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International Journal of Molecular... Jun 2023Various papers have introduced the use of positron emission tomography (PET) with [Ga]Ga-radiolabeled fibroblast-activation protein inhibitor (FAPi) radiopharmaceuticals... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
Various papers have introduced the use of positron emission tomography (PET) with [Ga]Ga-radiolabeled fibroblast-activation protein inhibitor (FAPi) radiopharmaceuticals in different subtypes of gastric cancer (GC). Our aim was to assess the diagnostic performance of this novel molecular imaging technique in GC with a systematic review and meta-analysis. A straightforward literature search of papers concerning the diagnostic performance of FAP-targeted PET imaging was performed. Original articles evaluating this novel molecular imaging examination in both newly diagnosed GC patients and GC patients with disease relapse were included. The systematic review included nine original studies, and eight of them were also eligible for meta-analysis. The quantitative synthesis provided pooled detection rates of 95% and 97% for the assessment of primary tumor and distant metastases, respectively, and a pooled sensitivity and specificity of 74% and 89%, respectively, for regional lymph node metastases. Significant statistical heterogeneity among the included studies was found only in the analysis of the primary tumor detection rate (I = 64%). Conclusions: Beyond the limitations of this systematic review and meta-analysis (i.e., all the included studies were conducted in Asia, and using [F]FDG PET/CT as a comparator of the index test), the quantitative data provided demonstrate the promising diagnostic performance of FAP-targeted PET imaging in GC. Nevertheless, more prospective multicentric studies are needed to confirm the excellent performances of FAP-targeted PET in this cluster of patients.
Topics: Humans; Positron Emission Tomography Computed Tomography; Stomach Neoplasms; Prospective Studies; Neoplasm Recurrence, Local; Positron-Emission Tomography; Radiopharmaceuticals; Fluorodeoxyglucose F18; Gallium Radioisotopes
PubMed: 37373285
DOI: 10.3390/ijms241210136 -
The American Journal of Emergency... Feb 2023Spurred by the Coronavirus infectious disease 2019 pandemic, aerosol containment devices (ACDs) were developed to capture infectious respiratory aerosols generated by... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Spurred by the Coronavirus infectious disease 2019 pandemic, aerosol containment devices (ACDs) were developed to capture infectious respiratory aerosols generated by patients at their source. Prior reviews indicated that such devices had low evidence of effectiveness, but did not address how ACDs should be evaluated, how well they should perform, nor have clearly defined performance standards. Towards developing design criteria for ACDs, two questions were posed: 1) What characteristics have guided the design of ACDs? 2) How have these characteristics been evaluated?
METHODS
A scoping review was performed consistent with PRISMA guidelines. Data were extracted with respect to general study information, intended use of the device, device design characteristics and evaluation.
RESULTS
Fifty-four articles were included. Evaluation was most commonly performed with respect to device aerosol containment (n = 31, 61%), with only 5 (9%), 3 (6%) and 8 (15%) formally assessing providing experience, patient experience and procedure impact, respectively. Nearly all of the studies that explored provider experience and procedure impact studied intubation. Few studies provided a priori performance criteria for any evaluation metric, or referenced any external guidelines by which to bench mark performance.
CONCLUSION
With respect to aerosol containment, ACDs should reduce exposure among HCP with the device compared with the absence of the device, and provide ≥90% reduction in respirable aerosols, equivalent in performance to N95 filtering facepiece respirators, if the goal is to reduce reliance on personal protective equipment. The ACD should not increase awkward or uncomfortable postures, or adversely impact biomechanics of the procedure itself as this could have implications for procedure outcomes. A variety of standardized instruments exist to assess the experience of patients and healthcare personnel. Integration of ACDs into routine clinical practice requires rigorous studies of aerosol containment and the user experience.
Topics: Humans; Respiratory Aerosols and Droplets; COVID-19; Personal Protective Equipment; Intubation, Intratracheal; Equipment Design
PubMed: 36435005
DOI: 10.1016/j.ajem.2022.11.007 -
Advanced Journal of Emergency Medicine 2019Nurses are the largest group of health service providers with a vital role in assisting victims during disasters. They must be therefore appropriately prepared to... (Review)
Review
CONTEXT
Nurses are the largest group of health service providers with a vital role in assisting victims during disasters. They must be therefore appropriately prepared to respond to health requirements in these situations.
