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There are few economic evaluations of adjunctive psychosocial therapies for bipolar disorder.
Aims
Estimate the cost–utility of in-person psychosocial therapies for adults with bipolar disorder added to treatment as usual (TAU), from an Australian Government perspective.
Method
We developed an economic model, estimating costs in 2021 Australian dollars (A$) and outcomes using quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) averted. The model compared psychoeducation, brief psychoeducation, carer psychoeducation, cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) and family therapy when added to TAU (i.e. pharmacotherapy) over a year for adults (18–65 years) with bipolar disorder. The relative risk of relapse was sourced from two network meta-analyses and applied to the depressive phase in the base case. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis and one-way sensitivity analyses were conducted, assessing robustness of results.
Results
Carer psychoeducation was preferred in the base case when the willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold is below A$1000 per QALY gained and A$1500 per DALY averted. Brief psychoeducation was preferred when WTP is between A$1000 and A$300 000 per QALY gained and A$1500 and A$450 000 per DALY averted. Family therapy was only preferred at WTP thresholds above A$300 000 per QALY gained or A$450 000 per DALY averted. In sensitivity analyses, brief psychoeducation was the preferred therapy. Psychoeducation and CBT were dominated (more costly and less effective) in base-case and sensitivity analyses.
Conclusions
Carer and brief psychoeducation were found to be the most cost-effective psychosocial therapies, supporting use as adjunctive treatments for adults with bipolar disorder and their families in Australia.
The Child Opportunity Index is an index of 29 indicators of social determinants of health linked to the United States of America Census. Disparities in the treatment of Wolff–Parkinson–White have not be reported. We hypothesise that lower Child Opportunity Index levels are associated with greater disease burden (antiarrhythmic use, ablation success, and Wolff–Parkinson–White recurrence) and ablation utilisation.
Methods:
A retrospective, single-centre study was performed with Wolff–Parkinson–White patients who received care from January 2021 to July 2023. Following exclusion for <5 years old and with haemodynamically significant CHD, 267 patients were included (45% high, 30% moderate, and 25% low Child Opportunity Index). Multi-level logistic and log-linear regression was performed to assess the relationship between Child Opportunity Index levels and outcomes.
Results:
Low patients were more likely to be Black (p < 0.0001) and to have public insurance (p = 0.0006), though, there were no significant differences in ablation utilisation (p = 0.44) or time from diagnosis to ablation (p = 0.37) between groups. There was an inverse relationship with emergency department use (p = 0.007). The low group had 2.8 times greater odds of having one or more emergency department visits compared to the high group (p = 0.004).
Conclusion:
The Child Opportunity Index was not related with ablation utilisation, while there was an inverse relationship in emergency department use. These findings suggest that while social determinants of health, as measured by Child Opportunity Index, may influence emergency department utilisation, they do not appear to impact the overall management and procedural timing for Wolff–Parkinson–White treatment.
Recent changes to US research funding are having far-reaching consequences that imperil the integrity of science and the provision of care to vulnerable populations. Resisting these changes, the BJPsych Portfolio reaffirms its commitment to publishing mental science and advancing psychiatric knowledge that improves the mental health of one and all.
Objectives/Goals: The objective of this study is to explore strategies for AI-physician collaboration in diagnosing acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) using chest X-rays. By comparing the diagnostic accuracy of different AI deployment methods, the study aims to identify optimal strategies that leverage both AI and physician expertise to improve outcomes. Methods/Study Population: The study analyzed 414 frontal chest X-rays from 115 patients hospitalized between August 15 and October 2, 2017, at the University of Michigan. Each X-ray was reviewed by six physicians for ARDS presence and diagnostic confidence. We developed a deep learning AI model for detecting ARDS and explored the strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots of both physicians and AI systems to inform optimal system deployment. We then investigated several AI-physician collaboration strategies, including: 1) AI-aided physician: physicians interpret chest X-rays first and defer to the AI model if uncertain, 2) physician-aided AI: the AI model interprets chest X-rays first and defers to a physician if uncertain, and 3) AI model and physician interpreting chest X-rays separately and then averaging their interpretations. Results/Anticipated Results: While the AI model (84.7% accuracy) had higher accuracy than physicians (80.8%), we found evidence that AI and physician expertise are complementary. When physicians lacked confidence in a chest X-ray’s interpretation, the AI model had higher accuracy. Conversely, in cases of AI uncertainty, physicians were more accurate. The AI excelled with easier cases, while physicians were better with difficult cases, defined as those where at least two physicians disagreed with the majority label. Collaboration strategies tested include AI-aided physician (82.4%), physician-aided AI (86.9%), and averaging interpretations (86%). The physician-aided AI approach had the highest accuracy, could off-load the human expert workload on the reading of up to 79% chest X-rays, allowing physicians to focus on challenging cases. Discussion/Significance of Impact: This study shows AI and physicians complement each other in ARDS diagnosis, improving accuracy when combined. A physician-aided AI strategy, where the AI defers to physicians when uncertain, proved most effective. Implementing AI-physician collaborations in clinical settings could enhance ARDS care, especially in low-resource environments.
