BACKGROUND: As patients nowadays tend to have multiple diseases and complex medical histories, our aim was to identify high-quality, non-instrumental dysphagia screening tools used for the detection of adult dysphagia cases in all disease categories in acute-care settings.
METHODS: A literature search was conducted in five databases from each database\'s earliest inception to 31 July 2021 and guided by five keywords: \'dysphagia\', \'deglutition\', \'screening\', \'test\' and \'measure\'. Without limiting the search in any specific disease category, reviewers assessed original studies and identified tools if they had been validated against instrumental evaluations and if they had been designed as a pass-fail procedure to screen whether dysphagia is absent or present. We further excluded any tool if it was (1) for pediatric focus, or (2) a patient self-report questionnaire. All final tool candidates underwent a methodological quality appraisal using the Revised Tool for the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS-2).
RESULTS: Out of 195 studies with 165 tools identified, 20 tool candidates underwent QUADAS-2 review. We found six high-quality, non-instrumental screening tools for detecting adult dysphagia cases in acute-care settings, including the Yale Swallow Protocol, Gugging Swallowing Screen, Toronto Bedside Swallowing Screening Test (both English and Portuguese versions), Sapienza Global Bedside Evaluation of Swallowing and Two-Step Thickened Water Test. These high-quality tools were developed primarily for patients with stroke. Only Yale Swallow Protocol was originally tested for heterogeneous populations with stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, oesophageal surgery, neurosurgery and head-and-neck cancer.
CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the gap in the unavailability of high-quality dysphagia screening tool in several emerged high-risk populations including elderly inpatients, or patients following endotracheal extubation. Further research is needed to determine whether these six tools can be effectively applied across different high-risk populations in acute-care settings to screen for cases finding.

BACKGROUND: Finding individuals with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) is important to control the pandemic and improve patient clinical outcomes. To our knowledge, systematic reviews assessing the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of different DR-TB case-finding strategies to inform research, policy, and practice, have not been conducted and the scope of primary research is unknown.
OBJECTIVE: We therefore assessed the available literature on DR-TB case-finding strategies.
METHODS: We looked at systematic reviews, trials, qualitative studies, diagnostic test accuracy studies, and other primary research that sought to improve DR-TB case detection specifically. We excluded studies that included patients seeking care for tuberculosis (TB) symptoms, patients already diagnosed with TB, or were laboratory-based. We searched the academic databases of MEDLINE, Embase, The Cochrane Library, Africa-Wide Information, CINAHL (Cumulated Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Epistemonikos, and PROSPERO (The International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews) using no language or date restrictions. We screened titles, abstracts, and full-text articles in duplicate. Data extraction and analyses were carried out in Excel (Microsoft Corp).
RESULTS: We screened 3646 titles and abstracts and 236 full-text articles. We identified 6 systematic reviews and 61 primary studies. Five reviews described the yield of contact investigation and focused on household contacts, airline contacts, comparison between drug-susceptible tuberculosis and DR-TB contacts, and concordance of DR-TB profiles between index cases and contacts. One review compared universal versus selective drug resistance testing. Primary studies described (1) 34 contact investigations, (2) 17 outbreak investigations, (3) 3 airline contact investigations, (4) 5 epidemiological analyses, (5) 1 public-private partnership program, and (6) an e-registry program. Primary studies were all descriptive and included cross-sectional and retrospective reviews of program data. No trials were identified. Data extraction from contact investigations was difficult due to incomplete reporting of relevant information.
CONCLUSIONS: Existing descriptive reviews can be updated, but there is a dearth of knowledge on the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, acceptability, and feasibility of DR-TB case-finding strategies to inform policy and practice. There is also a need for standardization of terminology, design, and reporting of DR-TB case-finding studies.

