The use of personal therapy by psychiatrists and psychiatry trainees: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: It is widely acknowledged that personal therapy positively contributes to the continued personal well-being and ongoing professional development of mental health professionals, including psychiatrists. As a result, most training bodies continue to recommend personal therapy to their trainees. Given its reported value and benefits, one might hypothesize that a high proportion of psychiatrists avail of personal therapy. This systematic review seeks to investigate whether this is the case. AIM: To identify and evaluate the findings derived from all available survey-based studies reporting quantitative data regarding psychiatrists' and psychiatry trainees' engagement in personal therapy. METHOD: A systematic search for survey-based studies about the use of personal therapy by psychiatric practitioners was conducted in four databases and platforms (PubMed, Scopus, Embase and EbscoHost) from inception to May 2022 following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies were assessed for quality using the quality assessment checklist for survey studies in psychology (Q-SSP) and findings summarized using narrative synthesis. RESULTS: The proportion of trainees who engaged in personal therapy ranged from a low of 13.4% in a recent UK based study to a high of 65.3% among Israeli residents. The proportion of fully qualified psychiatrists who engaged in personal therapy varied from 32.1% in South Korea to 89% in New Zealand. CONCLUSION: This review represents the first known attempt to collect and synthesize data aimed at providing insights into the past and current trends in psychiatrists' use of personal therapy across different geographic regions and career stages.

Electrostatic wipes as simple and reliable methods for influenza virus airborne detection.

The performance of an in-house protocol for virus detection on commercialized electrostatic wipes (EWs) was assessed experimentally by impregnating them with suspensions of cytomegalovirus, adenovirus, and influenza virus, and by determining the recovery efficiency, repeatability, and detection limit of the protocol. The protocol was sensitive enough to detect 4 log10 gene copies of virus. At room temperature, influenza RNA was stable on EWs for at least four days. When EWs were placed high in 32 influenza-infected patients' rooms, influenza RNA was detectable in 75% (N = 24) of EWs, suggesting that EWs are simple and reliable methods for influenza virus airborne detection.

[What are the ethical issues raised by the COVID 19 epidemic?] / « Quels enjeux de nature éthique l'épidémie de COVID 19 a-t-elle soulevé ? ¼.

The COVID-19 epidemic has highlighted or revealed real ethical issues, revealing the limits of knowledge, the limits of life, the limits of our health care system, the limits of our society. Questioning these limits and therefore these ethical issues can be interesting to advance our health system and our society. In this article, we have chosen to address a few ethical questions concerning more particularly the function of care, the relationship to death, the relationship to uncertainty, questions more related to containment measures than to COVID itself and finally a more political questioning on what this epidemic reveals about the fragility of our societies and our economies. We arbitrarily set aside, given the constrained format of the article, some extremely important issues such as research ethics issues, issues related to the notion of patient selection or triage, issues related to the ethics of managing the shortage, and finally issues related to the tracing of contacts or patients.

Multifactorial immunodeficiency in frail elderly patients: Contributing factors and management.

Immunodeficiency in the elderly is multifactorial. The analysis of etiological factors demonstrates the major role of immunosenescence and protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) with high prevalence deficiencies in micronutrients such as vitamin D, zinc, or vitamin E in people aged above 75 years. PEM contributes to the numerous consequences of frailty syndrome, and mainly to susceptibility to infections including fungal infections, which are usually observed in immunodeficient patients. Particular attention should thus be paid to these patients. However, these peculiarities of the immune system aging and the aging-related vulnerability can lead to diagnostic delays and treatment escalation, mainly with antibiotics, as well as to a loss of time resulting in a loss of opportunity for patients. Antibiotic escalation also leads to microbiological selection pressure in frail elderly people, which can be deleterious in the long-term in case of opportunistic infections. Guidelines are mainly based on the identification and management of frailty, especially in terms of nutrition. The identification of nutritional risk, dietary management, mood vigilance, and a functional approach are the four pillars of the management strategy. These elements are part of a global geriatric assessment and care.

Deaths in France: Characteristics, place of death, hospitalisations and use of palliative care during the year before death.

