J Formos Med Assoc
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Evidence regarding the impact of early palliative family conferences (PFCs) and decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment (DTW) on healthcare costs in an intensive care unit (ICU) setting is inconsistent. ⋯ Palliative family conferences held within 7 days after ICU admission with decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatments significantly lowered healthcare costs.
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The risk of recurrence after resection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is high. Apart from nucleos(t)ide analogues therapy, population-based studies suggest statin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and aspirin have chemopreventive effect on recurrence. The role of those drugs on HCC recurrence should be delineated. ⋯ Aspirin use may have chemo-preventive effect on recurrence of hepatitis B virus-related HCC after curative resection.
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This study aimed to examine social-cognitive impairments in patients with schizophrenia using the Eyes test. In contrast to previous methods using the correct answers, we developed the Taiwanese version of the Eyes test and constructed the response network to explore impairments in the emotional aspects of theory of mind in patients with schizophrenia. ⋯ Our results demonstrated more diversity to recognize negative emotions from patients' choice patterns as compared to those in the control group. These findings suggest that deficits on recognizing negative emotions might be associated with the dysfunctions of mental states in schizophrenia.
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The percentage of female medical students has been significant elevating worldwide. The demographic shift is expected to influence the proportion of male versus female surgeons soon. The objective of this study was to evaluate the gender differences in the acquisition of robotic suturing skills. ⋯ Female medical students performed better in the VR task of suture spongy and achieved more stitches than male students with the da Vinci system despite no difference in robotic suture quality by gender. Because this is the first study comparing gender performance on a robotic platform, further studies are required to investigate if different training approaches will affect the performance by gender.
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Variable effects of beta-blockers (BB) and/or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) were reported to retard aortic root growth in Marfan syndrome (MFS). This study aimed to compare the effects of BB therapy and ARB-related therapies on cardiovascular protection in MFS. ⋯ For cardiovascular protection in MFS, only-ARB therapy is not inferior to only-BB therapy. Moreover, the outcomes of ARB-plus-BB therapy seemed to be favourable to those of only-BB therapy.