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Health Care Science Oct 2023This study examines the UK's May 2023 judgment in an international organ trafficking and organ tourism case. Human trafficking for organ removal is one of the least...
Ethical and policy considerations for organ trafficking and transplant tourism: Based on the UK's first international case of human trafficking for the purpose of organ removal.
This study examines the UK's May 2023 judgment in an international organ trafficking and organ tourism case. Human trafficking for organ removal is one of the least understood but growing forms of trafficking worldwide. Countries in the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas are often widely criticized by the international transplant community as sites for organ trafficking. However, we believe that when discussing this issue, it is not just these areas that need to be addressed. What is particularly special is that this case not only involves transnational human trafficking, organ trafficking, and illegal organ transplantation interest chains but also involves the participation of national political officials and complex social and humanistic factors. This article focuses on the current ethical and policy issues involved in organ transplant tourism and organ trafficking and analyzes the implications of this case for our country's donation and transplantation work.
PubMed: 38938586
DOI: 10.1002/hcs2.70 -
Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive... Jun 2024Congenital microphthalmia and anophthalmia are rare development disorders with underdevelopment of the orbital region, resulting in asymmetry of the face. No clear...
PURPOSE
Congenital microphthalmia and anophthalmia are rare development disorders with underdevelopment of the orbital region, resulting in asymmetry of the face. No clear guidelines exist to determine when these deviations are acceptable.
METHODS
The face of a healthy 6-year-old child was three-dimensionally scanned. On this scan, we modeled various incremental degrees of facial asymmetries using three-dimensional modeling software. We modeled for smaller palpebral fissures, sunken eyes, and downward displacement of the eye. We also tested whether adjusting the vertical palpebral fissure height in relation to the horizontal palpebral fissure width affected perception. A total of 22 videos were created in which the model turned the head horizontally and vertically. We created a questionnaire asking raters how acceptable the face is, on a linear scale from 0 to 10.
RESULTS
Results showed a correlation between the degree of asymmetry and the acceptability score of the raters. Enophthalmos of ≥6 mm, palpebral fissure width ≤79% compared with the other eye, and 2 mm or more downward displacement of the eye resulted in a significant different acceptability score. The desire for correction was strongly increased when these thresholds were exceeded. Adjusting the vertical palpebral fissure height to the horizontal palpebral fissure width resulted in a worse acceptability score.
CONCLUSION
A unilateral sunken eye (enophthalmos) of 6 mm or more, asymmetric horizontal palpebral fissure length of ≤79%, and a lower position of one eye of more than 2 mm resulted in unacceptable judgment. These data can be used to evaluate treatment outcome in children treated for congenital microphthalmia and anophthalmia.
PubMed: 38934734
DOI: 10.1097/IOP.0000000000002711 -
Archives of Rheumatology Jun 2024This study aimed to analyze the risk factors for mortality of idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) patients admitted with interstitial lung disease (ILD) to guide...
OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to analyze the risk factors for mortality of idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) patients admitted with interstitial lung disease (ILD) to guide rapid and accurate judgment of clinical prognosis.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
This retrospective, single-center cohort study was conducted with 135 participants (37 males, 98 females; mean age: 54.8±11.1 years; range, 24 to 85 years) between June 1, 2016, and June 30, 2021. The participants were categorized into the survival group (n=111) and nonsurvivors (n=24) according to whether they survived during the one-year follow-up. The independent risk factors for mortality in one year after discharge were analyzed. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was used to determine the accuracy of oxygenation index at baseline combined with pulmonary infection (PI) at follow-up to indicate death in IIM-ILD patients.
RESULTS
Compared to the survival group, nonsurvivors were older (p=0.006) and had a higher proportion of anti-MDA5 (melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5) positivity (p<0.001). The ILD duration was shorter (p=0.006), the oxygenation index was lower (p<0.001), and the intensive care unit occupancy rate (p<0.001) and ventilator utilization rate (p<0.001) were elevated in nonsurvivors compared to the survival group. Oxygenation index at baseline (odds ratio [OR]=1.021, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.001-1.023, p=0.040) and PI (clinical judgment) at follow-up (OR=16.471, 95% CI: 1.565-173.365, p=0.020) were found as independent risk factors for death in the year after discharge in IIM inpatients with ILD. An oxygenation index ≤279 mmHg at baseline combined with PI at follow-up exhibited a promising predictive value for all-cause death in IIM-ILD patients within one year.
