Search

Background Stroke is highly prevalent in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) , a most common cardiac arrhythmia with high morbidity, and anticoagulation therapy is a key strategy to prevent AF-related stroke. However, there is short of research on the use of anticoagulation therapy in patients with AF in the community. Objective To explore the prevalence of use of anticoagulation therapy and influencing factors in elderly patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF) in Shanghai's communities. Methods A cross-sectional survey design was used. Stratified sampling was used to select elderly patients with AF who received the 2018 annual physical examination at four community health centers in Shanghai during July to December 2019, and they were surveyed using a questionnaire (consisting of three parts: demographics, CHA2DS2-VASc score and ORBIT score) compiled by our research team for collecting information on their AF prevalence and associated medication use, awareness of AF, comorbidities, and complication, as well as risk for stroke and bleeding. Based on the results of the survey, we excluded those without previous AF-related medical experience and valvular AF, then analyzed the prevalence of anticoagulation therapy in those with NVAF. Anticoagulation therapy was recommended for patients at high risk for stroke in accordance with the CHA2DS2-VASc score. Univariate and multivariate Logistic regression analyses were used to identify influencing factors of anticoagulation therapy in NVAF patients at high risk of stroke. Results Three hundred and two patients with NVAF were finally included, of whom the prevalence of current use of anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs was 29.5% (89/302) , and 39.7% (120/302) , respectively, and that of non-use of anticoagulant or antiplatelet drugs was 30.8% (93/302) . By the CHA2DS2-VASc score, 279 of the 302 NVAF patients (92.4%) were assessed with high risk of stroke, among whom the prevalence of current use of anticoagulant and antiplatelet drugs was 30.5% (85/279) , 40.1% (112/279) , respectively, and the rest 29.4% (82/279) did not take anticoagulant or antiplatelet drugs. Univariate Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that age, marital status, type of AF, onset of AF symptoms, duration of AF, prescription of anticoagulants at the first visit for AF, knowledge of the harmfulness of AF, prevalence of hyperlipidemia, and risk of bleeding were associated with the use of anticoagulation therapy in NVAF patients at high risk of stroke (P

Plasma treatment of wood surfaces has shown significant effects, but different excitation methods used for different species of wood generally result in varied characteristics of wood surfaces. Secondly, plasma modification greatly enhances the absorption of liquids by wood, but the relationship between liquid absorption and surface wettability is rarely studied. Limited detailed investigation of the modification effects and mechanisms has hindered the large-scale applications of plasma treatment in the wood industry. In this study, two typical plasmas, radio frequency (RF) plasma and gliding arc discharge (GAD) plasma, were employed to treat three species of wood: poplar, black walnut, and sapele. By focusing on changes in the contact angle of the wood surface, an exponential equation fitting method is used to determine the measurement time for contact angles. The research identified that factors contributing to the decrease in contact angle after plasma modification include not only the increase in surface energy but also liquid absorption. SEM and XPS analyses demonstrate that plasma etching accelerated liquid absorption by modifying the surface topography, while the increase in surface energy was due to the addition of oxygen-containing groups. High-valence C=O and O-C=O groups serve as indicators of plasma-induced surface chemical reactions. RF modification primarily features surface etching, whereas GAD significantly increases the active surface groups. Thus, different plasmas, due to their distinct excitation modes, produce diverse modification effects on wood. Considering the various physical and chemical properties of plasma-modified wood surfaces, recommendations for adhesive use on plasma-modified wood are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ObjectiveTo compare the risk of hospitalisation and associated costs in patients after treatment for prostate cancer.Patients and methodsWe identified 29 571 patients aged 66-75 years without significant comorbidity from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare linked database who were diagnosed with localised prostate cancer between 2004 and 2009. We compared the rates of all-cause and treatment-related hospitalisation that occurred within 365 days of the initiation of definitive therapy. We used multivariable logistic regression analysis to identify determinants associated with hospitalisation.ResultsMen who underwent radical prostatectomy (RP) rather than radiotherapy (RT) had lower odds of being hospitalised for any cause after therapy [odds ratio (OR) 0.80, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.74-0.87]. Patients who underwent RP rather than RT had higher odds of being hospitalised for treatment-related complications (OR 1.15, 95% CI: 1.03-1.29). However, men who underwent external beam RT (EBRT)/intensity modulated RT (IMRT) (OR 0.84, 95% CI: 0.72-0.99) had a 16% lower odds of hospitalisation from treatment-related complications than patients undergoing RP. Using propensity score-weighted analyses there was no significant difference in the odds of hospitalisation from treatment-related complications for men who underwent RP vs RT (OR 1.06, 95% CI: 0.92-1.21). Patients hospitalised for treatment-related complications after RT were costlier than patients who underwent RP (Mean $18 381 vs $13 203, P < 0.001).ConclusionsWith the exception of men who underwent EBRT/IMRT, there was no statistically significant difference in the odds of hospitalisation from treatment-related complications. Costs from hospitalisation after treatment were significantly higher for men undergoing RT than RP. Our findings are relevant in the context of penalties linked to hospital readmissions and bundled payment models.

