Evaluation of Public Interest in Mohs Surgery and Other Elective Surgical Procedures During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The reallocation of health care resources to focus on the acute care needs of COVID-19 patients leads to a delay and deferral of outpatient surgical procedures such as Mohs surgery. OBJECTIVE: Planning for the resumption of regular outpatient surgical care and preparing for future surges in COVID-19 cases requires identifying surrogate markers of health care demand. MATERIALS AND METHODS: United States national and state-based Google search data for "Mohs surgery" and other common elective surgical and cosmetic procedures were evaluated. These were compared with national and state-wide COVID-19 case number and death data from the Johns Hopkins University. Pearson correlation coefficients were generated to assess the association between COVID-19 cases and deaths with Google search trends. RESULTS: Search volume for "Mohs surgery" and other elective surgical and cosmetic procedures significantly decreased as the number of new deaths from COVID-19 increased. Statistically significant inverse correlation was noted between "Mohs surgery" search volume and new COVID-19 deaths on a national and state-based level. CONCLUSION: Search metric analysis may be used as part of a big data model to help predict health care demand during the reopening phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comparison of nonlinear microscopy and frozen section histology for imaging of Mohs surgical margins.

Mohs surgery uses en face frozen section analysis (FSA) with complete margin examination for the excision of select basal cell carcinomas (BCC), obtaining excellent cosmetic outcomes and extremely low recurrence rates. However, Mohs with FSA is time-consuming because of the need to iteratively perform cryosectioning on sequential excisions. Fluorescent microscopies can image tissue specimens without requiring physical sectioning, potentially reducing the time to perform Mohs surgery. We demonstrate a protocol for nonlinear microscopy (NLM) imaging of surgical specimens that combines dual agent staining, virtual H&E rendering, and video rate imaging. We also introduce a novel protocol that enables micron-level co-registration of NLM images with FSA histology, and demonstrate that NLM can reproduce similar features similar to FSA in BCC specimens with both negative and positive surgical margins. We show that the fluorescent labels can be extracted with conventional vacuum infiltration processing, enabling subsequent immunohistochemistry on fluorescently labeled tissue. This protocol can also be applied to evaluate the performance of NLM compared with FSA in a wide range of pathologies for intraoperative consultation.

Rapid histopathological imaging of skin and breast cancer surgical specimens using immersion microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation.

Rapid histopathological evaluation of fresh, unfixed human tissue using optical sectioning microscopy would have applications to intraoperative surgical margin assessment. Microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation (MUSE) is a low-cost optical sectioning technique using ultraviolet illumination which limits fluorescence excitation to the specimen surface. In this paper, we characterize MUSE using high incident angle, water immersion illumination to improve sectioning. Propidium iodide is used as a nuclear stain and eosin yellow as a counterstain. Histologic features of specimens using MUSE, nonlinear microscopy (NLM) and conventional hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) histology were evaluated by pathologists to assess potential application in Mohs surgery for skin cancer and lumpectomy for breast cancer. MUSE images of basal cell carcinoma showed high correspondence with frozen section H&E histology, suggesting that MUSE may be applicable to Mohs surgery. However, correspondence in breast tissue between MUSE and paraffin embedded H&E histology was limited due to the thicker optical sectioning in MUSE, suggesting that further development is needed for breast surgical applications. We further demonstrate that the transverse image resolution of MUSE is limited by the optical sectioning thickness and use co-registered NLM to quantify the improvement in MUSE optical sectioning from high incident angle water immersion illumination.

Screening Recommendations for Hepatitis B Virus Infection.

CLINICAL QUESTION: What are the screening guidelines for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection for asymptomatic, nonpregnant adolescents and adults in the United States? BOTTOM LINE: Patients with a high risk of infection, such as those with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), who use injection drugs, or who live in a household where someone is infected with HBV; men who have sex with men; or patients who come from countries with a high prevalence of HBV infection, should be screened.

Severe cutaneous adverse reaction to telaprevir.

A 50-year-old woman presented with diffuse, intensely pruritic pink-red papules on her trunk and extremities three weeks after starting combination therapy with ribavirin, telaprevir, and interferon. She also had cervical lymphadenopathy, fever, eosinophilia, and transaminitis consistent with a severe drug reaction to telaprevir. She was started on high potency topical steroids under inpatient observation and recovered within two weeks. Severe cutaneous eruptions secondary to telaprevir have resulted in black-box warnings for potentially fatal skin reactions, including Drug Reaction with Eosinophilia and Systemic Symptoms (DRESS) and Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), and Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN). Because these reactions carry acute mortality rates of 10%, prompt detection and treatment with steroids are important. As such, physicians should be aware of these potentially lethal side effects.

Synovitis, acne, pustulosis, hyperostosis, and osteitis syndrome treated with a combination of isotretinoin and pamidronate.

Synovitis, acne, pustulosis, hyperostosis, and osteitis (SAPHO) syndrome is a clinically heterogeneous entity, encompassing a variety of debilitating conditions that have in common inflammation of the skeletal system and skin. To date, there is a paucity of documented efficacious treatment options. We report a 48-year-old man with skeletal and cutaneous signs and symptoms who improved dramatically after treatment with a combination of isotretinoin and pamidronate. This report provides an alternative treatment regimen for SAPHO that addresses the possible underlying pathophysiology of this likely underdiagnosed syndrome.

Tumescent anesthesia: evolution and current uses.

The tumescent technique of local anesthesia is one of the great techniques developed in the last 20 years. It has dramatically changed the way clinicians perform many cutaneous surgical procedures. Those that use the technique are forever grateful for the insight that Dr. Jeffrey Klein used to push the envelope and discover the safe doses of subcutaneous administration of lidocaine.

Exploration of a bayesian updating methodology to monitor the safety of interventional cardiovascular procedures.

Appropriate methods for monitoring of the safety of medical devices introduced into clinical practice have been elusive to develop and implement. A novel approach is the application of Bayesian updating, which incorporates existing knowledge regarding event rates into the estimation of risk. This framework has been shown in other domains to be data efficient and to address some of the limitations of conventional statistical methods. In this article, the authors propose a methodologic framework for developing initial prior probability distributions in risk-stratified patient groups and a mechanism for incorporating accumulating procedure safety experience. In addition, they use this methodology to retrospectively analyze the clinical outcomes of 309 patients undergoing an infrequent interventional cardiology procedure, rotational atherectomy. These exploratory analyses demonstrate the feasibility of Bayesian updating applied to medical device safety evaluation and indicate that the methodology is capable of generating stable estimates of risk in a variety of patient risk groups.