Low meniscus reoperation rates following meniscus repair during anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction in Turkey: an in-depth national analysis of 8-years.

BACKGROUND: Concomitant knee injuries, such as meniscal tears, are observed in up to 80% of cases and can have a detrimental impact on outcomes following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR). Over recent decades, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of preserving meniscal tissue. Consequently, the prevalence of meniscal-preserving procedures has been on the rise. PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to examine the prevalence of concurrent meniscal procedures, assess the success rate, and identify factors associated with the failure of meniscal repair in patients undergoing ACLR. METHODS: All patients who underwent ACLR due to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury between January 2015 and December 2022 were extracted from the Republic of Türkiye National health system using operation-specific procedure codes. Patients with multiple ligament injuries, revision ACL patients, and patients with missing data were excluded from the study. The treatment methods were grouped into the subsets of meniscectomy, meniscal repair, transplantation, and meniscectomy + repair. The distribution of ACLR and meniscus treatment methods according to years, age and sex groups, hospital characteristics, and geographical regions was examined. A secondary analysis was performed to assess the effect of patient demographics and hospital healthcare level on revision meniscal procedures in the ACLR + concomitant meniscal repair group. RESULTS: A total of 91,700 patients who underwent ACLR between 2015 and 2022 were included in the study. A concomitant meniscal procedure was noted in 19,951(21.8%) patients (16,130 repair,3543 meniscectomy). In the 8 years studied, meniscus repair rates increased from 76.3%to87.9%, while meniscectomy rates decreased from 23.7%to12.1% (p < 0.001). The revision meniscus surgery rate following ACLR + meniscal repair was 3.7%at a mean follow-up of 50 ± 26 months. The interval between primary and revision surgery was 20.5 ± 21.2 months. The meniscectomy rates were higher in community hospitals, while private hospitals showed the lowest revision meniscus surgery rates. Younger age was associated with increased meniscus repair failure rates. CONCLUSION: The propensity towards using repair techniques to treat meniscal tears during concurrent ACLR has significantly increased in Turkey. Age and the healthcare level of the treating hospital affect the success of meniscal repair.

Fracture Patterns and Mortality in Osteopetrosis: A 7-year Retrospective Analysis from Türkiye's National Registry.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study is to determine the demographic data, fracture treatment methods, and medical treatments of patients diagnosed with osteopetrosis in the national registry. METHODS: Patients with International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 code Q78.2 for osteopetrosis between January 1, 2016 and April 11, 2023 were retrospectively reviewed. Data on sex, age at time of diagnosis, fracture history, mortality, and use of medications were evaluated for all patients. In addition, open reduction and internal fixation, closed reduction and internal fixation, closed reduction and casting, and conservative treatment methods were noted. The number of patients requiring deformity surgery was determined. The incidence and prevalence of osteopetrosis were also calculated in this cross-sectional study. RESULTS: A total of 476 patients diagnosed with osteopetrosis were identified. The mean age at time of diagnosis of these patients was 5.79 ± 5.43 years. A total of 101 patients died. As the age at diagnosis decreased, the mortality rate of the patients increased with statistical significance ( P <0.001). A total of 192 fractures were seen in 121 osteopetrosis patients in this study. Femur fractures were most common among these patients with osteopetrosis. A history of fracture was statistically significantly less common in patients using a combination of vitamin D + calcium compared with patients not using such medication ( P <0.001). In this 7-year cross-sectional study, the incidence was found to be 1 in 416,000 and the prevalence was 0.00199% in the population under 18 years of age. CONCLUSION: Younger age at diagnosis is associated with higher mortality in patients with osteopetrosis. In addition, the combination of vitamin D and calcium were associated with lower fracture incidence. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Prognostic Level II.

Insights from Turkey's big data: unraveling the preventability, pathogenesis, and risk management of Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Extensive research into dementia has more recently honed in on several key areas. These areas include the advancement of techniques such as the accumulation of amyloid-ß and tau proteins, the monitoring of cerebral hypometabolism rates etc. The primary objective of this study is to explore the intricate interplay between Alzheimer's disease (AD)-other dementias (D) and various chronic illnesses in terms of time, intensity, and connectivity. In this context, we retrospectively examined data of 149,786 individuals aged 65 and above who received diagnoses of AD and D in the year 2020. At first, logistic regression (LR) analysis has been made with "sex", "age" and "foreigner" (citizenship status) independent variables for AD and D. The LR models shows that while "sex" and "age" variables have a small rate on the risk of developing AD/D, it is detected that being a foreigner increase the risk of AD and D as 69.8% and 88.5% respectively. Besides, the LR models have middle-level success prediction rate for both of the two dependent variables. Additionally, we used the parallel coordinates graphs method within the R Studio to visualize their relationships and connections. The findings of this investigation strongly suggest that AD/D don't stand as isolated conditions, but rather stem from intricate interactions and progressive processes involving diverse chronic diseases over time. Notably, ailments including hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and psychological disorders, contribute substantially to the emergence of both AD and D. This study highlights that the fight against AD/D can only be possible with next-generation prophylactic interventions that can predict and manage risks. Such an approach holds the potential to potentially lower AD and dementia to levels that are amenable to treatment.

Prevalence, number of fractures, and hospital characteristics among the pediatric population with osteogenesis imperfecta: results from the nationwide registry of Türkiye.