Objectives/Goals: Manual skin assessment in chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) can be time consuming and inconsistent (>20% affected area) even for experts. Building on previous work we explore methods to use unmarked photos to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, aiming to improve performance by expanding and diversifying the training data without additional burden on experts. Methods/Study Population: Common to many medical imaging projects, we have a small number of expert-marked patient photos (N = 36, n = 360), and many unmarked photos (N = 337, n = 25,842). Dark skin (Fitzpatrick type 4+) is underrepresented in both sets; 11% of patients in the marked set and 9% in the unmarked set. In addition, a set of 20 expert-marked photos from 20 patients were withheld from training to assess model performance, with 20% dark skin type. Our gold standard markings were manual contours around affected skin by a trained expert. Three AI training methods were tested. Our established baseline uses only the small number of marked photos (supervised method). The semi-supervised method uses a mix of marked and unmarked photos with human feedback. The self-supervised method uses only unmarked photos without any human feedback. Results/Anticipated Results: We evaluated performance by comparing predicted skin areas with expert markings. The error was given by the absolute difference between the percentage areas marked by the AI model and expert, where lower is better. Across all test patients, the median error was 19% (interquartile range 6 – 34) for the supervised method and 10% (5 – 23) for the semi-supervised method, which incorporated unmarked photos from 83 patients. On dark skin types, the median error was 36% (18 – 62) for supervised and 28% (14 – 52) for semi-supervised, compared to a median error on light skin of 18% (5 – 26) for supervised and 7% (4 – 17) for semi-supervised. Self-supervised, using all 337 unmarked patients, is expected to further improve performance and consistency due to increased data diversity. Full results will be presented at the meeting. Discussion/Significance of Impact: By automating skin assessment for cGVHD, AI could improve accuracy and consistency compared to manual methods. If translated to clinical use, this would ease clinical burden and scale to large patient cohorts. Future work will focus on ensuring equitable performance across all skin types, providing fair and accurate assessments for every patient.
Objectives/Goals: Lung transplant is a life-saving surgery for patients with advanced lung diseases yet long-term survival remains poor. The clinical features and lung injury patterns of lung transplant recipients who die early versus those who survive longer term remain undefined. Here, we use cell-free DNA and rejection parameters to help elucidate this further. Methods/Study Population: Lung transplant candidacy prioritizes patients who have a high mortality risk within 2 years and will likely survive beyond 5 years. We stratified patients who died within 2 years of transplant as early death (n = 50) and those who survived past 5 years as long-term survivors (n = 53). Lung transplant recipients had serial blood collected as part of two prospective cohort studies. Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) was quantified using relative (% donor-derived cfDNA {%ddcfDNA}) and absolute (nuclear-derived {n-cfDNA}, mitochondrial-derived {mt-cfDNA}) measurements. As part of routine posttransplant clinical care, all patients underwent pulmonary function testing (PFT), surveillance bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), transbronchial biopsy (TBBx), and donor-specific antibody testing (DSA). Results/Anticipated Results: Over the first 2 years after transplant, the number of episodes of antibody-mediated rejection (p) Discussion/Significance of Impact: Clinically, early-death patients perform worse on routine surveillance PFTs and experience a worse degree of CLAD. These patients also have higher levels of cfDNA as quantified by n-cfDNA and mt-cfDNA. These results provide preliminary evidence that early-death patients have worse allograft rejection, dysfunction, and molecular injury.