AIM: Only limited data are available concerning the diseases managed and the hospital pathway before death. The aim of this study was to describe diseases, hospitalisations, and use of palliative care one year before death as well as place of death in France. METHODS: French health insurance general scheme beneficiaries who died in 2013 were identified in the National Health Insurance Information System (SNIIRAM) with a selection of information concerning their various hospital stays, including hospital palliative care (HPC) and nursing home care. Diseases were identified by algorithms from reimbursement data recorded in the SNIIRAM database. RESULTS: A total of 347 253 people were included (61% of all deaths in France). The mean age of death was 77 years (SD 15.1). Diseases managed before death were cardiovascular/neurovascular diseases (56%), cancers (42%), neurological and degenerative diseases (25%), diabetes (21%) and chronic respiratory diseases (20%). Deaths occurred in hospital in 60% of cases: 51% in acute wards, 6% in rehabilitation units, 3% in hospital at home (HaH), and 13% in nursing homes. During the year preceding death, 84% of people were hospitalised at least once and 29% received HPC. People receiving HPC more often died in hospital than people not receiving HPC (69% vs. 44%). CONCLUSION: Health administrative data from the SNIIRAM database can refine our knowledge of the care pathway prior to death and of the use of hospital palliative care and can be useful to evaluate the new governmental palliative care plan recently deployed in France.

Lithium monitoring patterns in the United Kingdom and Ireland: Can shared care agreements play a role in improving monitoring quality? A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The appropriate monitoring of patients on lithium therapy has been the subject of extensive research in the form of clinical audits and surveys culminating in the development of specific guidelines to help clinicians provide optimal care for patients on lithium. The concept of 'shared care' has also gained attention in the literature with various types of shared care interventions being introduced as potential ways of improving communication between primary and secondary care. OBJECTIVES: This article aims to (1) review the literature evaluating lithium monitoring practices in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the last 25 years and (2) determine whether locally agreed shared care agreements have the potential to improve monitoring quality. METHODS: A literature search was conducted using the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Academic Search Premier, CINAHL and PsychInfo. A total of 12 studies were selected for review including 11 audits/prospective chart reviews and one qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the quality of lithium monitoring seems to be improving throughout the years. However, none of the studies reviewed revealed complete adherence to monitoring guidelines. This may be due to a lack of effective communication between primary and secondary care. Several shared care interventions have been described in the literature but there is a paucity of studies concerned with the effects of local shared care arrangements designed for the specific purpose of lithium monitoring. Nonetheless, the extant data suggests that such agreements may help improve monitoring standards by allowing the responsibilities for managing the prescribing and monitoring of lithium to be more clearly defined and shared between primary and secondary care.

Use of chemotherapy near the end of life: what factors matter?

Background: Use of chemotherapy near the end of life in patients with metastatic cancer is often ineffective and toxic. Data about the factors associated with its use remain scarce, especially in Europe. Methods: Nationwide, register-based study including all hospitalized patients aged ≥20 years who died from metastatic solid tumors in France between 2010 and 2013. Results: A total of 279 846 hospitalized patients who died from metastatic cancer were included. During the last month before death, 19.5% received chemotherapy (including 11.3% during the last 2 weeks). Female sex (OR= 0.96, 95% CI= 0.93-0.98), older age (OR= 0.70, 95% CI= 0.69-0.71 for each 10-year increase) and higher number of chronic comorbidities (OR= 0.83, 95% CI= 0.82-0.84) were independently associated with lower rates of chemotherapy. Although patients with chemosensitive tumors were statistically more likely to receive chemotherapy during the last month before death (OR= 1.21, 1.18-1.25), this association was mostly fueled by testis and ovary tumors and we found no obvious pattern between the expected chemosensitivity of different cancers and the rates of chemotherapy use close to death. Compared with university hospitals, patients who died in for-profit clinics/hospital (OR= 1.40, 95% CI= 1.34-1.45), or comprehensive cancer centers (OR= 1.43, 95% CI= 1.36-1.50) were more likely to receive chemotherapy. Finally, high-volume centers and hospitals without palliative care units reported greater-than-average rates of chemotherapy near the end of life. Conclusion: among hospitalized patients with cancer, young individuals, treated in comprehensive cancer centers or in high-volume centers without palliative care units were the most likely to receive chemotherapy near the end of life. We found no evident pattern between the expected chemosensitivity of different cancers and the probability for patients to receive chemotherapy close to death.

