Narrative review of clinical practice guidelines for treating people with moderate or severe traumatic brain injury.

BACKGROUND: Practice guidelines (CPGs) provide informed treatment recommendations from systematic reviews and assessment of the benefits and harms that are intended to optimize patient care. Review of CPGs addressing rehabilitation for people with moderate/severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), has not been fully investigated. OBJECTIVE: Identify published, vetted, clinical practice guidelines that address rehabilitation for people with moderate/severe TBI. METHODS: Six data bases were accessed using key word search terms: "Traumatic Brain Injury" and "Clinical Practice Guidelines" and "Rehabilitation". Further inclusions included "adult" and "moderate or severe". Exclusions included: "mild" and "concussive injury". Three reviewers read abstracts and manuscripts for final inclusion. The AGREE II template was applied for additional appraisal. RESULTS: There were 767 articles retrieved using the search terms, 520 were eliminated because of content irrelevance; and 157 did not specify rehabilitation treatment or did not follow a process for CPGs. A total of 17 CPGs met all criteria and only 4 of these met all AGREE II criteria. CONCLUSION: There are few CPGs addressing rehabilitation for people with moderate/severe TBI. More interventional trials are needed to determine treatment effectiveness. Timely and methodologically sound vetting of studies are needed to ensure CPG reliability and facilitate access to quality, effective treatment for people with moderate/severe TBI.

Narrative Review of Clinical Practice Guidelines for Rehabilitation of People With Spinal Cord Injury: 2010-2020.

ABSTRACT: Clinical practice guidelines provide reliable, vetted, and critical information to bring research to practice. Some medical specialties (e.g., physical medicine and rehabilitation) provide multidomain treatment for various conditions. This presents challenges because physical medicine and rehabilitation is a small specialty, a diverse patient base in terms sociodemographics and diagnosis, treatments are difficult to standardize, and rehabilitation research is underfunded. We wished to identify quality and applicability of clinical practice guidelines and searched "Spinal Cord Injury AND Clinical Practice Guidelines AND Rehabilitation" and vetting process.Three hundred fifty-nine articles were identified of which 58 met all criteria for full-text review of which 13 were included in the final selection. Additional publications were accessed from a nondatabase search. Five articles addressed postacute care, community treatment. Nine articles had no recorded vetting process but addressed rehabilitation as an outcome and were included separately. Many of the clinical practice guidelines were developed without evidence from randomized controlled trials, one had input from stakeholders, and some are out of date and do not address important aspects of changes in demographics of the affected population and the use of newer technologies such as sensors and robotics and devices. Identification of these gaps may help stimulate treatment that is clinically relevant, accessible, and current.

Contribution of sarcopenia and physical inactivity to mortality in people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyle have contributed to the epidemic of obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We assessed the association between physical activity, NAFLD, and sarcopenia, and their contributions to mortality. METHODS: Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2004 with Linked Mortality file (through 2015) was utilised. NAFLD was determined by the US Fatty Liver Index in the absence of secondary causes of liver disease. Sarcopenia was defined using appendicular lean mass divided by body mass index by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health criteria. Activity level was determined using standard self-reports. Publicly available imputed dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry data sets were used. RESULTS: Of 4,611 NHANES participants (48.2% males; 72.5% White; mean age 45.9 years), NAFLD was present in 1,351 (29.3%), of whom 17.7% had sarcopenia. Of the NAFLD group, 46.3% was inactive, whilst intermediate and ideal physical activity rates were observed in 14.2% and 39.5%, respectively. Sarcopenia was significantly and inversely related to higher physical activity level, both amongst NAFLD (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45 [95% CI 0.30-0.69]) and non-NAFLD (OR = 0.51 [0.35-0.75]) groups. During a median follow-up of 13.5 years, a total of 586 subjects died, of whom 251 had NAFLD. Amongst those who died with NAFLD, 33.0% had sarcopenia and 54.3% were inactive. Compared with NAFLD without sarcopenia, NAFLD with sarcopenia was associated with a higher risk of all-cause (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.78 [1.16-2.73]), cardiac-specific (HR = 3.19 [1.17-8.74]), and cancer-specific mortality (HR = 2.12 [1.08-4.15]). CONCLUSIONS: Inactivity is associated with presence of sarcopenia, whilst sarcopenia is associated with increased mortality amongst NAFLD patients. Sarcopenia should be a part of clinical assessment of patients with NAFLD. Treatment of NAFLD should include optimal management of sarcopenia. LAY SUMMARY: Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and sarcopenia have similar pathophysiological profiles. Our data show that sarcopenia is associated with inactivity in subjects with NAFLD. The presence of sarcopenia in patients with NAFLD poses increased risk for all-cause and cardiac-specific mortality.

Paucity of Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Rehabilitation of Burn Survivors.