The link between venous thromboembolism (VTE) and cancer is well known. VTE could be the initial sign of an occult malignancy. There are more diagnoses of cancer after an unprovoked VTE compared to a provoked VTE, with a reported prevalence between 4.5% and 5.6% over 12 months, within the first 6 months of VTE diagnosis. There are no recommended guidelines and scores yet adopted in clinical practice, but many studies support occult cancer screening in unprovoked VTE patients. We report the case of a patient with a history of unprovoked pulmonary embolism (PE) diagnosed with bronchopulmonary neoplasm in an advanced stage one year after the thromboembolic event. When the cancer was first diagnosed, the patient\'s condition was already serious, being too late for the adoption of measures meant to decrease the risk of mortality and increase the duration of survival. We wanted to emphasize the importance of occult cancer screening in patients with unprovoked VTE and the fact that early cancer diagnosis reduces the risk of cancer progression, decreasing mortality and morbidity related to it.

BACKGROUND: Cervical myelopathy (CM) causes several symptoms such as clumsiness of the hands and often requires surgery. Screening and early diagnosis of CM are important because some patients are unaware of their early symptoms and consult a surgeon only after their condition has become severe. The 10-second hand grip and release test is commonly used to check for the presence of CM. The test is simple but would be more useful for screening if it could objectively evaluate the changes in movement specific to CM. A previous study analyzed finger movements in the 10-second hand grip and release test using the Leap Motion, a noncontact sensor, and a system was developed that can diagnose CM with high sensitivity and specificity using machine learning. However, the previous study had limitations in that the system recorded few parameters and did not differentiate CM from other hand disorders.
OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop a system that can diagnose CM with higher sensitivity and specificity, and distinguish CM from carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), a common hand disorder. We then validated the system with a modified Leap Motion that can record the joints of each finger.
METHODS: In total, 31, 27, and 29 participants were recruited into the CM, CTS, and control groups, respectively. We developed a system using Leap Motion that recorded 229 parameters of finger movements while participants gripped and released their fingers as rapidly as possible. A support vector machine was used for machine learning to develop the binary classification model and calculated the sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC). We developed two models, one to diagnose CM among the CM and control groups (CM/control model), and the other to diagnose CM among the CM and non-CM groups (CM/non-CM model).
RESULTS: The CM/control model indexes were as follows: sensitivity 74.2%, specificity 89.7%, and AUC 0.82. The CM/non-CM model indexes were as follows: sensitivity 71%, specificity 72.87%, and AUC 0.74.
CONCLUSIONS: We developed a screening system capable of diagnosing CM with higher sensitivity and specificity. This system can differentiate patients with CM from patients with CTS as well as healthy patients and has the potential to screen for CM in a variety of patients.

BACKGROUND: Artificial intelligence (AI)-based cancer detectors (CAD) for mammography are starting to be used for breast cancer screening in radiology departments. It is important to understand how AI CAD systems react to benign lesions, especially those that have been subjected to biopsy.
OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to corroborate the hypothesis that women with previous benign biopsy and cytology assessments would subsequently present increased AI CAD abnormality scores even though they remained healthy.
METHODS: This is a retrospective study applying a commercial AI CAD system (Insight MMG, version 1.1.4.3; Lunit Inc) to a cancer-enriched mammography screening data set of 10,889 women (median age 56, range 40-74 years). The AI CAD generated a continuous prediction score for tumor suspicion between 0.00 and 1.00, where 1.00 represented the highest level of suspicion. A binary read (flagged or not flagged) was defined on the basis of a predetermined cutoff threshold (0.40). The flagged median and proportion of AI scores were calculated for women who were healthy, those who had a benign biopsy finding, and those who were diagnosed with breast cancer. For women with a benign biopsy finding, the interval between mammography and the biopsy was used for stratification of AI scores. The effect of increasing age was examined using subgroup analysis and regression modeling.
RESULTS: Of a total of 10,889 women, 234 had a benign biopsy finding before or after screening. The proportions of flagged healthy women were 3.5%, 11%, and 84% for healthy women without a benign biopsy finding, those with a benign biopsy finding, and women with breast cancer, respectively (P<.001). For the 8307 women with complete information, radiologist 1, radiologist 2, and the AI CAD system flagged 8.5%, 6.8%, and 8.5% of examinations of women who had a prior benign biopsy finding. The AI score correlated only with increasing age of the women in the cancer group (P=.01).
CONCLUSIONS: Compared to healthy women without a biopsy, the examined AI CAD system flagged a much larger proportion of women who had or would have a benign biopsy finding based on a radiologist\'s decision. However, the flagging rate was not higher than that for radiologists. Further research should be focused on training the AI CAD system taking prior biopsy information into account.