End-of-life, euthanasia, and assisted suicide: An update on the situation in France.

On February 2, 2016, the French parliament adopted legislation creating new rights for the terminally ill. The text modifies and reinforces the rights of patients to end-of-life care and strengthens the status of surrogate decision makers. Under the new regulations, advance directives become legally binding though not unenforceable. Two types of advance directives are distinguished depending on whether the person is suffering or not from a serious illness when drafting them. The attending physician must abide by the patient's advance directives except in three situations: there is a life-threatening emergency; the directives are manifestly inappropriate; the directives are not compatible with the patient's medical condition. There is no time limit on the validity of advance directives. They are to be written in concordance with a model elaborated by the French superior health authority. This model takes into account the person's knowledge (or not) of having a serious illness when drafting his/her advance directives. In all likelihood, physicians will be called upon to help patients elaborate their advance directives. The law also has a provision for a national registry - potentially the shared medical file - to be designed as a reference source to facilitate storage, accessibility and safety of advance directives. The law introduces the right to continuous deep sedation until death in three specific situations: (i) at the patient's request when the short-term prognosis is death and continuous deep sedation is the only alternative for relieving the patient's suffering or one or more otherwise uncontrollable symptoms; (ii) at the patient's request when the patient chooses to withdraw artificial life-sustaining treatment and such withdrawal would be rapidly life-shortening and susceptible to cause unbearable suffering; (iii) when the patient is unable to express his/her wishes and the collegiate medical decision is to withdraw aggressive futile life-sustaining treatment; continuous deep sedation is mandatory when the patient presents signs of suffering or when the patient's suffering cannot be evaluated due to the patient's cerebral or cognitive state. The law stipulates prior control of such practices, implying the development of a new type of collegiate procedure for medical decision-making. Satisfactory application of this new law will depend greatly on the implementing decrees. It will also depend on the implementation of a genuine policy for the development of palliative care. Professional guidelines will be needed. Several issues relevant to the field of neurology remain unresolved or are introduced by the new regulations. Further in-depth reflection and research are need.

End-of-life care for hospitalized patients with metastatic melanoma in France: a nationwide, register-based study.

BACKGROUND: Although the aggressiveness of end-of-life cancer care has come under great scrutiny over the past two decades, little is known about the intensity of care and treatments in the last months of life of patients with metastatic melanoma. OBJECTIVES: To measure the prevalence of aggressive cancer care use, and to assess the frequency of palliative care referral over the course of the last 3 months of life of hospitalized patients who died from metastatic melanoma. METHODS: A nationwide register-based study in France was carried out, including all hospitalized adults aged ≥ 20 years who died from metastatic melanoma in metropolitan France between 2010 and 2013. RESULTS: Of 3889 patients who died from metastatic melanoma, 51·9% received chemotherapy in the last 3 months before death, 25·9% in the last month, 12·9% in the last 2 weeks and 7·6% in the last week. On average, patients were hospitalized for 31·7 days over the course of their last 3 months of life. During the final month before death, 12·0% of patients received radiation therapy, 14·0% received blood transfusion, 12·1% were transferred into an intensive care unit and 19·7% remained hospitalized continuously. Palliative care needs were identified in 78·4% of patients, with variations according to the type of facility. In total 17% of all patients died in palliative care inpatient units. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment intensity near the end of life of patients with metastatic melanoma raises concerns for the quality of care. There is a need for clinical guidelines and adequate support to facilitate patient-physician communication and to improve access to palliative care services.

Protocol Design Challenges in the Detection of Awareness in Aware Subjects Using EEG Signals.

