Considerations for appraising diagnostic studies of communication disorders

Clinicians have always been aware of the importance of using valid and reliable clinical tests and measures—and of avoiding those that are not. However, the choice of which tests and measures to use is often more a matter of personal preference, arising out of knowledge of a test's psychometric properties and one's experience with the test, rather than being based on a systematic, critical appraisal of assessment tools. This paper proposes a method of critically appraising clinical assessments in the speech and language sciences, for the purpose of deciding whether they are likely to be informative in diagnosing individuals with communication disorders. QUADAS (Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies)—a 14-item, evidence-based critical appraisal tool (Whiting, Rutjes, Reitsma, Bossuyt,?&?Kleijnen, 2003) originally designed to assess the quality of diagnostic-accuracy studies used in systematic reviews in medicine—is presented, with an example of how it can be applied in the field of communication disorders.     

Deep learning for intelligent diagnosis in thyroid scintigraphy

ObjectiveTo construct deep learning (DL) models to improve the accuracy and efficiency of thyroid disease diagnosis by thyroid scintigraphy.MethodsWe constructed DL models with AlexNet, VGGNet, and ResNet. The models were trained separately with transfer learning. We measured each model’s performance with six indicators: recall, precision, negative predictive value (NPV), specificity, accuracy, and F1-score. We also compared the diagnostic performances of first- and third-year nuclear medicine (NM) residents with assistance from the best-performing DL-based model. The Kappa coefficient and average classification time of each model were compared with those of two NM residents.ResultsThe recall, precision, NPV, specificity, accuracy, and F1-score of the three models ranged from 73.33% to 97.00%. The Kappa coefficient of all three models was >0.710. All models performed better than the first-year NM resident but not as well as the third-year NM resident in terms of diagnostic ability. However, the ResNet model provided “diagnostic assistance” to the NM residents. The models provided results at speeds 400 to 600 times faster than the NM residents.ConclusionDL-based models perform well in diagnostic assessment by thyroid scintigraphy. These models may serve as tools for NM residents in the diagnosis of Graves’ disease and subacute thyroiditis.     

Myocardial infarction classification and its implications on measures of cardiovascular outcomes,quality, and racial/ethnic disparities

Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, with approximately 805 000 cumulative deaths from myocardial infarctions (MI) from 2005 to 2014. Gender and racial/ethnic disparities in MI diagnoses are becoming more evident in quality review audits. Although recent changes in diagnostic codes provided an improved framework, clinically distinguishing types of MI remains a challenge. MI misdiagnoses and health disparities contribute to adverse outcomes in cardiac medicine. We conducted a literature review of relevant biomedical sources related to the classification of MI and disparities in cardiovascular care and outcomes. From the studies analyzed, African Americans and women have higher rates of mortality from MI, are more probably to be younger and present with other comorbidities and are less probably to receive novel therapies with respect to type of MI. As high-sensitivity troponin assays are adopted in the United States, implementation should account for how race and sex differences have been demonstrated in the reference range and diagnostic threshold of the newer assays. More research is needed to assess how the complexity of health disparities contributes to adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Creating dedicated medical quality teams (physicians, nurses, clinical documentation improvement specialists, and medical coders) and incorporating a plan-do-check-adjust quality improvement model are strategies that could potentially help better define and diagnose MI, reduce financial burdens due to MI misdiagnoses, reduce cardiovascular-related health disparities, and ultimately improve and save lives.     

Occlusal dysesthesia: a topical narrative review

Occlusal dysesthesia (OD) is a disorder characterised by the sensation of uncomfortable bite with no obvious occlusal discrepancy. It is usually associated with emotional distress and is elicited by dental occlusal procedures. Multiple dental treatments are often provided to try to resolve the symptoms, but the outcome is usually dissatisfying for the dentist and disappointing for the patient. To summarise the specific features of OD, a PubMed search was carried out looking for all papers related to the topic. The references from the studies selected and from review articles were also examined for further relevant papers. A total of 138 articles were first identified, of which 18 of them were considered relevant to the topic. This article reviews the epidemiology, taxonomy and etio‐pathophysiology, symptomatology, diagnosis and treatment of OD, with special relevance to issues of clinical importance and dental therapy. Any dental treatment must be avoided in patients with OD, because the results could be inadequate and it usually worsens the symptoms.     

1.5T磁共振T2 mapping成像诊断腰椎间盘退行性变的价值

目的探讨1.5T磁共振T2 mapping成像在腰椎间盘退行性变之中的诊断价值。方法选择2018年1月—2019年1月在本院行1.5T磁共振检查的50例腰背疼痛患者当做研究对象,所有患者均进行矢状位T₁WI、T₂WI、横断位T₂WI、正中矢状位T2 mapping成像。以Pfirrmann标准作为依据,进行腰椎间盘分级,并对髓核、纤维环前缘和后缘T2值进行测量,分别对各级髓核及纤维环的前缘及后缘T2值进行对比,并对T2值、分级以及年龄之间的相关性进行分析,同时,选择15例患者时隔6个月进行第2次磁共振检查,对两次椎间盘T2值之间产生的差异进行对比。结果腰椎间盘各级髓核T2值中,Ⅳ级与Ⅴ级之间未见明显差异,无统计学意义,P>0.05,其余各级间均存在明显差异,有统计学意义,P<0.05;患者年龄与分级呈正相关,年龄与T2值呈负相关,T2值与分级呈负相关;15例患者前后两次检测中,椎间盘纤维环前缘、后缘、髓核T2值均不存在明显差异,无统计学意义,P>0.05。结论腰椎间盘退行性变采用1.5T磁共振T2 mapping成像进行检查,能够实现有效的定量评估,特别是髓核T2值可对Ⅰ~Ⅳ级椎间盘退行性变程度差异进行有效反映,值得应用。