Palliative dilation of esophageal carcinoma

The authors' experience with palliative dilation of 46 consecutive patients evaluated for squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus was retrospectively reviewed. Thirty-nine of 46 patients (85%) underwent dilation in order to palliate symptoms, enable endoscopy and biopsy, or prepare for placement of an esophageal prosthesis. Thirty-two of the 46 patients (70%) were treated with radiation therapy and seven (15%) underwent placement of an esophageal prosthesis. Thirty-five of the 39 patients dilated (90%) noted improvement in swallowing, allowing resumption of a soft or regular diet. Complications were noted in three of the 39 patients dilated (8%). The authors conclude that peroral dilation is a safe, effective, and probably underutilized method of palliation in patients with squamous cell esophageal carcinoma.     

压力性损伤居家老年患者医院-社区-家庭三元联动护理实践

总结压力性损伤居家老年患者医院-社区-家庭三元联动护理实践经验。护理要点包括：明确医院及社区职责,成立医院-社区联动护理合作团队,加强组织管理;加强社区医护人员培训,提高伤口管理能力;制订压力性损伤居家老年患者评估记录单,提高社区医护人员伤口评估能力;及时会诊,指导社区医护人员进行伤口管理;建立医院-社区双向转诊,实施分级治疗;加强多学科协作,促进伤口愈合;开展延续性居家护理,提高患者及其照护者配合治疗、护理的依从性。经医院-社区-家庭三元联动护理,30例压力性损伤居家老年患者中,治愈26例,好转4例,治愈率达86.67%。     

移动卒中单元救治流程的优化及应用效果

目的 探讨优化移动卒中单元（mobile utroke unit,MSU）救治流程对急性缺血性脑卒中患者的效果。 方法 回顾性分析该院2020年1月—6月MSU出车接诊的30例急性缺血性脑卒中静脉溶栓患者,其中MSU救治流程优化后静脉溶栓的18例患者为试验组,MSU运行初期、流程优化前实施静脉溶栓的12例患者为对照组。收集两组的临床资料,比较两组的护理效率及临床结局。结果 试验组的卒中专科护士首次静脉穿刺成功例数、发病至静脉溶栓时间、呼叫120至静脉溶栓时间、MSU到达现场至静脉溶栓时间均优于对照组,差异具有统计学意义（P<0.05）。两组发病至呼叫120时间、呼叫120至MSU到达现场时间、静脉溶栓24 h内症状性颅内出血例数、静脉溶栓后90 d改良Rankin量表评分≤2分的例数比较,差异无统计学意义（P>0.05）。结论 通过优化救治流程可有效缩短患者发病至静脉溶栓时间、呼叫120至静脉溶栓时间及MSU到达现场至静脉溶栓时间,提高护士工作效率,提升患者救治质量。     

Beyond plaque: A pictorial review of non-atherosclerotic abnormalities of extracranial carotid arteries

The common carotid artery (CCA) and extracranial internal carotid artery are subject to a wide variety of non-atheromatous pathologies. These entities are often overshadowed in both research and clinical realms by atherosclerotic disease. Nevertheless, non-atherosclerotic disease of the carotid arteries may have profound, even devastating, neurologic consequences. Hence, this review will cover both common and uncommon forms of extracranial carotid artery pathologies in a pictorial format, in order to aid the diagnostician in identifying and differentiating such pathologies.     

Pre-hospital transfusion of post-traumatic hemorrhage: Medical and regulatory aspects

Data of good methodological quality have recently become available to support prehospital use of transfusion in the severe trauma setting. Consistent with recent guidelines for the implementation of damage control resuscitation in the hospital in this setting and in the wake of numerous cohort study data from wartime medicine, they are now guided by recent guidelines for the use of freeze-dried plasma. The main difficulties to overcome in order to implement a practice are of a regulatory and logistic nature.     

Staging Dementia From Symptom Profiles on a Care Partner Website

Background

The World Wide Web allows access to patient/care partner perspectives on the lived experience of dementia. We were interested in how symptoms that care partners target for tracking relate to dementia stage, and whether dementia could be staged using only these online profiles of targeted symptoms.

Objectives

To use clinical data where the dementia stage is known to develop a model that classifies an individual’s stage of dementia based on their symptom profile and to apply this model to classify dementia stages for subjects from a Web-based dataset.

Methods

An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used to identify the relationships between the dementia stages and individualized profiles of people with dementia obtained from the 60-item SymptomGuide (SG). The clinic-based training dataset (n=320), with known dementia stages, was used to create an ANN model for classifying stages in Web-based users (n=1930).

Results

The ANN model was trained in 66% of the 320 Memory Clinic patients, with the remaining 34% used to test its accuracy in classification. Training and testing staging distributions were not significantly different. In the 1930 Web-based profiles, 309 people (16%) were classified as having mild cognitive impairment, 36% as mild dementia, 29% as moderate, and 19% as severe. In both the clinical and Web-based symptom profiles, most symptoms became more common as the stage of dementia worsened (eg, mean 5.6 SD 5.9 symptoms in the MCI group versus 11.9 SD 11.3 in the severe). Overall, Web profiles recorded more symptoms (mean 7.1 SD 8.0) than did clinic ones (mean 5.5 SD 1.8). Even so, symptom profiles were relatively similar between the Web-based and clinical datasets.

Conclusion

Symptoms targeted for online tracking by care partners of people with dementia can be used to stage dementia. Even so, caution is needed to assure the validity of data collected online as the current staging algorithm should be seen as an initial step.