitudes and knowledge toward screening, diagnosis, and treatment of liver disease among the Thai population. This is a cross-sectional, self-reported and web-based questionnaire study. Awareness, perceptions and attitudes toward liver-related health and diseases as well as screening, diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases were assessed among 500 Thai adults. ⋯ Multivariate analysis identified income, recent health screening status and being diagnosed with liver disease(s) as significant predictors of the knowledge, attitude, and behaviors of the Thai population toward liver diseases. This study highlighted a degree of misperception and lack of in-depth understanding toward hepatitis-related liver diseases including poor attitudes and knowledge toward screening, diagnosis, and treatment of liver diseases. Factors identified suggest an unmet need to encourage proactive health-seeking behaviors to reduce transmission risks of hepatitis-related liver diseases within the community.
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Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) rearrangement is the second most common targetable oncogene-dirven gene in nonsmall cell lung cancer. Owing to the advanced sequencing technologies, new partner genes of ALK have been constantly detected. ⋯ Together, we identified a rare triple ALK fusion variant, ALK-LRRN2, LTBP1-ALK and HIP1-ALK, in a patient with lung adenocarcinoma. The patient benefited from alectinib treatment, which could provide a certain reference for the patients with such gene alteration.
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Studies of infective endocarditis (IE) have relied on International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes to identify cases, a method vulnerable to misclassification. Clinical narrative data could offer greater accuracy and richness to cohort identification. We evaluated two algorithms: 1. a standard query of ICD-9/10 billing codes, with or without procedure codes for echocardiogram and 2. a text query of discharge summaries (DS) that selected on the term “endocarditis” in fields headed by “Discharge Diagnosis” or “Admission Diagnosis” or similar. ⋯ Specificity was high for all queries >94%. The DS query also yielded valve data (prosthetic, tricuspid, aortic, etc) in 60% and microbiologic agent in 73% of identified cases with an accuracy of 94% and 90%, respectively when assessed by chart review. Compared with ICD-based queries, text-based queries of discharge summaries have the potential to improve precision of IE case ascertainment and extract key clinical variables.
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Patients with congenital pulmonary varix are asymptomatic and require no treatment, but the radiological characteristics of a pulmonary varix are similar to those of a pulmonary arteriovenous malformation, which requires treatment. Pulmonary angiography is useful for obtaining information about the dynamics of pulmonary blood flow to differentiate a pulmonary varix from a pulmonary arteriovenous malformation for the purpose of treatment planning. Two cases of congenital pulmonary varices that were differentiated from pulmonary arteriovenous malformations based on pulmonary angiography findings are presented. ⋯ Two cases of congenital pulmonary varices were reported. Information about the dynamics of pulmonary blood flow obtained by performing pulmonary angiography was effective in distinguishing between pulmonary arteriovenous malformation and congenital pulmonary varix.
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Central neurocytoma occurring outside the ventricles is known as extraventricular neurocytoma (EVN). EVN is rare and its magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings vary greatly and overlap with the imaging features of other intracerebral primary tumors. ⋯ EVN can be considered as a differential diagnosis for lesions occurring in the cerebral hemispheres of young patients with cystic degeneration, thick fence-like enhancement, and peritumoral edema on MRI.