EVIDENCE ACQUISITION
Three articles were ultimately extracted from a comprehensive search conducted in the present systematic review and meta-analysis in Google Scholar, SID, Magiran, Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science using English keywords and their Persian equivalents. The I index was used to evaluate the heterogeneity between the studies, and the analyses were performed in STATA 14.
RESULTS
This review was conducted on 586 nurses working in hospitals. The final meta-analysis included three articles. The matched mean scores of knowledge, attitude and performance concerning disaster preparedness were respectively found to be 43.49 (95% CI: 37.67-49.31, P=0.581, I=0.0%), 68.81 (95% CI: 63.04-70.58, p=0.913, I=0.0%) and 56.19 (95% CI: 53.95-58.42, P=0.001, I=86.2%).
CONCLUSION
The present findings suggested moderate levels of knowledge and performance and good attitudes associated with preparedness in disasters in the Iranian nurses. These parameters can be therefore improved to desirable levels and the overall preparedness for coping with disasters boosted in nurses by training nurses and performing hospital drills.
PubMed: 31633097
DOI: 10.22114/ajem.v0i0.204 -
JMIR Medical Informatics Jan 2020Sentiment analysis (SA) is a subfield of natural language processing whose aim is to automatically classify the sentiment expressed in a free text. It has found... (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
Sentiment analysis (SA) is a subfield of natural language processing whose aim is to automatically classify the sentiment expressed in a free text. It has found practical applications across a wide range of societal contexts including marketing, economy, and politics. This review focuses specifically on applications related to health, which is defined as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
OBJECTIVE
This study aimed to establish the state of the art in SA related to health and well-being by conducting a systematic review of the recent literature. To capture the perspective of those individuals whose health and well-being are affected, we focused specifically on spontaneously generated content and not necessarily that of health care professionals.
METHODS
Our methodology is based on the guidelines for performing systematic reviews. In January 2019, we used PubMed, a multifaceted interface, to perform a literature search against MEDLINE. We identified a total of 86 relevant studies and extracted data about the datasets analyzed, discourse topics, data creators, downstream applications, algorithms used, and their evaluation.
RESULTS
The majority of data were collected from social networking and Web-based retailing platforms. The primary purpose of online conversations is to exchange information and provide social support online. These communities tend to form around health conditions with high severity and chronicity rates. Different treatments and services discussed include medications, vaccination, surgery, orthodontic services, individual physicians, and health care services in general. We identified 5 roles with respect to health and well-being among the authors of the types of spontaneously generated narratives considered in this review: a sufferer, an addict, a patient, a carer, and a suicide victim. Out of 86 studies considered, only 4 reported the demographic characteristics. A wide range of methods were used to perform SA. Most common choices included support vector machines, naïve Bayesian learning, decision trees, logistic regression, and adaptive boosting. In contrast with general trends in SA research, only 1 study used deep learning. The performance lags behind the state of the art achieved in other domains when measured by F-score, which was found to be below 60% on average. In the context of SA, the domain of health and well-being was found to be resource poor: few domain-specific corpora and lexica are shared publicly for research purposes.
CONCLUSIONS
SA results in the area of health and well-being lag behind those in other domains. It is yet unclear if this is because of the intrinsic differences between the domains and their respective sublanguages, the size of training datasets, the lack of domain-specific sentiment lexica, or the choice of algorithms.