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) provide an efficient route from research to practice because they follow a prescribed, vetted process for evidence collection. CPGs offer underserved fields, such as burn rehabilitation, an accessible approach to reliable treatment. A literature search was performed using the terms "Burns AND CPGs AND Rehabilitation." Three reviewers determined whether guideline development followed an established vetting process. "Rehabilitation" required evidence of treatment to improve, maintain, or restore human function and provide treatment to facilitate recovery. Only 160 articles were obtained and, after adding the term "functional outcome," 62 remained for full-text review, of which 21 were eligible. When articles were scored for inclusion of both rehabilitation AND function or functional outcome AND guideline vetting, seven articles remained. One was community based. Nine articles had no recorded vetting process but addressed rehabilitation as an outcome. There is a paucity of CPGs relevant to clinical rehabilitation for burn survivors, likely a result of very few published intervention trials, rare randomized controlled trials addressing rehabilitation, absence of data to establish an evidence base for practice recommendations, an inadequate number of community-based intervention trials, and little patient input. It is likely that rehabilitation of burn survivors will improve if more people gain skills in meeting the needs of people with burn injury. An increase in trained professionals may lead to an increase in intervention trials and research to establish evidence for CPGs. People engaged in burn research have an opportunity to devise a systematic, generally agreed-upon approach toward evaluating burn patients and treatment outcomes that will permit data sharing across the world and assess patients throughout the acute and chronic phases of burn injury.

The impact of modifiable risk factors on the long-term outcomes of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular (CV) disease is the leading cause of mortality in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The American Heart Association (AHA) developed 7 CV health metrics (poor, intermediate and ideal health) to improve CV health. AIM: To assess population-attributable fractions (PAFs) of CV health metrics to all-cause and CV mortality among NAFLD patients METHODS: We included adult participants from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 1988-1994) with clinical and mortality data. NAFLD was defined as the presence of hepatic steatosis on ultrasonography in the absence of other chronic liver diseases and excessive alcohol use. RESULTS: A total of 4040 adults with NAFLD and 7515 without were included. NAFLD had fewer ideal health metrics than non-NAFLD (age-standardised prevalence: 20% vs 10% for ≤1 ideal health metric; 5.1% vs 8.7% for ≥6, all P < .001). Following median follow-up of 19.2 years (IQR: 17.5-21.0 years), 1,136 NAFLD subjects (327 CV deaths) and 1600 non-NAFLD subjects (447 CV deaths) died. Increased number of ideal health metrics (all trend P < .0001) correlated with lower risk for all-cause and CV mortality. If all NAFLD subjects achieved 7 ideal health metrics, 66% of all-cause deaths and 83% of CV deaths were preventable. Among NAFLD subjects, lack of glycaemic control (adjusted PAF = 28.3% all-cause; 38.1% CV) and hypertension (adjusted PAF of 23% all-cause; 52.8% CV) were the largest mortality contributors. Ideal physical activity level obtainment provided an adjusted PAF = 13.9% all-cause and 13.8% CV mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Attainment of ideal CV health metrics provides protection against all-cause and CV deaths in NAFLD.

Prevalence, mortality and healthcare utilization among Medicare beneficiaries with Hepatitis C in Haemodialysis units.

Hepatitis C (HCV) is more common among patients with end-stage renal disease requiring haemodialysis compared to the general population. Thus, we aimed to assess trends in prevalence, health resource utilization and mortality among Medicare beneficiaries with HCV on haemodialysis. This is a retrospective study of outpatient and inpatient claims for Medicare beneficiaries receiving haemodialysis (2005-2016). A total of 291 663 subjects on haemodialysis were included (67.3 ± 15.2 years, 55% male, 55% white, 49% age-based eligibility). The prevalence of HCV in subjects on haemodialysis was stable and was significantly higher (mean 4.2% in 2005-2016, P = 0.50 for the trend) than in subjects not on haemodialysis (<1%). In multivariate analysis, liver cirrhosis (odds ratio = 3.4 (95% CI = 3.3-3.6)) was an independent predictor of 1-year mortality among haemodialysis patients. Mean total inpatient payments in dialysis patients with HCV remained stable during 2005 ($73 803) through 2016 ($72 133) (trend P = 0.54) while mean total outpatient payment decreased from 2005 ($53 497) to 2016 ($35 439; trend P = 0.0013). In multivariate analysis, after adjustment for age, gender, race and location, both HCV and cirrhosis remained significant contributors to greater spending [HCV: inpatient +22.1% (+19.2%-25%), HCV: outpatient +18.4% (+14.6%-22.2%), cirrhosis: inpatient +59.7% (+56.9%-62.6%), cirrhosis: outpatient +9.4% (+6.2%-12.6%)]. In conclusion, HCV-infected Medicare patients receiving haemodialysis incur greater resource utilization; mortality is higher in patients with cirrhosis only. Although HCV prevalence in Medicare haemodialysis recipients is higher than in patients without haemodialysis, these rates are lower than reported, suggesting potential under-screening for HCV in this high-risk population.