Recent studies have evidenced serious difficulties in detecting covert awareness with electroencephalography-based techniques both in unresponsive patients and in healthy control subjects. This work reproduces the protocol design in two recent mental imagery studies with a larger group comprising 20 healthy volunteers. The main goal is assessing if modifications in the signal extraction techniques, training-testing/cross-validation routines, and hypotheses evoked in the statistical analysis, can provide solutions to the serious difficulties documented in the literature. The lack of robustness in the results advises for further search of alternative protocols more suitable for machine learning classification and of better performing signal treatment techniques. Specific recommendations are made using the findings in this work.

International study of the place of death of people with cancer: a population-level comparison of 14 countries across 4 continents using death certificate data.

BACKGROUND: Where people die can influence a number of indicators of the quality of dying. We aimed to describe the place of death of people with cancer and its associations with clinical, socio-demographic and healthcare supply characteristics in 14 countries. METHODS: Cross-sectional study using death certificate data for all deaths from cancer (ICD-10 codes C00-C97) in 2008 in Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain (2010), USA (2007) and Wales (N=1,355,910). Multivariable logistic regression analyses evaluated factors associated with home death within countries and differences across countries. RESULTS: Between 12% (South Korea) and 57% (Mexico) of cancer deaths occurred at home; between 26% (Netherlands, New Zealand) and 87% (South Korea) occurred in hospital. The large between-country differences in home or hospital deaths were partly explained by differences in availability of hospital- and long-term care beds and general practitioners. Haematologic rather than solid cancer (odds ratios (ORs) 1.29-3.17) and being married rather than divorced (ORs 1.17-2.54) were most consistently associated with home death across countries. CONCLUSIONS: A large country variation in the place of death can partly be explained by countries' healthcare resources. Country-specific choices regarding the organisation of end-of-life cancer care likely explain an additional part. These findings indicate the further challenge to evaluate how different specific policies can influence place of death patterns.

On the difficulty to communicate with fMRI-based protocols used to identify covert awareness.

Assessment of awareness in patients with disorders of consciousness such as patients in a vegetative state (unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, UWS) and patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS) remains difficult, with a high rate of misdiagnosis (around 40%). While patients with UWS have no awareness, patients with MCS have partial preservation of conscious awareness. To improve the assessment of awareness in these patients, recent functional neuroimaging protocols have been developed. However, does the complexity of realizing and interpreting these functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigation protocols, which are currently carried out by only a few specialist teams, permit generalizable use in clinical routine? In this study, 32 healthy volunteers, by definition perfectly conscious and able to efficiently communicate, performed the protocol proposed by Monti et al. in 2010. Four methods (comprising the method proposed by Monti et al., a mean squared error-based method, a correlation-based method, and a support vector machine-based method) were tested for correctly and accurately interpreting the communication task. Firstly, the different instructions for the localizer and the communication tasks had no effect on activations. Secondly, 25% of participants (8/32) did not provide the expected patterns of activations during fMRI tasks (four for each imagery task). However, this did not necessarily prevent the classification methods from correctly guessing the answers during the communication task. Conversely, these classification methods may fail to detect the correct answers even though participants activated the expected brain areas. None of the four methods produced 100% correct detection during the communication phases. The correlation-based method obtained the best results with an error rate of 4.2%. The results of this study demonstrate that fMRI-based communication paradigms may not be robust enough to reliably detect awareness in all aware patients. There is still a need to develop new statistical and analytical methods before considering their generalization in clinical routine.

Substitute or complement? Defining the relative place of EEG and fMRI in the detection of voluntary brain reactions.

To improve the assessment of awareness in patients with disorders of consciousness, recent protocols using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) have been developed, and led some specialized coma centers to use this method on a routine basis. Recently, promising results have also been observed with electroencephalography (EEG), a less expensive and widely available technique. However, since the spatiotemporal nature of the recorded signal differs between both EEG and fMRI, the question of whether one method could substitute or should complement the other method is a matter of debate. In this study, we compared the neural processes of two well-known EEG and fMRI mental imagery protocols to define the relative place of each method in the assessment of awareness. A group of 20 healthy volunteers performed both EEG and fMRI command-following and communication tasks. Distinct command following was found with both EEG and fMRI for five subjects, only with fMRI for 12 subjects, and only with EEG for one subject. In the communication task, neither EEG nor fMRI alone gave satisfactory results and no reliable communication could be established in approximately 1/3rd of the participants. If fMRI showed the best performance to detect volitional reactions in mental imagery tasks, our results provide evidence that the use of EEG must not be underestimated since a better detection was found with this method for at least one subject. More than being used as a substitute, EEG should complement fMRI to improve the detection of sign of awareness, and to reduce the risks of misjudgments.

