Plos One
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Several new definitions for categorizing the severely injured as the Berlin Definition have been developed. Here, severely injured patients are selected by additive physiological parameters and by the general Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS)-based assessment. However, all definitions should conform to an AIS severity coding applied by an expert. We examined the dependence of individual coding on defining injury severity in general and in identifying polytrauma according to several definitions. A precise definition of polytrauma is important for quality management. ⋯ Compared with the ISS-based definitions of polytrauma, the Berlin Definition proved less dependent on the individual rater. This underlines the need to redefine the selection of severely injured patients. Using the Berlin Definition for identifying polytrauma could improve the comparability of patient data across studies, in trauma center benchmarking, and in quality assurance.
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Estimation of functional connectivity (FC) has become an increasingly powerful tool for investigating healthy and abnormal brain function. Static connectivity, in particular, has played a large part in guiding conclusions from the majority of resting-state functional MRI studies. However, accumulating evidence points to the presence of temporal fluctuations in FC, leading to increasing interest in estimating FC as a dynamic quantity. ⋯ We apply the investigated features to two neurologic populations of interest, healthy controls and patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, and show that the proposed approach leads to substantial increases in predictive performance compared to both traditional estimates of static connectivity as well as current approaches to dFC. Variable importance is assessed and shows that there are several quantities that can be extracted from dFC signal which are more informative than the traditional mean or variance of dFC. This work illuminates many previously unexplored facets of the dynamic properties of functional connectivity between resting-state networks, and provides a platform for dynamic functional connectivity analysis that facilitates its usage as an investigative measure for healthy as well as abnormal brain function.
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Clinical Trial
Thyromental height test as a new method for prediction of difficult intubation with double lumen tube.
Predicting difficult intubation is of high clinical interest. ⋯ Thyromental height test is a simple, easy to perform and non-invasive test to predict difficult intubation in patients scheduled for elective double lumen tube intubation during thoracic surgical procedures. With 1 mm above 50 mm increase in thyromental height test the risk of difficult intubation decreased by 7%.
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Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) have always represented a public health concern in the military, yet most studies rely on self-reports among non-random samples of military populations. In addition, most of the studies exploring STI rates among the military focus on US service members. This paper assesses the prevalence and correlates of STIs in the French military using biomarkers and compares self-reported versus diagnosed STIs. ⋯ This study underlines the need to use biomarkers in population-based surveys, given the differential and substantial underreporting of STIs. Results also highlight the need for programmatic adaptation to address gender inequalities in STI rates, by developing women's health services in the French military. Addressing such needs not only benefits women but could also serve as a strategy to reduce overall STI rates as most military women have military partners, increasing the risk of internal transmission.
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Zika virus (ZIKV) was first isolated in Uganda in 1947. In Brazil, the first reported case of ZIKV infection was in May 2015. Additionally, dengue (DENV) is endemic and there has been a recent outbreak of chikungunya (CHIKV). Since the clinical manifestations of different arboviral infections (AI) can be similar, definitive diagnosis requires laboratory testing. ⋯ Among HIV-infected pregnant women with laboratory evidence of a recent AI, 72% were ZIKV-infected. In this cohort, CNS malformations occurred among infants born to both symptomatic and asymptomatic pregnant women with Zika infection.