Cognitive behavioural therapists and practitioners often feel uncertain about how to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following rape and sexual assault. There are many myths and rumours about what you should and should not do. All too frequently, this uncertainty results in therapists avoiding doing trauma-focused work with these clients. Whilst understandable, this means that the survivor continues to re-experience the rape as flashbacks and/or nightmares. This article outlines an evidence-based cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approach to treating PTSD following a rape in adulthood. It aims to be a practical, ‘how to’ guide for therapists, drawing on the authors’ decades of experience in this area. We have included film links to demonstrate how to undertake each step of the treatment pathway. Our aim is for CBT practitioners to feel more confident in delivering effective trauma-focused therapy to this client group. We consider how to assess and formulate PTSD following a rape in adulthood, then how to deliver cognitive therapy for PTSD (CT-PTSD; Ehlers and Clark, 2000). We will cover both client and therapist factors when working with memories of rape, as well as legal, social, cultural and interpersonal considerations.
Key learning aims
To understand the importance of providing effective, trauma-focused therapy for survivors of rape in adulthood who are experiencing symptoms of PTSD.
To be able to assess, formulate and treat PTSD following a rape in adulthood.
How to manage the dissociation common in this client group.
To be able to select and choose appropriate cognitive, behavioural and imagery techniques to help with feelings of shame, responsibility, anger, disgust, contamination and mistrust.
For therapists to learn how best to support their own ability to cope with working in a trauma-focused way with survivors of rape and sexual violence.
This chapter documents the complex relationship between the papacy and liberation theology. Prior to the explicit emergence of liberation theology, the papacies of Pius XII and John XXIII provided important institutional and theological conditions in which liberation developed and became influential. A relative harmony existed during the ministry of Paul VI, as liberation theologians often took positions influenced theologically by Vatican II and politically by Paul VI’s attention to global poverty and hopes for the underdeveloped world. This tenor changed dramatically under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Their experiences of communism and reaction to perceived excesses in the implementation of Vatican II translated into great tensions between the Vatican and liberation theologians. The papacy of Francis signals that these tensions have passed, as his priorities align more closely to the work of liberation theologians with important implications for Church governance and in relation to pressing global issues.
The diversity gap in precision medicine research (PMR) participation has led to efforts to boost the inclusion of underrepresented populations. Yet our prior research shows that study teams need greater support to identify key decision-making issues that influence diversity and equity, weigh competing interests and tradeoffs, and make informed research choices. We therefore developed a Diversity Decision Map (DDM) to support the identification of and dialogue about study practices that impact diversity, inclusion, and equity.
Methods:
The DDM is empirically derived from a qualitative project that included a content analysis of documents, observations of research activities, and interviews with PMR stakeholders. We identified activities that influenced diversity goals and created a visual display of decision-making nodes, their upstream precedents, and downstream consequences. To assess the potential utility of the DDM, we conducted engagements with stakeholder groups (regulatory advisors, researchers, and community advisors).
Results:
These engagements indicated that the DDM helped diverse stakeholder groups trace tradeoffs of different study choices for diversity, inclusion, and equity, and suggest paths forward. Stakeholders agreed that the DDM could facilitate discussion of tradeoffs and decision-making about research resources and practices that impact diversity. Stakeholders felt that different groups could use the DDM to raise questions and dilemmas with each other, and shared suggestions to increase the utility of the DDM.
Conclusion:
Based on a research life course perspective, and real-world research experiences, we developed a tool to make transparent the tradeoffs of research decisions for diversity, inclusion, and equity in PMR.
We study how people solve the optimal stopping problem of buying an airline ticket. Over a set of problems, people were given 12 opportunities to buy a ticket ranging from 12 months before travel to 1 day before. The distributions from which prices were sampled changed over time, following patterns observed in industry analysis of flight ticket pricing. We characterize the optimal decision process in terms of a set of thresholds that set the maximum purchase price for each time point. In a behavioral analysis, we find that the average price people pay is above the optimal, that there is little evidence people learn over the sequence of problems, but that there are likely significant individual differences in the way people make decisions. In a model-based analysis, we propose a set of nine possible decision strategies, based on how purchasing probabilities change according to time and the price of the ticket. Using Bayesian latent-mixture methods, we infer the strategies used by the participants, finding that some use purely time-based strategies, while others also attend to the price of the tickets. We conclude by noting the limitations in the strategies as accounts of people's decision making, highlighting the need to consider sequential effects and other context effects on purchasing behavior.