[Setting up supportive care in oncology: reflexions and suggestions.]. / A propos de la mise en place des soins de support en cancérologie : pistes de réflexions et propositions.

A group of 19 health professionals implicated in supportive care wanted to suggest some reflexions for organization, setting and evaluation of the supportive care in institutions and health territories. The suggested organization must be applicable to any cancer patient and the place of the care whatever the age, the stage of the disease; in the future, must be applicable to any patient with serious chronic illness. This organization must allow to optimize the accompaniment and the care of the patients and their close relations by 1) precise and regular analysis of their needs; 2) the respect of the continuity of the health care; 3) the setting of collaborative practice and transversality in the care. It is not a new medical speciality but a coordination of competences for patients and their families.

["Research, medicine and tomorrow"]. / "Les réseaux, la médecine de demain".

In recent years health networks have developed as an essential new element in the organisation of the French health system. Under the auspices of the Regional Agency for Hospitalisation, the Franche-Comté was established in 1996 as per the Agency's order to implement a policy which facilitated the development and expansion of such networks. A Regional Federation of Health Networks was recently created in order to accompany the implementation of this policy so as to ensure coherence and efficiency. This article briefly presents one such health network in order to provide an example of the operational axis common to all networks. Furthermore, it presents the Regional Federation of Health Networks from Franche-Comté in order to highlight the necessity for research on the coordination and collaboration between the different health networks. Finally, the reader is invited to question the potential role of the Faculty of Medicine in this schema for the future expansion of the health system to one which focuses on health rather than medicine, taking into account the new professional practices and the new occupational fields which have arisen as a result of the development of health networks.

[CT guided neurolysis of the sphenopalatine ganglion for management of refractory trigeminal neuralgia]. / Névralgie faciale essentielle traitée par neurolyse du ganglion sphéno-palatin sous contrôle tomodensitométrique.

The authors present the case of a patient with recurrent trigeminal neuralgia, refractory to medical treatment and ablation of the trigeminal ganglion, who underwent three separate CT guided injections for pterygopalatine ganglion ablation over a two year period. Ablation of the pterygopalatine ganglion may be an effective technique for pain management in patients suffering from atypical facial pain syndrome, cluster headache, or neuritis. The technique used for CT guided ablation using alcohol or radiofrequency is described. The advantages and pitfalls of this technique are reviewed.

Racial and ethnic disparities in infant mortality: risk in social context.

This article presents the multifaceted efforts of Syracuse Healthy Start, a federally funded initiative of the Onondaga County Health Department and over 20 partnering agencies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in infant mortality. The analyses presented in this article demonstrate that many women--Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic--have serious risks for low birth weight and infant death. In many cases, multiple, simultaneous risks complicate a pregnant woman's situation and in other cases the longitudinal cumulative risks impact health across generations. Infant mortality decreased overall, and for both Caucasian and African American infants during the first 3 years of the project.

Twin pregnancy in a woman on long-term epoprostenol therapy for primary pulmonary hypertension. A case report.

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy associated with primary pulmonary hypertension is an uncommon observation, with maternal mortality > 50%. Experience treating this condition is limited. Past reports have emphasized the need for pregnancy termination. In the last few years there has been considerable interest in long-term intravenous use of epoprostenol (prostacyclin) in patients with primary pulmonary hypertension. CASE: A woman with severe primary pulmonary hypertension who was on long-term epoprostenol therapy became pregnant with twins and was treated with high doses of epoprostenol and nitric oxide during delivery and the postpartum period. She was well six months later on continuous epoprostenol therapy. The one viable infant was alive and still hospitalized at this writing. CONCLUSION: Epoprostenol therapy may be continued during pregnancy in patients with severe primary pulmonary hypertension for long-term pulmonary vasodilatation.