CONCLUSION
Oxygenation index at baseline and PI during follow-up were independent risk factors for death of IIM-ILD patients within one year after discharge. Patients with an oxygenation index ≤279 mmHg at baseline had an increased risk of death once they developed PI during the one-year follow-up.
PubMed: 38933718
DOI: 10.46497/ArchRheumatol.2024.10418 -
International Journal of Environmental... May 2024This study aims to examine how the activation of the role of nursee and professional identification as a nurse can influence moral judgments in terms of deontological...
This study aims to examine how the activation of the role of nursee and professional identification as a nurse can influence moral judgments in terms of deontological and utilitarian inclinations. In Study 1, a priming technique was used to assess the impact of activating the nursing concept on moral reasoning. Participants were randomly assigned to either a nursing prime or neutral prime condition. By using a scrambled-sentence task, participants were prompted to think about nursing-related or neutral thoughts. Following the priming task, participants were asked to respond to 20 moral dilemmas. The process dissociation approach was employed to measure the degree of deontological and utilitarian tendencies in their moral reasoning. In Study 2, participants completed the nursing profession identification scale and the moral orientation scale before engaging in moral judgments similar to those in Study 1. The findings revealed that priming the concept of being a nursee resulted in an increase in deontological clinical inclinations while having no significant effect on utilitarian inclinations. Additionally, a positive correlation was observed between identification with the nursing profession and deontological clinical inclinations, whereas a negative correlation was found with utilitarian inclinations. Deliberation orientation acted as a complete mediator in the relationship between nursing professional identification and deontological tendencies and as a partial mediator for utilitarian tendencies.
Topics: Humans; Female; Male; Adult; Young Adult; Morals; Nurses; Judgment
PubMed: 38928958
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph21060712 -
International Journal of Environmental... May 2024Retention in care for people living with HIV (PLWH) is important for individual and population health. Preemptive identification of PLWH at high risk of lapsing in care...
Retention in care for people living with HIV (PLWH) is important for individual and population health. Preemptive identification of PLWH at high risk of lapsing in care may improve retention efforts. We surveyed providers at nine institutions throughout Chicago about their perspectives on using an electronic health record (EHR) tool to predict the risk of lapsing in care. Sixty-three percent (20/32) of providers reported currently assessing patients' risk for lapsing in care, and 91% (29/32) reported willingness to implement an EHR tool. When compared to those with other job roles, prescribers agreed (vs. neutral) that the tool would be less biased than personal judgment (OR 13.33, 95% CI 1.05, 169.56). Prescribers were also more likely to identify community health workers as persons who should deliver these interventions (OR 10.50, 95% CI 1.02, 108.58). Transportation, housing, substance use, and employment information were factors that providers wanted to be included in an EHR-based tool. Social workers were significantly more likely to indicate the inclusion of employment information as important (OR 10.50, 95% CI 1.11, 98.87) when compared to other participants. Acceptability of an EHR tool was high; future research should investigate barriers and evaluate the effectiveness of such a tool.
Topics: Humans; HIV Infections; Electronic Health Records; Male; Female; Chicago; Feasibility Studies; Adult; Health Personnel; Middle Aged; Retention in Care; Attitude of Health Personnel
PubMed: 38928919
DOI: 10.3390/ijerph21060671 -
Foods (Basel, Switzerland) Jun 2024Against the backdrop of continuous socio-economic development, there is a growing concern among people about food quality and safety. Individuals are increasingly...
Against the backdrop of continuous socio-economic development, there is a growing concern among people about food quality and safety. Individuals are increasingly realizing the critical importance of healthy eating for bodily health; hence the continuous rise in demand for detecting food pollution. Simultaneously, the rapid expansion of global food trade has made people's pursuit of high-quality food more urgent. However, traditional methods of food analysis have certain limitations, mainly manifested in the high degree of reliance on personal subjective judgment for assessing food quality. In this context, the emergence of artificial intelligence and biosensors has provided new possibilities for the evaluation of food quality. This paper proposes a comprehensive approach that involves aggregating data relevant to food quality indices and developing corresponding evaluation models to highlight the effectiveness and comprehensiveness of artificial intelligence and biosensors in food quality evaluation. The potential prospects and challenges of this method in the field of food safety are comprehensively discussed, aiming to provide valuable references for future research and practice.