UNASSIGNED: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), a chronic condition leading to glucose intolerance during pregnancy, is common in low- and middle-income countries, posing health risks to both the mother and fetus. Limited studies have been done in Ethiopia, especially using WHO\'s 2013 universal screening criteria. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the risk factors linked to GDM in women attending antenatal (ANC) clinics in Hawassa town public health institutions, located in the Sidama regional state of Ethiopia.
UNASSIGNED: An Unmatched case-control study was carried out in Ethiopia\'s Sidama Region from April 1st to June 10th, 2023, involving 510 pregnant women. The Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) was utilized for universal screening and diagnosing GDM based on the updated 2013 WHO diagnostic criteria. Data analysis included descriptive and analytical statistics, with variables having p-values below 0.1 deemed suitable for bivariate analysis. Statistical significance was assessed using the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) with a 95% confidence interval and a p-value < 0.05.
UNASSIGNED: The study involved 633 participants (255 cases and 378 controls), resulting in a 100% response rate, with women having an average age of 29.03 years.Variables such as: age at first conception (AOR=0.97, P=0.01, 95% CI (0.95,0.99)), urban residency (AOR=1.66, P<0.01, 95% CI(01.14,2.40)), widowed marital status (AOR=0.30, P=0.02, 95% CI (0.30,0.90)), parity (AOR=1.10, P<0.01, 95% CI (1.03,1.17)), history of stillbirth (AOR=1.15, P=0.03, 95% CI(1.04,2.30)), and previous cesarean section (AOR=1.86, P=0.01, 95% CI (1.13,2.66)) were identified as independent factors associated with GDM.
UNASSIGNED: The study concluded that factors like age at first conception, place of residence, marital status, parity, history of Caesarian section, and stillbirth were independently associated with GDM. Surprisingly, upper arm circumference (MUAC), a proxy for pre-gestational BMI, was not identified as a risk factor for GDM. It is recommended that healthcare providers conduct comprehensive GDM risk assessments in pregnant women to identify and address risk factors, and propose specific screening and intervention strategies.

An artificial intelligence-based case-finding strategy has been developed to systematically identify individuals with osteoporosis or at varying risk of fragility fracture. This strategy has the potential to close the critical care gap in osteoporosis treatment in primary care, thereby lessening the societal burden imposed by fragility fractures.
BACKGROUND: Osteoporotic fractures represent a major cause of morbidity and, in older adults, a precursor of disability, loss of independence, poor quality of life and premature death. Despite the detrimental health impact, osteoporosis remains largely underdiagnosed and undertreated worldwide. Subjects at risk for osteoporosis-related fractures are identified either via organised screening or case finding. In the absence of a population-based screening policy, subjects at high risk of fragility fractures are opportunistically identified when a fracture occurs or because of other clinical risk factors (CRFs) for osteoporotic fracture and areal bone mineral density (aBMD) measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA).
OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the development of a novel case-finding strategy, named Osteoporosis Diagnostic and Therapeutic Pathway (ODTP), which enables to identify subjects with osteoporosis or at varying risk of fragility fracture. This strategy is based on a specifically designed software tool, named \"Bone Fragility Query\" (BFQ), which analyses the electronic health record (EHR) databases of General Practitioners (GPs) to systematically identify individuals who should be prescribed DXA-BMD measurement, vertebral fracture assessment (VFA) and anti-osteoporosis medications (AOM).
CONCLUSIONS: The ODTP through BFQ tool is a feasible, convenient and time-saving osteoporosis model of care for GPs during routine clinical practice. It enables GPs to shift their focus from what to do (clinical guidelines) to how to do it in the primary health care setting. It also allows a systematic approach to primary and secondary prevention of fragility fractures, thereby overcoming clinical inertia and contributing to closing the gap between evidence and practice for the management of osteoporosis in primary care.

