Plos One
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We aimed to provide a complex assessment of adult females with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) after a minimum of 23 years after completed Milwaukee brace treatment. In the present study, a comparison between healthy female and AIS patients' perception of trunk disfigurement, self-image, mental health, pain level and everyday activity was made. Thirty AIS patients with a mean of 27.77 yrs (SD 3.30) after the treatment were included in the study. ⋯ Long-term results were not conclusive in terms of nonverbal assessment of body image and emotional tension regarding the experiences of brace-wearing. Future patients can be reassured that scoliosis treated conservatively does not negatively affect everyday activity, pain level, childbearing and mental health. Subjects who declared to have psychological problems due to scoliosis had a bigger curve size after treatment and in this study than the other AIS patients.
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Religion plays an important role in the lives of people in the United States. We examined the prevalence of religiosity among Hispanic/Latinos in four regions of the United States and looked at its correlation to depression and anxiety symptoms. ⋯ Religiosity varied by Hispanic/Latino background. Lack of religiosity was associated with elevated depressive or anxiety symptomology in older adults but not in young or middle-aged adults.
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Review Meta Analysis
Heart rate variability in type 2 diabetes mellitus: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Cardiac autonomic neuropathy in type 2 dibetes mellitus (T2DM) patients is frequent and associated with high cardiovascular mortality. Heart rate variability (HRV) is the gold standard to measure cardiac autonomic neuropathy. We aimed to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the impact of T2DM on HRV parameters. ⋯ T2DM was associated with an overall decrease in the HRV of T2DM patients. Both sympathetic and parasympathetic activity were decreased, which can be explained by the deleterious effects of altered glucose metabolism on HRV, leading to cardiac autonomic neuropathy.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Comparison of cardiac function index derived from femoral and jugular indicator injection for transpulmonary thermodilution with the PiCCO-device: A prospective observational study.
Cardiac function index (CFI) is a trans-pulmonary thermodilution (TPTD)-derived estimate of systolic function. CFI is defined as the ratio of cardiac output divided by global end-diastolic volume GEDV (CFI = CO/GEDV). Several studies demonstrated that the use of femoral venous access results in a marked overestimation of GEDV, while CFI is underestimated. One study suggested a correction formula for femoral venous access that markedly reduced the bias for GEDVI. Therefore, the last PiCCO-algorithm requires information about the CVC-position which suggests a correction of GEDV for femoral access. However, a recent study demonstrated inconsistencies of the last PiCCO algorithm using incorrected GEDV to calculate CFI despite obvious correction of GEDV. Nevertheless, this study was based on mathematical analyses of data displayed in a total of 15 patients equipped with only a femoral, but not with a jugular CVC. Therefore, this study compared CFI derived from the femoral indicator injection TPTD to data derived from jugular indicator injection in 28 patients with both a jugular and a femoral CVC. ⋯ While the last PiCCO algorithm obviously corrects GEDVI for femoral indicator injection, this correction is not applied to CFI. Therefore, femoral TPTD indicator injection results in substantially lower values for CFI compared to TPTD using a jugular CVC. Necessarily, uncorrected CFI-values derived from femoral TPTD are misleading and have to be corrected.
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Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a magnetic resonance imaging technique that quantifies the magnetic susceptibility distribution within biological tissues. QSM calculates the underlying magnetic susceptibility by deconvolving the tissue magnetic field map with a unit dipole kernel. However, this deconvolution problem is ill-posed. ⋯ Using phantom and in vivo datasets, we compared the performance of MATV with that of MEDI. MATV results had better visual quality than MEDI results, especially near tissue boundaries. Preliminary brain imaging results illustrated that MATV has potential to improve the reconstruction of regions near tissue boundaries.