PubMed: 38928877
DOI: 10.3390/foods13121936 -
Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) Jun 2024Lung cancer is a prevalent malignancy associated with a high mortality rate, with a 5-year relative survival rate of 23%. Traditional survival analysis methods, reliant...
Lung cancer is a prevalent malignancy associated with a high mortality rate, with a 5-year relative survival rate of 23%. Traditional survival analysis methods, reliant on clinician judgment, may lack accuracy due to their subjective nature. Consequently, there is growing interest in leveraging AI-based systems for survival analysis using clinical data and medical imaging. The purpose of this study is to improve survival classification for lung cancer patients by utilizing a 3D-CNN architecture (ResNet-34) applied to CT images from the dataset. Through comprehensive ablation studies, we evaluate the effectiveness of different features and methodologies in classification performance. Key contributions include the introduction of a novel feature (), the proposal of a novel loss function () accounting for false negatives and false positives, and the showcasing of their efficacy in classification. Experimental work demonstrates results surpassing those of the existing literature, achieving a classification accuracy of 0.7434 and an ROC-AUC of 0.7768. The conclusions of this research indicate that the AI-driven approach significantly improves survival prediction for lung cancer patients, highlighting its potential for enhancing personalized treatment strategies and prognostic modeling.
PubMed: 38928724
DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics14121309 -
Brain Sciences Jun 2024Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a critical condition characterized by a high prevalence, substantial mortality rates, and unpredictable clinical outcomes, which...
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a critical condition characterized by a high prevalence, substantial mortality rates, and unpredictable clinical outcomes, which results in a serious threat to human health. Improving the timeliness and accuracy of prognosis assessment is crucial to minimizing mortality and long-term disability associated with ICH. Due to the complexity of ICH, the diagnosis of ICH in clinical practice heavily relies on the professional expertise and clinical experience of physicians. Traditional prognostic methods largely depend on the specialized knowledge and subjective judgment of healthcare professionals. Meanwhile, existing artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies, which predominantly utilize features derived from computed tomography (CT) scans, fall short of capturing the multifaceted nature of ICH. Although existing methods are capable of integrating clinical information and CT images for prognosis, the effectiveness of this fusion process still requires improvement. To surmount these limitations, the present study introduces a novel AI framework, termed the ICH Network (ICH-Net), which employs a joint-attention cross-modal network to synergize clinical textual data with CT imaging features. The architecture of ICH-Net consists of three integral components: the Feature Extraction Module, which processes and abstracts salient characteristics from the clinical and imaging data, the Feature Fusion Module, which amalgamates the diverse data streams, and the Classification Module, which interprets the fused features to deliver prognostic predictions. Our evaluation, conducted through a rigorous five-fold cross-validation process, demonstrates that ICH-Net achieves a commendable accuracy of up to 87.77%, outperforming other state-of-the-art methods detailed within our research. This evidence underscores the potential of ICH-Net as a formidable tool in prognosticating ICH, promising a significant advancement in clinical decision-making and patient care.
PubMed: 38928618
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14060618 -
Brain Sciences May 2024: People with Down syndrome (DS) are deficient in verbal memory but relatively preserved in visuospatial perception. Verbal memories are related to semantic knowledge....
: People with Down syndrome (DS) are deficient in verbal memory but relatively preserved in visuospatial perception. Verbal memories are related to semantic knowledge. Receptive ability is better than expressive ability in people with DS but still seriously lags behind their age-matched controls. This lag may result in the weak semantic integration of people with DS. : This study aimed to examine the ability of semantic integration of people with DS by using false-memory tasks. Possible differences in the number of false memories induced by nouns and verbs were of focus. Two phases were involved in the false-memory task. In the study phase, ten-word lists with semantically related associates were presented. In the recognition phase, judgments were to be made about whether the words presented had been heard before. Three types of words were tested: previously presented associates, semantically related lures, and semantically unrelated new words. : People with DS overall showed the lowest accuracy among groups in response to tested word types. In the processing of lures, people with DS were worse in recognition than MA controls. In processing unrelated words, people with DS responded least accurately to all types of words compared to control groups. In the processing of associates, people with DS showed similar recognition rates as the MA controls but were less accurate than the CA controls. No difference was observed between nouns and verbs in recognizing word types among groups, though faster responses to nouns than to verbs emerged in college students. Further analyses on topic-wised comparisons of errors across syntactic categories revealed differences in specific concepts among groups, suggesting people with DS were atypical in semantic organization. : People with DS showed mixed patterns in semantic integration by false-memory tasks with delay to associates and deviance to lures together with unrelated words. People with DS showed distinct patterns in processing nouns and verbs while conducting topic-wise comparisons, suggesting that they formed false memories differently based on distinct syntactic categories. We concluded that people with DS develop a deviant semantic structure, hence showing problems in language and social cognition. Category-based rehabilitation is suggested to be implemented for people with DS to improve their semantic knowledge through lexical connections.
