Anaesthesia management of a patient with Bethlem Myopathy for elective tonsillectomy: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Bethlem Myopathy is a collagen VI-related myopathy presenting as a rare hereditary muscular disorder with progressive muscular weakness and joint contractures. Despite its milder clinical course relative to other myopathies, anaesthetic management can be challenging. High arched palates and fixed flexion deformities may contribute to a difficult airway. A progressive decline in pulmonary function can present later into adulthood. This respiratory decline can carry secondary cardiovascular consequences due to the progressive nature of restrictive lung disease, including right sided heart disease and pulmonary hypertension. We describe a case of a male patient with Bethlem Myopathy undergoing anaesthesia, to contribute to the limited body of literature on this condition and enhance awareness and guidance amongst anaesthesiologists on approaching patients with this condition. This is the first case report within the literature of its kind. CASE PRESENTATION: This case details a 33-year-old male with Bethlem Myopathy undergoing tonsillectomy. Diagnosed in childhood following developmental delays, the patient had no prior anaesthetic exposure and no family history of anaesthetic complications. Anaesthetic induction was achieved without complications, avoiding depolarizing muscle relaxants and careful airway management. Extreme care was taken in patient positioning to prevent complications. The surgery proceeded without incident and muscle paralysis was reversed with Suggammadex, resulting in no adverse post-operative respiratory complications. The patient was discharged on the first post-operative day without any respiratory or cardiovascular compromise. CONCLUSIONS: Bethlem Myopathy, while often exhibiting a mild clinical course, can present anaesthetic challenges. Awareness of potential complications including a difficult airway, cardiovascular and respiratory implications as well as the need for specialised monitoring and positioning is crucial to ensure a safe peri-operative course.

Comparative analysis of popular predictors for difficult laryngoscopy using hybrid intelligent detection methods.

Difficult laryngoscopy is associated with airway injury, and asphyxia. There are no guidelines or gold standards for detecting difficult laryngoscopy. There are many opinions on which predictors to use to detect difficult laryngoscopy exposure, and no comprehensively unified comparative analysis has been conducted. The efficacy and accuracy of deep learning (DL)-based models and machine learning (ML)-based models for predicting difficult laryngoscopy need to be evaluated and compared, under the circumstance that the flourishing of deep neural networks (DNN) has increasingly left ML less concentrated and uncreative. For the first time, the performance of difficult laryngoscopy prediction for a dataset of 671 patients, under single index and integrated multiple indicators was consistently verified under seven ML-based models and four DL-based approaches. The top dog was a simple traditional machine learning model, Naïve Bayes, outperforming DL-based models, the best test accuracy is 86.6%, the F1 score is 0.908, and the average precision score is 0.837. Three radiological variables of difficult laryngoscopy were all valuable separately and combinedly and the ranking was presented. There is no significant difference in performance among the three radiological indicators individually (83.06% vs. 83.20% vs. 83.33%) and comprehensively (83.74%), suggesting that anesthesiologists can flexibly choose appropriate measurement indicators according to the actual situation to predict difficult laryngoscopy. Adaptive spatial interaction was imposed to the model to boost the performance of difficult laryngoscopy prediction with preoperative cervical spine X-ray.

Human papillomavirus vaccine uptake among young gay and bisexual men who have sex with men with a time-limited targeted vaccination programme through sexual health clinics in Melbourne in 2017.

OBJECTIVE: In mid-2017, the Victorian Government funded a free time-limited human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination catch-up programme for gay and bisexual men who have sex with men (MSM) aged up to 26 years through sexual health clinics or other immunisation centres. We aimed to examine the uptake of the HPV vaccine among young MSM attending the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre (MSHC). METHODS: MSM aged ≤26 attending MSHC between 27 April 2017 and 31 December 2017 were included in the analysis. HPV vaccine uptake was calculated based on the first consultation of each patient during the period. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to examine the association between vaccine uptake and patient factors. RESULTS: There were 2108 MSM aged ≤26 who attended MSHC over the study period, with 7.6% (n=161) reporting previous HPV vaccination. Of the 1947 eligible men, 1134 (58.2%, 95% CI 56.0% to 60.4%) were offered the vaccine by the clinicians, and 830 men received it on the day. The vaccine coverage among all eligible MSM was 42.6% (95% CI 40.4% to 44.9%; 830 of 1947) and among MSM who were offered the vaccine by the clinicians was 73.2% (95% CI 70.5% to 75.8%; 830 of 1134). Men with a history of genital warts (adjusted OR (aOR)=3.11, 95%CI 1.39 to 6.99) and those who had >4male partners in the last 12 months (aOR=1.38, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.85) were more likely to receive the HPV vaccine on the day. 304 men declined the vaccine; most men did not specify the reason (31.3%, n=95), while 27.3% (n=83) needed time to think. CONCLUSION: Although vaccine uptake was 73.2% among those offered, the actual coverage of those eligible remained unsatisfactory (42.6%) in a sexual health clinic. This highlights a clinic-based targeted MSM programme may not reach sufficiently high vaccine coverage to provide MSM with the same vaccine benefits as heterosexuals.

Sex with a transgender or gender diverse person among patients attending a sexual health centre in Melbourne, Australia.

OBJECTIVES: All males and females attending the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre (MSHC) from August 2017 were asked whether they had had sex with a transgender or gender diverse (TGD) person using computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI). We aimed to verify the self-reported responses via chart review. The secondary aim of this study was to identify whether having sex with a TGD person was associated with STI risk. METHODS: This was a retrospective chart analysis of patients visiting MSHC between August and December 2017. Chart review was performed to verify the self-reported responses. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to examine the association between having sex with a TGD person and patients' characteristics and STI risk. RESULTS: Of the 10 100 male and female consultations, the proportion who reported having sex with a TGD person was 111 (1.0%) and was higher among males (1.3%) than females (0.6%) (p=0.001). After chart review, we could verify 66.9% of the responses, more for males (75.2%) than females (45.2%) (p<0.001). Of the 6822 males, men aged ≥35 years (adjusted OR=2.2; 95% CI 1.1 to 4.1) were more likely to have sex with a TGD person compared with men aged ≤24 years, after adjusting for confounding factors. Sex with a TGD person was not associated with sexual orientation in males. Of the 3278 females, gay and bisexual females had 13.7-fold (95% CI 5.1 to 37.0) higher odds of having sex with a TGD person than heterosexual females. There was no association between chlamydia positivity and sex with a TGD person in both males and females. CONCLUSION: When a question on TGD partners is asked as part of routine sexual history using CASI, the majority of responses could be verified. TGD partners were most commonly reported among males. These findings underscore the value of asking patients about sex with TGD partners.