Positron emission tomography assessment of metacarpal/metatarsal condylar fractures post surgical repair: Prospective study in 14 racehorses.

OBJECTIVES: To assess 18F-sodium fluoride (18F-NaF) positron emission tomography (PET) findings associated with metacarpal/metatarsal condylar fractures at the time of fracture repair and through healing. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective descriptive study. ANIMALS: Fourteen Thoroughbred racehorses. METHODS: 18F-NaF PET was performed within 4 days of surgical metacarpal/metatarsal condylar fracture repair, on both the injured and contralateral limb. Follow-up PET scans were offered at 3- and 5-months post fracture repair. Areas of abnormal uptake were assessed using a previously validated grading system. RESULTS: Eight fractures were located in the parasagittal groove (PSG) (six lateral and two medial) and six fractures were located abaxial to the PSG (non-PSG) through the palmar/plantar condyle (all lateral). All horses in the latter group had uptake in the lateral palmar condyle of the contralateral limb suggestive of stress remodeling. Three horses with PSG fractures had uptake in a similar location in the contralateral limb. Horses with lateral condylar fracture only presented minimal or mild uptake in the medial condyle, which is considered atypical in the front limbs for horses in full training. Four horses developed periarticular uptake in the postoperative period suggestive of degenerative joint disease, three of these horses had persistent uptake at the fracture site. These four horses did not return to racing successfully. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study provide evidence of pre-existing lesions and specific uptake patterns in racehorses suffering from metacarpal/metatarsal condylar fractures. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: PET has a possible role in the prevention, diagnosis, and postoperative monitoring of metacarpal/metatarsal condylar fractures in racehorses.

Focusing Narrowly on Model Fit in Factor Analysis Can Mask Construct Heterogeneity and Model Misspecification: Applied Demonstrations across Sample and Assessment Types.

This study builds upon research indicating that focusing narrowly on model fit when evaluating factor analytic models can lead to problematic inferences regarding the nature of item sets, as well as how models should be applied to inform measure development and validation. To advance research in this area, we present concrete examples relevant to researchers in clinical, personality, and related subfields highlighting two specific scenarios when an overreliance on model fit may be problematic. Specifically, we present data analytic examples showing that focusing narrowly on model fit may lead to (a) incorrect conclusions that heterogeneous item sets reflect narrower homogeneous constructs and (b) the retention of potentially problematic items when developing assessment measures. We use both interview data from adult outpatients (N = 2,149) and self-report data from adults recruited online (N = 547) to demonstrate the importance of these issues across sample types and assessment methods. Following demonstrations with these data, we make recommendations focusing on how other model characteristics (e.g., factor loading patterns; carefully considering the content and nature of factor indicators) should be considered in addition to information provided by model fit indices when evaluating factor analytic models.

A multisample demonstration of using the prolific platform for repeated assessment and psychometric substance use research.

The Prolific platform offers a potentially useful and efficient crowdsourcing option for repeated assessment substance use research, including for psychometric research requiring large samples. We present both (a) a series of practical recommendations for using Prolific and (b) data from multiple samples demonstrating Prolific's potential for efficiently collected repeated measures data. First, we present data from a 5-day daily diary protocol. We recruited a large sample (N = 321 at Day 1) screened for a history of self-identified mental health issues and weekly alcohol use. Participant adherence was good (82%) even without in-person contact. Alcohol use patterns conformed to theoretical expectations: Participants were more likely to drink on Fridays and Saturdays than other days, men drank more than women, and higher Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT; Saunders et al., 1993) scores were associated with an increased likelihood of use and more overall drinking on a given day. Second, we present data from 429 Prolific participants screened for a history of mental health issues who completed assessments 2 weeks apart with strong retention (N = 377; 88%). We compare these data with the data from undergraduates (N = 529) to demonstrate Prolific's utility for conducting psychometrically oriented substance use research. Internal consistency estimates for measures from the Prolific data matched or exceeded those from the undergraduate data. Furthermore, measure scores showed strong temporal stability, and factor structures (e.g., AUDIT item-level structures) conformed to theoretical expectations. Collectively, these findings indicate that Prolific can be used successfully for repeated measures data collection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Momentary assessment of everyday physical pain in outpatients with borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric disorder associated with dysregulation in multiple domains of functioning. Physical health, and specifically pain, is one such domain that has gone understudied. Although evidence suggests that BPD is associated with chronic pain, few studies have examined nonchronic pain in the disorder. The current study used ambulatory assessment to examine momentary physical pain in everyday life in BPD outpatients (N = 26) and community comparisons (COM; N = 26) not in treatment for chronic pain (Nobservations = 5,458). We predicted and observed that BPD outpatients would report greater pain intensity and greater pain variability than COM comparisons. We also examined the relationship of pain and emotion dysregulation, a core feature of BPD, by testing the association between pain and negative affect concurrently and lagged over time. We predicted that momentary pain and negative affect would be associated in both groups, but that pain would predict negative affect more strongly in the BPD group. As predicted, concurrent pain and negative affect were associated in both groups, and groups differed significantly in terms of the association of lagged pain and next-assessment negative affect, with a negative association in the COM group. The current study represents a preliminary first step, finding that pain is relevant to the everyday experience of BPD individuals. This pain propensity may contribute to the elevated prevalence of BPD in chronic pain samples. Further, BPD individuals demonstrated emotional reactivity to pain, suggesting that pain may be a contributor to emotion dysregulation in this disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Ambulatory Assessment.

In recent years, significant technological advances have changed our understanding of dynamic processes in clinical psychology. A particularly important agent of change has been ambulatory assessment (AA). AA is the assessment of individuals in their daily lives, combining the twin benefits of increased ecological validity and minimized retrospective biases. These benefits make AA particularly well-suited to the assessment of dynamic processes, and recent advancements in technology are providing exciting new opportunities to understand these processes in new ways. In the current article, we briefly detail the capabilities currently offered by smartphones and mobile physiological devices, as well as some of the practical and ethical challenges of incorporating these new technologies into AA research. We then provide several examples of recent innovative applications of AA methodology in clinical research, assessment, and intervention and provide a case example of AA data generated from a study utilizing multiple mobile devices. In this way, we aim to provide a sense of direction for researchers planning AA studies of their own.