Plos One
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Comparative Study
Prevalence of burnout among German general practitioners: Comparison of physicians working in solo and group practices.
Studies from general practitioner (GP) populations from various European countries show a high prevalence of burnout, yet data from Germany are scarce and there are no data comparing GPs from solo versus group practices. ⋯ Burnout prevalence was higher among physicians in group practices compared to solo practices. In group practices, employed, young, female and part-time working physicians showed a higher burnout risk.
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Bloodstream infections in critically ill require a speeded-up microbiological diagnosis to improve clinical outcomes. In this pre-post intervention study, we evaluated how a molecular identification test directly performed on positive blood cultures of critically ill improves patient's therapeutic management. ⋯ FA-BCID testing drastically reduced time to optimal antimicrobial treatment in critically ill with bloodstream infections.
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Comparative Study
The setting of the rising sun? A recent comparative history of life expectancy trends in Japan and Australia.
Adult male and female mortality declines in Japan have been slower than in most high-income countries since the early 1990s. This study compares Japan's recent life expectancy trends with the more favourable trends in Australia, measures the contribution of age groups and causes of death to differences in these trends, and places the findings in the context of the countries' risk factor transitions. ⋯ The considerable gains in Australian male life expectancy from declining non-communicable disease mortality are attributable to a range of risk factors, including declining smoking prevalence due to strong public health interventions. A recent reversal in life expectancy trends could continue because Japan has greater scope for further falls in smoking and far lower levels of obesity. Japan's substantial female life expectancy advantage however could diminish in future because it is primarily due to lower mortality at old ages.
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Comparative Study Observational Study
Screening and application of nutritional support in elderly hospitalized patients of a tertiary care hospital in China.
Malnutrition is very common in elderly patients admitted to the hospital. The aim of our study is to assess the nutritional status of elderly patients and the use of nutritional support in a tertiary care hospital in China and to analyze the impacts of nutritional status and nutritional support on clinical outcomes. ⋯ Undernourishment and nutritional risk in elderly patients at hospital admission is a common occurrence. In the current study, the nutritional risk rate in the Gastroenterology department was higher than in other departments. Patients with normal nutritional status were still receiving nutritional support. Overall, there is a need to better apply nutritional support in the clinical treatment of elderly patients. In elderly patients with nutritional risk and malnutrition, nutritional support reduced the length of hospital stay and the incidence of infectious complications.
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Robust Artificial-neural-networks for k-space Interpolation (RAKI) is a recently proposed deep-learning-based reconstruction algorithm for parallel imaging. Its main premise is to perform k-space interpolation using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on subject-specific autocalibration signal (ACS) data. Since training is performed individually for each subject, the reconstruction time is longer than approaches that pre-train on databases. In this study, we sought to reduce the computational time of RAKI. ⋯ The proposed implementations of RAKI bring the computational time towards clinically acceptable ranges. The new CNN architecture yields faster training, albeit at a slight performance loss, which may be acceptable for faster visualization in some settings.