PubMed: 32012057
DOI: 10.2196/16023 -
Journal of Medicine and Life Jan 2023The purpose of single-use flexible ureteroscopes (su-fURS) was to overcome the limitations of conventional reusable ureteroscopes in terms of maneuverability and... (Review)
Review
The purpose of single-use flexible ureteroscopes (su-fURS) was to overcome the limitations of conventional reusable ureteroscopes in terms of maneuverability and maintenance. We aimed to perform a systematic literature review on available su-fURS performance conventional reusable fURS focusing on clinical data. A systematic research using Pubmed was performed evaluating single-use fURS and reusable fURS in urinary tract stone disease, including prospective assessments and case series. This review aimed to provide an overview of single-use and disposable flexible ureteroscopes and to examine and compare their capabilities (deflection, irrigation, optical properties). We included 11 studies, where the single-use fURS were compared to the reusable fURS. The studies with single-use ureteroscopes included data on LithoVue (Boston Scientific), The Uscope UE3022 (Pusen, Zhuhai, China), NeoFlex-Flexible, (Neoscope Inc San Jose, CA), 23 YC-FR-A (Shaogang). For reusable ureteroscopes, data were included on three models, two digital (Karl Storz Flex-XC and Olympus URF-Vo) and one fiber optic (Wolf-Cobra). There were no significant differences in stone-free rate, procedure duration, or functional capabilities between single-use fURS and reusable fURS. The systematic literature review analyzed operative time, functional capabilities, stone-free rates, and postoperative complications of the ureteroscopes, and a special chapter about renal abnormalities to emphasize that they are a good choice having a high proportion of stone-free rates and few risks, particularly in treating difficult-to-access calculi. Single-use fURS demonstrate a comparable efficacy with reusable fURS in resolving renal lithiasis. Further studies on clinical efficacy are needed to determine whether single-use fURS will reliably replace its reusable counterpart.
Topics: Humans; Prospective Studies; Ureteroscopes; Postoperative Complications; PubMed
PubMed: 36873117
DOI: 10.25122/jml-2022-0269 -
Translational Vision Science &... Jul 2023The purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize evidence from studies using deep learning (DL) to predict cardiovascular... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis
PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize evidence from studies using deep learning (DL) to predict cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk from retinal images.
METHODS
A systematic literature search was performed in MEDLINE, Scopus, and Web of Science up to June 2022. We extracted data pertaining to predicted outcomes, model development, and validation and model performance metrics. Included studies were graded using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracies Studies 2 tool. Model performance was pooled across eligible studies using a random-effects meta-analysis model.
RESULTS
A total of 26 studies were included in the analysis. There were 42 CVD risk-related outcomes predicted from retinal images were identified, including 33 CVD risk factors, 4 cardiac imaging biomarkers, 2 CVD risk scores, the presence of CVD, and incident CVD. Three studies that aimed to predict the development of future CVD events reported an area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC) between 0.68 and 0.81. Models that used retinal images as input data had a pooled mean absolute error of 3.19 years (95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.95-3.43) for age prediction; a pooled AUROC of 0.96 (95% CI = 0.95-0.97) for gender classification; a pooled AUROC of 0.80 (95% CI = 0.73-0.86) for diabetes detection; and a pooled AUROC of 0.86 (95% CI = 0.81-0.92) for the detection of chronic kidney disease. We observed a high level of heterogeneity and variation in study designs.
CONCLUSIONS
Although DL models appear to have reasonably good performance when it comes to predicting CVD risk, further work is necessary to evaluate the real-world applicability and predictive accuracy.
TRANSLATIONAL RELEVANCE
DL-based CVD risk assessment from retinal images holds great promise to be translated to clinical practice as a novel approach for CVD risk assessment, given its simple, quick, and noninvasive nature.
Topics: Humans; Cardiovascular Diseases; Deep Learning
PubMed: 37440249
DOI: 10.1167/tvst.12.7.14 -
Iranian Journal of Parasitology 2023We aimed to present a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that used antigen-based assays for the diagnosis of human giardiasis. (Review)
Review
BACKGROUND
We aimed to present a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies that used antigen-based assays for the diagnosis of human giardiasis.
METHODS
All the related published literature cited within PubMed, ISI web of science, Google Scholar, Embase, and Scopus, were searched up to December 2021. The search terms, both as MeSH terms and text words, were "", "", "", "giardiasis", combined with "diagnosis", "antigen detection", serodiagnosis, or serological diagnosis. The required data was extracted from the papers. Pooled estimates of sensitivity and specificity were obtained and forest plots and summary receiver operating characteristics (SROC) plots were used to calculate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV).