PubMed: 38928536
DOI: 10.3390/brainsci14060538 -
Zhongguo Shi Yan Xue Ye Xue Za Zhi Jun 2024To investigate the value of serum free light chain (sFLC) and serum calcium ion in the diagnosis and prognosis of multiple myeloma (MM).
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the value of serum free light chain (sFLC) and serum calcium ion in the diagnosis and prognosis of multiple myeloma (MM).
METHODS
Forty patients with MM treated in Henan Provincial People's Hospital from January 2018 to January 2022 were selected as the observation group, and 40 healthy volunteers were selected as the control group. The differences of sFLC-κ、sFLC-λ、sFLC-κ/λ, serum calcium ions, etc between the two groups were compared. Meanwhile, the differences of sFLC-κ、sFLC-λ、sFLC-κ/λ, serum calcium ions, etc in different international staging systems (ISS), chemotherapy efficacy and prognosis patients were analyzed.
RESULTS
The levels of sFLC-κ[(98.39±21.19) (12.01±4.45) mg/L], sFLC-λ[(210.20±45.54) (14.10±5.11) mg/L] and proportions of hypocalcemia (65% 0) in the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group ( < 0.05), while sFLC-κ/ λ ratio[(0.44±0.10) (0.87±0.12)] and serum calcium ions [(1.98±0.46) (2.42±0.40)mmol/L] were significantly lower than those in the control group ( < 0.05). The sFLC-κ, sFLC-λ, the proportion of hypocalcemia and the course of hypocalcemia in ISS stage III patients in the observation group were significantly higher than those in stage I and II patients ( < 0.05), while sFLC-κ/λ ratio, and serum calcium ions were significantly lower than those in stage I and II patients ( < 0.05). The levels of sFLC-κ [(107.76±21.22) (94.67±20.11)mg/L], sFLC- λ[(245.54±41.12) (205.54±50.22)mg/L] of patients with hypocalcemia in the observation group was significantly higher than those without hypocalcemia ( < 0.05), while the sFLC-κ/λ ratio was significantly lower than those without hypocalcemia [(0.42±0.04) (0.47±0.06); < 0.05]. The levels of sFLC-κ [(107.29±20.14) ( 91.11±18.92)mg/L], sFLC-λ[(247.98±42.26) (179.29±39.32)mg/L] in patients with ineffective chemotherapy were significantly higher than those in patients with effective chemotherapy ( < 0.05), while the sFLC-κ/λ ratio was significantly lower than those in patients with effective chemotherapy [(0.43±0.10) (0.50±0.09); < 0.05)]. The area under the ROC curve for sFLC-κ, sFLC-λ, sFLC-κ/λ predicting ineffective chemotherapy was 0.803, 0.793 and 0.699 respectively, < 0.05. There was no significant difference in sFLC-κ, sFLC-λ, sFLC-κ/λ ratio, serum calcium ion, hypocalcemia ratio and hypocalcemia course between survival and death patients ( >0.05).
CONCLUSION
sFLC and serum calcium are related to ISS stage of MM patients. sFLC level has a certain value to predict the curative effect of chemotherapy in MM patients. However, the prognostic values of sFLC and serum calcium are not yet confirmed for MM patients.
Topics: Humans; Multiple Myeloma; Calcium; Prognosis; Immunoglobulin kappa-Chains; Immunoglobulin Light Chains; Hypocalcemia; Case-Control Studies; Female; Immunoglobulin lambda-Chains; Male; Middle Aged
PubMed: 38926969
DOI: 10.19746/j.cnki.issn.1009-2137.2024.03.021