OBJECTIVE: Osteogenesis imperfecta is a rare connective tissue disorder with an estimated number of 4-20 cases per 100 000 inhabitants. Although the prevalence differs among regions, there are only a few number of national registry studies published previously. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of osteogenesis imperfecta among the pediatric age group in Türkiye, together with the patient and hospital characteristics. METHODS: Via the e-health database of the Turkish Ministry of Health, we collected and retrospectively evaluated the medical records of the patients who were under 18 years of age with the diagnosis of osteogenesis imperfecta between 2016 and 2022. Total number of fractures, treatment modalities, and the hospital characteristics were also recorded. Two thousand seven hundred forty patients were extracted with a mean age of 9.77 ±â€…4.81 years. RESULTS: The prevalence of osteogenesis imperfecta in Türkiye among the pediatric population was calculated as 11.6 per 100 000 individuals. The median annual incidence was 31.5 per 100 000 live births between 2016 and 2022. There were 17.4 hospital admissions per patient per year. The mean age at the time of in-hospital mortality was 4.08 ±â€…5.03 years. The fracture rate per patient per year was 0.56 and conservative treatment was the most commonly preferred modality for all ages. CONCLUSION: This is the first registry-based nationwide study of osteogenesis imperfecta patients in Türkiye, providing important characteristics of the disease. Together with the help of the ongoing development of national health database systems, precision in patient identification would yield substantial benefits in terms of management of osteogenesis imperfecta.

Region-Based Semi-Two-Stream Convolutional Neural Networks for Pressure Ulcer Recognition.

Pressure ulcers are a common, painful, costly, and often preventable complication associated with prolonged immobility in bedridden patients. It is a significant health problem worldwide because it is frequently seen in inpatients and has high treatment costs. For the treatment to be effective and to ensure an international standardization for all patients, it is essential that the diagnosis of pressure ulcers is made in the early stages and correctly. Since invasive methods of obtaining information can be painful for patients, different methods are used to make a correct diagnosis. Image-based diagnosis method is one of them. By using images obtained from patients, it will be possible to obtain successful results by keeping patients away from such painful situations. At this stage, disposable wound rulers are used in clinical practice to measure the length, width, and depth of patients' wounds. The information obtained is then entered into tools such as the Braden Scale, the Norton Scale, and the Waterlow Scale to provide a formal assessment of risk for pressure ulcers. This paper presents a novel benchmark dataset containing pressure ulcer images and a semi-two-stream approach that uses the original images and the cropped wound areas together for diagnosing the stage of pressure ulcers. Various state-of-the-art convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures are evaluated on this dataset. Our experimental results (test accuracy of 93%, the precision of 93%, the recall of 92%, and the F1-score of 93%) show that the proposed semi-two-stream method improves recognition results compared to the base CNN architectures.

Cemented Versus Uncemented Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty Treatment of Proximal Humerus Fractures: National Shoulder Arthroplasty Data from Türkiye.

Background: This study evaluated national trends in cemented and uncemented reverse shoulder arthroplasty (RSA) for proximal humerus fractures using a comprehensive national surgical database. This study aimed to compare RSA used in the treatment of proximal humerus fractures with the literature and to determine the country's trend. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using the health records of individuals aged ≥ 18 years who underwent RSA for proximal humerus fractures between 2016 and 2022. Patients were divided into cemented and uncemented groups, and demographic data (age, sex), duration of hospital stay, transfusions, revisions, mortality, and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) scores were analyzed. Results: A total of 618 cemented RSA and 1,364 uncemented RSA procedures were reviewed. Patients who underwent cemented RSA were significantly older than those who had uncemented RSA (p = 0.002). Transfusion rates were higher in the cemented RSA group (p = 0.006). The frequency of revision surgery was 6.1%. Younger age and male sex were associated with revision (p < 0.001). CCI scores were higher among transfused patients than non-transfused patients (p < 0.001). The incidence of cemented RSA was 11.7% and 49% in 2016 and 2022, respectively. Differences were found among hospital types and geographical regions. Conclusions: While cemented RSA has been gaining attention and increased application in recent years for proximal humerus fractures, uncemented RSA still predominates. The choice between these 2 methods is largely influenced by regional and hospital-level factors. The type of RSA and high CCI scores were found to have no significant impact on the risk of surgical revision.

Shedding light on slipped capital femoral epiphysis: a nationwide study on Turkish population.

OBJECTIVES: This comprehensive study aimed to describe the epidemiologic and demographic distribution of slipped capital femoral epiphysis (SCFE) in Türkiye, a condition that globally presents at a rate of 10.8 cases per 100 000 children. Utilizing data from the Ministry of Health, we examined the specifics of SCFE in Türkiye, comparing the findings with those of other populations to clarify the country's unique epidemiological profile. METHODS: In this retrospective analysis, the Ministry of Health's database was used to extract medical records of children under the age of 16 diagnosed with SCFE from 2016 to 2023. Patients were evaluated based on sex, age at diagnosis, comorbidities, complications, time of diagnosis and BMI. RESULTS: Our analysis identified 720 children with SCFE, with the average age at diagnosis being 12.9 years. The prevalence of SCFE in Türkiye was found to be 0.005% for the year 2022. The occurrence of SCFE showed no correlation with seasons. It was noted that the majority of patients received treatment at university and high-level hospitals (59.9%), with none being treated at lower-level public hospitals. A total of 58 patients were found to have additional growth and developmental diseases. Notably, only 33 cases (4.6%) involved avascular necrosis during follow-up. CONCLUSION: This study provides the first epidemiological and demographic analysis of SCFE in Türkiye. Interestingly, our data suggest that male patients are twice as likely to develop SCFE compared to their female counterparts.