We establish hyperweak boundedness of area functions, square functions, maximal operators, and Calderón–Zygmund operators on products of two stratified Lie groups.
Vaccines have revolutionised the field of medicine, eradicating and controlling many diseases. Recent pandemic vaccine successes have highlighted the accelerated pace of vaccine development and deployment. Leveraging this momentum, attention has shifted to cancer vaccines and personalised cancer vaccines, aimed at targeting individual tumour-specific abnormalities. The UK, now regarded for its vaccine capabilities, is an ideal nation for pioneering cancer vaccine trials. This article convened experts to share insights and approaches to navigate the challenges of cancer vaccine development with personalised or precision cancer vaccines, as well as fixed vaccines. Emphasising partnership and proactive strategies, this article outlines the ambition to harness national and local system capabilities in the UK; to work in collaboration with potential pharmaceutic partners; and to seize the opportunity to deliver the pace for rapid advances in cancer vaccine technology.
Information on the time spent completing cognitive testing is often collected, but such data are not typically considered when quantifying cognition in large-scale community-based surveys. We sought to evaluate the added value of timing data over and above traditional cognitive scores for the measurement of cognition in older adults.
Method:
We used data from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India-Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD) study (N = 4,091), to assess the added value of timing data over and above traditional cognitive scores, using item-specific regression models for 36 cognitive test items. Models were adjusted for age, gender, interviewer, and item score.
Results:
Compared to Quintile 3 (median time), taking longer to complete specific items was associated (p < 0.05) with lower cognitive performance for 67% (Quintile 5) and 28% (Quintile 4) of items. Responding quickly (Quintile 1) was associated with higher cognitive performance for 25% of simpler items (e.g., orientation for year), but with lower cognitive functioning for 63% of items requiring higher-order processing (e.g., digit span test). Results were consistent in a range of different analyses adjusting for factors including education, hearing impairment, and language of administration and in models using splines rather than quintiles.
Conclusions:
Response times from cognitive testing may contain important information on cognition not captured in traditional scoring. Incorporation of this information has the potential to improve existing estimates of cognitive functioning.
Ambulatory antimicrobial stewardship can be challenging due to disparities in resource allocation across the care continuum, competing priorities for ambulatory prescribers, ineffective communication strategies, and lack of incentive to prioritize antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) initiatives. Efforts to monitor and compare outpatient antibiotic usage metrics have been implemented through quality measures (QM). Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) represent standardized measures that examine the quality of antibiotic prescribing by region and across insurance health plans. Health systems with affiliated emergency departments and ambulatory clinics contribute patient data for HEDIS measure assessment and are directly related to value-based reimbursement, pay-for-performance, patient satisfaction measures, and payor incentives and rewards. There are four HEDIS® measures related to optimal antibiotic prescribing in upper respiratory tract diseases that ambulatory ASPs can leverage to develop and measure effective interventions while maintaining buy-in from providers: avoidance of antibiotic treatment for acute bronchitis/bronchiolitis, appropriate treatment for upper respiratory infection, appropriate testing for pharyngitis, and antibiotic utilization for respiratory conditions. Additionally, there are other QM assessed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), including overuse of antibiotics for adult sinusitis. Ambulatory ASPs with limited resources should leverage HEDIS® to implement and measure successful interventions due to their pay-for-performance nature. The purpose of this review is to outline the HEDIS® measures related to infectious diseases in ambulatory care settings. This review also examines the barriers and enablers in ambulatory ASPs which play a crucial role in promoting responsible antibiotic use and the efforts to optimize patient outcomes.