Abdominal aortic aneurysm, characterized by a persistent dilation exceeding 3 cm or 50% of the aortic diameter, poses a substantial risk, particularly in males over 65. Despite its potentially asymptomatic nature, early detection is imperative due to the elevated mortality rates, reaching 90% following rupture. The presented case involves a 60-year-old male with progressively worsening abdominal pain, a history of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and smoking. Initial examinations were inconclusive, requiring advanced imaging that revealed a large aneurysmal dilation. Therapeutic measures included endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), highlighting the significance of timely intervention. Despite elective surgery risks, mortality rates decrease significantly when the aneurysm diameter surpasses 43 mm. This report stresses the need for primary care physicians to conduct thorough screenings, recognize risk factors, and facilitate prompt referrals for advanced imaging. The case\'s pivotal lesson lies in the comprehensive management of abdominal aortic aneurysm, showcasing the potential for life-saving interventions and the critical role of early detection in mitigating the severe consequences associated with its rupture.

UNASSIGNED: Cardiomyopathy caused by aggregation and deposition of transthyretin amyloid fibrils in the heart (ATTR-CM) is divided into a hereditary (ATTRv) and a wild-type (ATTRwt) forms. While ATTR-CM has been considered a rare disease, recent studies suggest that it is severely underdiagnosed and an important cause of heart failure in elderly patients. Familial occurrence is implicit in ATTRv, but it is not expected in ATTRwt.
UNASSIGNED: We report a case series of two unrelated families each with two brothers diagnosed with ATTRwt. Genetic testing did not reveal mutations in the transthyretin gene. Family screening with electrocardiogram, echocardiography, and genetic testing did not raise any suspicion of ATTR in first-line family members.
UNASSIGNED: Familial occurrence of a rare, non-hereditary disease is statistically unlikely. Two siblings in two different families diagnosed with ATTRwt highlight that the aetiology of ATTRwt is poorly understood, and that genetic factors distinct from mutations in the transthyretin gene, as well as environmental factors, might contribute to the pathogenesis. Identifying such factors might reveal new therapeutic targets. To investigate this further, clinicians need to be aware of the possibility of familial occurrence of ATTRwt.

UNASSIGNED: Gender-affirming mastectomy (GAM), in contrast to simple mastectomy (SM), utilizes preservation of subcutaneous and breast tissue to produce a cosmetically favorable result for transgender patients, however does not remove all future malignancy risk. Here we present a case report of a transmale patient who was evaluated for GAM and subsequently found to have a malignant breast mass, necessitating multi-disciplinary intervention and coordination between breast and plastic surgery teams. This patient\'s unique and rare presentation with breast cancer prior to GAM emphasized the paucity of previously detailed cases in the literature and demonstrated the likely degree of variability in decision-making for treatment of these patients without universal guidelines for management.
UNASSIGNED: The patient is a 47-year-old African American transgender male who was found to have a 3-cm breast mass on routine pre-operative mammographic screening prior to GAM. Pathology confirmed grade II invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) and further genetic testing showed the patient was BRCA2 positive. The breast and plastic surgery teams coordinated the GAM to best address the mass while achieving cosmetic goals. This case was complicated by positive nipple margins on intra-operative cold specimen, which necessitated deviation from the initial plan to perform bilateral nipple grafts, and instead utilized excess areolar tissue from the left nipple to reconstruct the contralateral right nipple. Graft survival and overall repair quality at 6 weeks was satisfactory to both patient and provider.
UNASSIGNED: This case highlights several of the challenges encountered when considering or performing GAMs in transmale patients with underlying breast cancer. Surgical considerations for these patients differ from cisgender individuals undergoing mastectomy for oncologic breast findings. Further research is needed to better determine the ideal operative practice and ideal follow-up screening for these patients.