Does the Day of the Week Predict a Cesarean Section? A Statewide Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Although guidelines for clinical indications of cesarean sections (CS) exist, nonclinical factors may affect CS practices. We hypothesize that CS rates vary by day of the week. METHODS: An analysis of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development database for California from 2006 to 2010 was performed. All patients admitted to a teaching or nonteaching hospital for attempted vaginal delivery were included. Patients who died within 24 h of admission were excluded. Weekend days were defined as Saturday and Sunday, and weekdays were defined as Monday to Friday. The primary outcome was CS versus vaginal delivery. Multivariable analysis was performed, adjusting for patient demographics, clinical factors, and system variables. RESULTS: A total of 1,855,675 women were included. The overall CS rate was 9.02%. On unadjusted analysis, CS rates were significantly lower on weekends versus weekdays (6.65% versus 9.58%, P < 0.001). On adjusted analysis, women were 27% less likely to have a CS on weekends than on weekdays (odds ratio [OR] 0.73, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.71-0.75, P < 0.001). In addition, Hispanic ethnicity and delivery in teaching hospitals were associated with a decreased likelihood of CS (OR 0.91, 95% CI 0.86-0.96, P = 0.01; OR 0.80, 95% CI 0.69-0.93, P < 0.001, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: CS rates are significantly decreased on weekends relative to weekdays, even when controlling for patient, hospital, and system factors.

Does preoperative pharmacologic prophylaxis reduce the rate of venous thromboembolism in pancreatectomy patients?

BACKGROUND: Whether the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) may be reduced by preoperative administration of prophylactic heparin is unknown. We hypothesized that timing of heparin administration does not significantly alter the incidence of VTE in pancreatic surgery. METHODS: An analysis was conducted using data from Massachusetts General Hospital's National Surgical Quality Improvement Program from 2012 to 2017. All patients admitted for elective pancreatic resection were included. The primary outcome was development of VTE. Multivariable regression was performed, adjusting for patient demographics and various clinical factors. RESULTS: In total, 1448 patients were analyzed, of whom 1062 received preoperative heparin (73.3%). Overall, 36 (2.5%) patients developed VTE. On unadjusted analysis, there was no statistically significant difference between patients who received preoperative heparin compared with those who did not (2.6% vs. 1.3%, respectively; p = 0.079). On adjusted analysis, there was an association with increased VTE rates among patients who received preoperative heparin (OR 2.93, 95% CI 1.10-7.81; p = 0.031). CONCLUSION: There was an association between preoperative heparin administration and increased incidence of VTE on adjusted analysis, possibly reflecting appropriate surgical judgment in patient selection for prophylaxis. These data question the inclusion of preoperative VTE pharmacologic prophylaxis as a reliable quality indicator.

The Operating and Anesthetic Reference Assistant (OARA): A fine-tuned large language model for resident teaching.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to fine-tune a large language model (LLM) for domain-specific text generation in surgical and anesthesia residency education. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: With growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) for medical training, the potential of LLMs to transform residency education is explored. METHODS: The 7-billion parameter base model "Vicuna v1.5" was trained on 266,342 lines of text from 821 peer-reviewed documents. We evaluated the model with 150 surgical or anesthesia queries and assessed accuracy, token count, and inference speed across various reasoning tasks. Tests of significance were conducted using ANOVA and chi-square analysis. RESULTS: Our model achieved 65.3% accuracy, excelling in surgical case-based tasks. We found no significant difference in accuracy between knowledge domains (P=0.081), though longer response generation demonstrated poorer accuracy, with significant accuracy variation based on output length (P â€‹= â€‹0.002). CONCLUSIONS: LLMs show potential in enhancing residency education. Our model's efficiency and task-specific accuracy highlights such promise, though limits in parameter count diminishes accuracy of longer response generation. Our findings showcase how AI may be integrated effectively within future residency training.

Colorectal surveillance outcomes from an institutional longitudinal cohort of lynch syndrome carriers.

Objective: Lynch Syndrome (LS) carriers have a significantly increased risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC) during their lifetimes. Further stratification of this patient population may help in identifying additional risk factors that predispose to colorectal carcinogenesis. In most LS patients CRC may arise from adenomas, although an alternative non-polypoid carcinogenesis pathway has been proposed for PMS2 carriers. Using data from our institutional LS cohort, our aim was to describe our current colorectal screening outcomes with a focus on the incidence of adenomas in the context of different MMR genotypes and patient demographics such as gender, race, and ethnicity. Design: We collected demographics, genetic, colonoscopy, and pathology results from a total of 163 LS carriers who obtained regular screening care at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Data were extracted from the electronic health records into a REDCap database for analysis. Logistic regressions were performed to measure the association between MMR variants and the likelihood of adenomas, advanced adenomas, and CRC. Then, we analyzed the cumulative incidences of these outcomes for the first 36 months following enrollment using Kaplan-Meier incidence curves, and Cox proportional hazard regressions. Results: On multivariate analysis, age (≥45 years old) was associated with an increased risk of developing adenomas (P=0.034). Patients with a prior or active cancer status were less likely to develop adenomas (P=0.015), despite of the lack of association between surgical history with this outcome (P=0.868). We found no statistically significant difference in likelihood of adenoma development between MLH1 and MSH2/EPCAM, MSH6, and PMS2 carriers. Moreover, we observed no statistically significant difference in the likelihood of advanced adenomas or CRC for any measured covariates. On Cox proportional hazard, compared to MLH1 carriers, the incidence of adenomas was highest among MSH2/EPCAM carriers during for the first 36-months of follow-up (P<0.001). We observed a non-statistically significant trend for Hispanics having a higher and earlier cumulative incidence of adenomas compared to non-Hispanics (P=0.073). No MMR carrier was more likely to develop advanced adenomas. No difference in the incidence of CRC by MMR gene (P=0.198). Conclusion: Screening recommendations for CRC in LS patients should be based on specific MMR variants and should also be tailored to consider patient demographics.

Intra-aortic balloon pump placement in coronary artery bypass grafting patients by day of admission.

INTRODUCTION: Intra-Aortic Balloon Pumps (IABPs) can be utilized to provide hemodynamic support in high risk patients awaiting coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). There are many indications for IABP and institutional practice patterns regarding the placement of IABPs is variable. As a result, the preoperative placement of an IABP in a patient awaiting CABG is not standardized and may vary according to non-clinical factors. We hypothesize that the rate of IABP placement varies by day of the week. METHODS: A retrospective cohort analysis of the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development database from 2006 to 2010 was performed. All patients admitted for CABG were included. Patients who died within 24 h of admission and those who had absolute contraindications to IABP placement were excluded. The primary outcome was preoperative IABP placement versus non-placement. A multivariable logistic regression analysis to identify predictors of IABP placement was performed, adjusting for patient demographics, clinical factors, and system variables. RESULTS: A total of 46,347 patients underwent CABG, of which 7695 (16.60%) had an IABP placed preoperatively. On unadjusted analysis, IABP rates were significantly higher on weekends versus weekdays (20.83% vs. 15.70%, p < 0.001). On adjusted analysis, patients awaiting CABG were 1.30 times more likely to have an IABP placed on weekends than on weekdays (OR: 1.30, 95% CI 1.20-1.40, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The odds of preoperative IABP placement prior to CABG is significantly increased on weekends compared to weekdays, even when controlling for clinical factors. Further exploration of this phenomenon and its associations are warranted.