The incidence of Kawasaki Disease has a peak in the winter months with a trough in late summer/early fall. Environmental/exposure factors have been associated with a time-varying incidence. These factors were altered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was performed through the International Kawasaki Disease Registry. Data from patients diagnosed with acute Kawasaki Disease and Multiple Inflammatory Syndrome-Children were obtained. Guideline case definitions were used to confirm site diagnosis. Enrollment was from 1/2020 to 7/2023. The number of patients was plotted over time. The patients/month were tabulated for the anticipated peak Kawasaki Disease season (December–April) and non-peak season (May–November). Data were available for 1975 patients from 11 large North American sites with verified complete data and uninterrupted site reporting. The diagnosis criteria were met for 531 Kawasaki Disease and 907 Multiple Inflammatory Syndrome-Children patients. For Multiple Inflammatory Syndrome-Children there were peaks in January of 2021 and 2022. For Kawasaki Disease, 2020 began (January–March) with a seasonal peak (peak 26, mean 21) with a subsequent fall in the number of cases/month (mean 11). After the onset of the pandemic (April 2020), there was no clear seasonal Kawasaki Disease variation (December–April mean 12 cases/month and May–November mean 10 cases/month). During the pandemic, the prevalence of Kawasaki Disease decreased and the usual seasonality was abolished. This may represent the impact of pandemic public health measures in altering environmental/exposure aetiologic factors contributing to the incidence of Kawasaki Disease.
Contemporary reckoning with the catastrophic outcomes of the post-9/11 era opens important questions for the future of counterterrorism policy. It also raises significant issues for thinking through the future priorities and purposes of security scholarship. In this article we make two core claims. First, recent years have seen considerable mainstreaming of ostensibly critical ideas on (counter)terrorism within political debate, media commentary, and – crucially – security policy. Second, such ideas – including around the futility of ‘war’ on terror; the ineffectiveness of torture; the unstable framing of threats such as radicalisation; and the inefficiency of excessive counterterrorism expenditure – were widely dismissed as lacking in policy relevance, even being utopian, when articulated by critically oriented scholars. This development, we argue, raises important ontological questions around the ending of security paradigms such as the war on terror. It also prompts vital political, epistemological, and normative questions around the status of overtly critical scholarship when its ideas and recommendations achieve wider currency.
Congress directed the Secretary of Defense (DoD) to conduct a Pilot program to increase the National Disaster Medical System’s (NDMS) surge capacity, capabilities, and interoperability to support patient movement during a large-scale overseas contingency operation.
Methods
The Pilot conducted a mixed methods exploratory study, the Military-Civilian NDMS Interoperability Study (MCNIS), identifying 55 areas of solutions for NDMS innovation that align with interagency stakeholder interests. Priorities were determined via facilitated discussions, refined and validated by all five Pilot sites.
Results
As the DoD provides essential support for the patient movement component within NDMS, the results highlighted areas for improvement between receiving patients at an airfield and moving them to NDMS definitive care partners during a large medical surge event. This includes patient tracking capabilities, transportation processes and patient placement.
Conclusions
In collaboration with the Departments of Health & Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, and Veterans Health Administration, the Pilot is addressing these areas for improvement, by executing site-specific projects that will be validated and identified for export across the system. Leaders across the Pilot site healthcare networks are working to enhance patient movement and tracking. Ultimately, the Pilot will deliver dozens of proven solutions to enhance the NDMS’s patient movement capabilities.
Carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma is a rare malignant salivary gland tumour for which distinct radiological features are unclear. We aim to identify radiological features that may pre-operatively predict for carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma and its degree of invasion.
Methods
Systematic review of Ovid Medline, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science (BIOSIS), Cochrane, PROSPERO, OpenDOAR, and OpenGrey from inception to 29 April 2023. Primary outcomes of interest were radiological features in magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography and ultrasound.
Results
Of 1729 studies, 12 studies (n = 426) underwent qualitative synthesis. Imaging findings for magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, and ultrasound were reported in 11 studies (n = 337), five studies (n = 253) and one study (n = 89), respectively. Magnetic resonance imaging features of lower mean apparent diffusion coefficient values and heterogenous T2 intensity were reported.
Conclusion
Magnetic resonance imaging has the greatest utility in predicting for carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma. Within the limits, a heterogenous body of evidence, in addition to general radiologic features of malignancy, lower mean apparent diffusion coefficient values and heterogenous T2 intensity, may indicate carcinoma ex pleomorphic adenoma.
Staphylococcus aureus nasal carriers were randomized (1:1) to XF-73 or placebo nasal gel, administered 5x over ∼24hrs pre-cardiac surgery. S. aureus burden rapidly decreased after 2 doses (–2.2log10 CFU/mL; placebo –0.01log10 CFU/mL) and was maintained to 6 days post-surgery. Among XF-73 patients, 46.5% received post-operative anti-staphylococcal antibiotics versus 70% in placebo (P = 0.045).