The American journal of managed care
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Testing of a tethered personal health record framework for early end-of-life discussions.
The process of planning for end-of life decisions, also known as advance care planning (ACP), is associated with numerous positive outcomes, including improved patient satisfaction with care and improved patient quality of life in terminal illness. In this study, we sought to test a novel personal health record (PHR)-delivered ACP framework through a small-scale randomized trial of usual care practices versus PHR-delivered ACP. ⋯ Tethered PHR use as an initial ACP communication tool can improve outpatient documentation rates and quality. Future studies obtaining patient feedback on a revised framework and testing in a larger setting are needed to determine reproducibility of findings.
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Three modalities have a role in the primary management of diabetic macular edema (DME): laser photocoagulation, intravitreal vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitors, and intravitreal corticosteroid implants. Intravitreal VEGF inhibitors are most commonly used for center-involved DME, but laser photocoagulation and intravitreal corticosteroids also have an important role in DME management. Until recently, the selection of a VEGF inhibitor for a patient was complicated by a lack of comparative data and a much lower cost for bevacizumab compared with other agents. ⋯ However, aflibercept and ranibizumab were more effective than bevacizumab for patients with worse baseline visual acuity. A higher rate of nonfatal stroke and vascular death with ranibizumab in the Protocol T trial has raised concern in the community and needs to be investigated further. Emerging drugs for DME include VEGF inhibitors with less-frequent dosing intervals, and new agents that target other pathologic processes that contribute to vascular leakage and angiogenesis in DME.