Preliminary effects of a rural skin cancer prevention intervention for youths.

OBJECTIVES: To pilot and assess the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects of the Rural Adult and Youth Sun (RAYS) protection program, a multilevel skin cancer preventive intervention for young children living in rural U.S. communities, delivered through community-organized team sports. METHOD: Three rural counties in Utah participated with two receiving the intervention and the third serving as a control. Youth sports leagues were recruited through recreation departments and the study took place from May through October 2021. Intervention leagues received sun protection supplies for players and coaches, educational materials for parents, and coaches were offered training on skin cancer and sun protection behaviors. RESULTS: The RAYS program is both feasible to deliver and acceptable to coaches, parents, and players. The intervention also demonstrates beneficial preliminary effects on components of observed child sun-protective behaviors, coach sun protection behaviors, knowledge of skin cancer prevention recommendations, and self-efficacy in skin cancer prevention. CONCLUSIONS: Multilevel interventions for skin cancer prevention among young children can be successfully delivered through community organizations and their settings. A priority moving forward is the identification of ways to optimize delivery of such programs to positively influence skin cancer preventive behaviors among children living in diverse rural areas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

'I had a bigger cancer risk than I thought ': The experience of receiving personalized risk information as part of a skin cancer prevention intervention in the college setting.

BACKGROUND: Diagnoses of both melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers are becoming increasingly common among young adults. Interventions in this population are a priority because they do not consistently follow skin cancer prevention recommendations. OBJECTIVES: The goal of the current study was to examine college students' perspectives on and experience with receiving a skin cancer prevention intervention that provided personalized skin cancer risk feedback in the form of an ultraviolet (UV) photograph, the results of genetic testing for common skin cancer risk variants, and/or general skin cancer prevention education. METHODS: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 38 college students who received a skin cancer prevention intervention. The interview covered students' feelings about their personal skin cancer risk information, the impact of the intervention on their skin cancer risk perceptions, actions or intentions to act with regard to their sun protection practices and feedback for improvement of the intervention content or delivery. RESULTS: Participants reported that different intervention components contributed to increased awareness of their sun protection behaviours, shifts in cognitions about and motivation to implement sun protection strategies and reported changes to their skin cancer prevention strategies. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that college students are interested in and responsive to these types of multicomponent skin cancer preventive interventions. Further, students demonstrate some motivation and intentionality toward changing their skin cancer risk behaviour in the short term. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Participants involved in this study were members of the public (undergraduate students) who were involved in a skin cancer prevention intervention, then participated in semistructured interviews, which provided the data analysed for this study.

Carbon dioxide embolism during pneumoperitoneum for laparoscopic surgery: a case report.

Although rare, a carbon dioxide (CO2) embolism is a potential complication of laparoscopic surgery. An embolism may occur during insufflation of the abdomen after incorrect placement of a Veress needle into a vascular organ or an intra-abdominal vessel. If the CO2 embolism is not recognized, it can be rapidly fatal for the patient unless the patient receives treatment immediately. Therefore, anesthesia providers must be vigilant while monitoring, recognize when an embolism has occurred, and be able to provide effective management and treatment for their patient. This case report describes a 34-year-old woman who underwent a suction dilation and curettage, followed by an exploratory laparoscopic procedure to examine her uterus. After placement of the Veress needle and insufflation of the abdomen, a CO2 embolism developed that caused severe hypotension, bradycardia, and loss of end-tidal CO2 tracing. The patient was treated quickly and aggressively with fluid administration and intravenous vasopressors. Because of rapid recognition and treatment the patient did not suffer any long-term adverse medical events.

Genotyping the BDNF rs6265 (val66met) polymorphism by one-step amplified refractory mutation system PCR.

BACKGROUND: The brain derived neutrophic factor (BDNF), a 27 kD polypeptide, is one of the most widely expressed neurotrophins in the brain, regulating neural development and plasticity. The BDNF gene contains a functional single-nucleotide polymorphism (rs6265), which results in a valine to methionine substitution (val66met), leading to reduced mature BDNF expression. This polymorphism has been widely implicated in a host of psychiatric disorders and is a focus of many ongoing psychiatric genetic studies. OBJECTIVE: To develop an efficient and rapid method to detect the val66met polymorphism in a one-step PCR reaction. METHOD AND RESULTS: We have designed four PCR primers that amplify the BDNF gene region containing rs6265. The specificity of the four primers in a single PCR reaction amplifies two allele-specific amplicons (253 and 201 bp) and the entire region (401 bp) as an internal control, which are easily distinguished on a polyacrylamide gel. The effectiveness and efficiency of the results are validated by traditional NlaIII restriction enzyme digestion, sequencing of resulting bands and confirmation on 308 genomic DNA samples. CONCLUSION: This new method describes a rapid, sensitive, cost effective and high throughput genotyping of the BDNF val66met polymorphism, ideal for large-scale genotyping studies.