RESULTS
The search of databases found 1683 papers, of which 46 articles fulfilled our eligibility criteria. The sensitivity of antigen-based methods for the diagnosis of human giardiasis ranged from 45% (95% CI: 31-59%) to 100% (95% CI: 100-100%) and the pooled estimate of sensitivity was 92% (95% CI: 90-93%). The pooled estimated specificity was 97% (95% CI: 96-98%), ranged from 81% (95% CI: 68-89%) to 100% (95% CI: 98-100%). The summary estimate of PPV and NPV were 92 % (95% CI: 90-93%) and 97% (95% CI: 96-98%) respectively. Comparing the performance of the antigen detection assays by region revealed a significant difference in the assay's performances in different regions of the world.
CONCLUSION
The antigen-based detection methods have acceptable and satisfactory performance in the diagnosis of human giardiasis. The task ahead is to identify more specific target antigens and design simpler, cheaper, and more sensitive methods for the diagnosis of this common worldwide-distributed parasitic infection.
PubMed: 37583633
DOI: 10.18502/ijpa.v18i2.13180 -
Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) Dec 2022This study aimed to analyze the existing literature on how artificial intelligence is being used to support the identification of cephalometric landmarks. The systematic... (Review)
Review
This study aimed to analyze the existing literature on how artificial intelligence is being used to support the identification of cephalometric landmarks. The systematic analysis of literature was carried out by performing an extensive search in PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, Cochrane, Scopus, and Science Direct databases. Articles published in the last ten years were selected after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. A total of 17 full-text articles were systematically appraised. The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (CHSRI) and Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment scale (NOS) were adopted for quality analysis of the included studies. The artificial intelligence systems were mainly based on deep learning-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in the included studies. The majority of the studies proposed that AI-based automatic cephalometric analyses provide clinically acceptable diagnostic performance. They have worked remarkably well, with accuracy and precision similar to the trained orthodontist. Moreover, they can simplify cephalometric analysis and provide a quick outcome in practice. Therefore, they are of great benefit to orthodontists, as with these systems they can perform tasks more efficiently.
PubMed: 36553978
DOI: 10.3390/healthcare10122454 -
Korean Journal of Anesthesiology Apr 2018Systematic reviews and meta-analyses present results by combining and analyzing data from different studies conducted on similar research topics. In recent years,...
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses present results by combining and analyzing data from different studies conducted on similar research topics. In recent years, systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been actively performed in various fields including anesthesiology. These research methods are powerful tools that can overcome the difficulties in performing large-scale randomized controlled trials. However, the inclusion of studies with any biases or improperly assessed quality of evidence in systematic reviews and meta-analyses could yield misleading results. Therefore, various guidelines have been suggested for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses to help standardize them and improve their quality. Nonetheless, accepting the conclusions of many studies without understanding the meta-analysis can be dangerous. Therefore, this article provides an easy introduction to clinicians on performing and understanding meta-analyses.
PubMed: 29619782
DOI: 10.4097/kjae.2018.71.2.103 -
EFSA Journal. European Food Safety... May 2022Climate change is a phenomenon that includes different dramatic events that deeply affect the physiology of animal species both directly and indirectly with...
Climate change is a phenomenon that includes different dramatic events that deeply affect the physiology of animal species both directly and indirectly with qualitative-quantitative impacts on livestock performances and health. The implications of climate change on animal welfare and on production demand are complex and call for a multidisciplinary approach which involved both animal science and economic sciences. The current technical report will describe the activities performed by the fellow while placed at the University of Foggia, Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Engineering, in Italy. Furthermore, the work programme offered by the hosting site consisted in performing a systematic literature review, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) Statement, and a quantitative synthesis of the literature on the impact of climate change events (e.g. heat stress) on livestock welfare and productivity and the effect of heat relieving strategies on the animals' performance.
PubMed: 35634557
DOI: 10.2903/j.efsa.2022.e200413