A measure for perioperative anxiety symptoms in patients with FUAS - treated uterine fibroids: development and validation.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a scale that measured the perioperative anxiety symptoms of uterine fibroids (PASM-UF) treated with focused ultrasound ablation surgery (FUAS). METHODS: A panel of gynecologists, nurses, and patient-reported outcome (PRO) experts created a draft of the PASM-UF scale. Women who underwent FUAS for uterine fibroids were recruited for its psychometric validation. Assessments were conducted during admission, before surgery, and at discharge. The Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) was administered to assess criterion validity. We assessed the relationship between the developed PASM-UF and the SCL-90 via a correlation analysis. Cronbach's alpha was used to assess internal consistency for reliability. RESULTS: We included five items, pain, lack of appetite, fatigue (tiredness), disturbed sleep, and anxiety, in the final version of the PASM-UF. Data were collected from 228 patients. Cronbach's alpha was 0.745, whereas the correlation coefficient between SCL-90 and PASM-UF was 0.345 (p < 0.001). The total PASM-UF scores were significantly higher in patients whose SCL-90 scores were ≥160 compared to those with <160 (9.85 ± 9.07 vs. 4.01 ± 5.15, p = .002). Those who did not complete the SCL-90 reported lower PASM-UF scores than those who did (2.33 ± 3.27 vs. 4.67 ± 5.99, p = .006). Patients reported significantly lower PASM-UF scores postoperatively than preoperatively (2.95 ± 4.18 vs. 3.92 ± 4.90, p = .002). CONCLUSIONS: The PASM-UF is a valid, reliable, and sensitive scale for assessing perioperative anxiety levels among women with uterine fibroids. Statistical analysis suggests that it is also an effective instrument for scientific research.Key MessageWe developed a brief scale to assess anxiety in perioperative patients with uterine fibroids. In addition, the scale monitored the anxiety levels at multiple frequencies and did not increase burden on the patients. The scale has been proven to be effective, reliable, and highly sensitive.

Diagnostic fragment-ion-based extension strategy for rapid screening and identification of serial components of homologous families contained in traditional Chinese medicine prescription using high-resolution LC-ESI- IT-TOF/MS: Shengmai injection as an example.

The paper presents a modified and universally applicable diagnostic fragment-ion-based extension strategy (DFIBES) to efficiently process the information acquired by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization source in combination with hybrid ion trap and high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry [LC-(ESI)-IT-TOF/MS], facilitating the structural determination of serial components contained in traditional Chinese medicine prescription (TCMP). The key advantage of DFIBES is that it facilitates the rapid classification of the complicated peaks into well-known chemical families, which significantly simplifies the complicated procedures of structural characterization. Moreover, considering that a certain family of compounds usually produces identical fragment ions, the DFIBES would be widely applicable to many other families of compounds identification besides the presently validated ginsenosides and lignans. Shengmai injection, composed of Panax ginseng, Radix ophiopogonis, and Schisandra chinensis, was taken as a TCMP example to conduct and validate the proposed DFIBES. Diagnostic fragment ions (DFI) for each chemical family contained in Shengmai injection was firstly determined or proposed from the separated analysis of 15 authentic standards and the extract of S. chinensis. The ESI-MSn fragmentation patterns of ginsenosides and lignans were then systematically studied for developing the 'structure extension' approach. Upon LC-IT-TOF/MS analysis and DFIBES, more than 30 ginsenosides and 20 lignans have been rapidly detected and identified from Shengmai injection, supporting that the DFIBES is a very powerful strategy and would be widely applicable for the complicated components identification from TCMP and other complicated mixtures.