PURPOSE: Compare the association of individual comorbidities, comorbidity indices, and survival in older adults with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), including in specific NHL subtypes. METHODS: Data source was SEER-Medicare, a population-based registry of adults age 65 years and older with cancer. We included all incident cases of NHL diagnosed during 2008-2017 who met study inclusion criteria. Comorbidities were classified using the three-factor risk estimate scale (TRES), Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), and National Cancer Institute (NCI) comorbidity index categories and weights. Overall survival (OS) and lymphoma-specific survival, with death from other causes treated as a competing risk, were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method from time of diagnosis. Multivariable Cox models were constructed, and Harrel C-statistics were used to compare comorbidity models. A two-sided P value of <.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: A total of 40,486 patients with newly diagnosed NHL were included. Patients with aggressive NHL had higher rates of baseline comorbidity. Despite differences in baseline comorbidity between NHL subtypes, cardiovascular, pulmonary, diabetes, and renal comorbidities were frequent and consistently associated with OS in most NHL subtypes. These categories were used to construct a candidate comorbidity score, the non-Hodgkin lymphoma 5 (NHL-5). Comparing three validated comorbidity scores, TRES, CCI, NCI, and the novel NHL-5 score, we found similar associations with OS and lymphoma-specific survival, which was confirmed in sensitivity analyses by NHL subtypes. CONCLUSION: The optimal measure of comorbidity in NHL is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that the three-category TRES and five-category NHL-5 scores perform as well as the 14-16 category CCI and NCI scores in terms of association with OS and lymphoma-specific survival. These simple scores could be more easily used in clinical practice without prognostic loss. The largest study to compare lymphoma-specific comorbidity prognostic models' association with survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy consumption of oil collection increases rapidly after oilfield enters the stage of high water cut. Carrying out gathering and transportation at normal or low temperature can save cost and bring certain enterprise benefit. In order to judge whether the gathering and transportation can be carried out at normal or low temperature, the thermodynamic hydraulic calculation model is constructed and modified according to the field measured data. Then the thermally hydraulic coupling calculation is carried out to determine the gathering and transportation radius. The single factor sensitivity analysis method was used to rank the sensitivity of the factors influencing the gathering and transportation radius, and the radius chart is made. The results show that the modified thermo-hydraulic model can better predict the temperature and pressure drop, and the average error of the calculated and the measured value is 2.5% and 7.67%. The four most influential factors from strong to weak are starting point temperature, liquid yield, moisture content of mass and ambient temperature. The chart drawn by the factors provides the basis for the normal temperature gathering and transportation of the pipeline, so the required temperature at the start of the pipe can be determined by querying the chart.

A blind super-resolution network with dual-channel attention is proposed for images captured by the 0.37 mm diameter sub-millimeter fiberscope. The fiberscope can used in scenarios where other image acquisition devices cannot be applied based on its flexible, soft, and minimally invasive characteristics. However, the images have black reticulated noise and only 3000 pixels. To improve image quality, the Butterworth band-stop filter is used to reduce the frequency of the reticulated noise. By optimizing the blind super-resolution model, high-quality images can be reconstructed that do not require a lot of synthetic paired fiberscope image data. Perceptual loss is utilized as a loss function, and channel and spatial attention mechanisms are introduced to the model to enhance the high-frequency detail information of the reconstructed image. In the comparative experiment with other methods, our method showed improvements of 2.25 in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and 0.09 in structural similarity (SSIM) based on objective evaluation metrics. The learned perceptual image patch similarity (LPIPS) based on learning was reduced by 0.6. Furthermore, four different methods were used to enhance the resolution of the fiberscope images by a factor of four. The results of this paper improve the information entropy and Laplace clarity by 0.44 and 2.54, respectively, compared to the average of other methods. Validation results show that the approach in this paper is more applicable to sub-millimeter-diameter fiberscopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]