Precision Population Cancer Medicine in Cancer of the Uterine Cervix: A Potential Roadmap to Eradicate Cervical Cancer.

With the success of the Human Genome Project, the era of genomic medicine (GM) was born. Later on, as GM made progress, there was a feeling of exhilaration that GM could help resolve many disease processes. It also led to the conviction that personalized medicine was possible, and a relatively synonymous word, precision medicine (PM), was coined. However, the influence of environmental factors and social determinants of diseases was only partially given their due importance in the definition of PM, although more recently, this has been recognized. With the rapid advances in GM, big data, data mining, wearable devices for health monitoring, telemedicine, etc., PM can be more easily extended to population-level health care in disease management, prevention, early screening, and so on.and the term precision population medicine (PPM) more aptly describes it. PPM's potential in cancer care was posited earlier,and the current authors planned a series of cancer disease-specific follow-up articles. These papers are mainly aimed at helping emerging students in health sciences (medicine, pharmacy, nursing, dentistry, public health, population health), healthcare management (health-focused business administration, nonprofit administration, public institutional administration, etc.), and policy-making (e.g., political science), although not exclusively. This first disease-specific report focuses on the cancer of the uterine cervix (CC). It describes how recent breakthroughs can be leveraged as force multipliers to improve outcomes in CC - by improving early detection, better screening for CC, potential GM-based interventions during the stage of persistent Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and treatment interventions - especially among the disadvantaged and resource-scarce populations. This work is a tiny step in our attempts to improve outcomes in CC and ultimately eradicate CC from the face of the earth.

COVID-19 impact on facial trauma: Insights from Mississippi's only level 1 trauma center.

PURPOSE: Our primary aim was to understand and describe the impact of COVID-19 on the incidence and etiology of facial trauma in the state of Mississippi. METHODS: Retrospective review of facial trauma-related Emergency Department encounters in Mississippi from March 11, 2019 to March 10, 2021, divided into three time periods using the state of Mississippi's Governor's Office Executive Orders. Chi-square tests and segmented linear regressions were used for analysis. RESULTS: Patients presenting with facial trauma were typically male, 18-44 years old, and lived in urban zip codes. Insurance payors significantly differed across time periods. There were no significant differences in self-inflicted assault or accidental injury between the 3 time periods, with pre- and pandemic patients more likely to be self-pay while patients during recovery being more likely to have private insurance. During the pandemic, facial trauma from a family member, partner or spouse, or other person in the household significantly increased. CONCLUSION: Similar accidental facial trauma trends may reflect lower adherence to social distancing guidelines. The increase in facial trauma perpetrated by family members is consistent with reported increases in domestic violence during the pandemic. While overall facial trauma demographic patterns did not change significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were notable changes in the etiology and insurance payor of facial trauma cases. LAY SUMMARY: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted healthcare systems worldwide, and our study seeks to understand how the pandemic affected incidence of facial trauma.

Dr. ChatGPT: Utilizing Artificial Intelligence in Surgical Education.

OBJECTIVE: This study sought to explore the unexamined capabilities of ChatGPT in describing the surgical steps of a specialized operation, the Fisher cleft lip repair. DESIGN: A chat log within ChatGPT was created to generate the procedural steps of a cleft lip repair utilizing the Fisher technique. A board certified craniomaxillofacial (CMF) surgeon then wrote the Fisher repair in his own words blinded to the ChatGPT response. Using both responses, a voluntary survey questionnaire was distributed to residents of plastic and reconstructive surgery (PRS), general surgery (GS), internal medicine (IM), and medical students at our institution in a blinded study. SETTING: Authors collected information from residents (PRS, GS, IM) and medical students at one institution. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Primary outcome measures included understanding, preference, and author identification of the procedural prompts. RESULTS: Results show PRS residents were able to detect more inaccuracies of the ChatGPT response as well as prefer the CMF surgeon's prompt in performing the surgery. Residents with less expertise in the procedure not only failed to detect who wrote what procedure, but preferred the ChatGPT response in explaining the concept and chose it to perform the surgery. CONCLUSIONS: In applications to surgical education, ChatGPT was found to be effective in generating easy to understand procedural steps that can be followed by medical personnel of all specialties. However, it does not have expert capabilities to provide the minute detail of measurements and specific anatomy required to perform medical procedures.

Surgical management of acquired buried penis and scrotal lymphedema: A retrospective review.

Acquired buried penis is a condition that can have detrimental physical and psychological consequences for patients. Factors such as elevated BMI, chronic scrotal lymphedema, hidradenitis suppurativa, and chronic inflammation can lead to the condition. Surgical intervention is the treatment of choice for advanced disease. Following IRB approval, a retrospective chart review was performed for patients with a diagnosis of acquired buried penis who required surgical intervention. Details of patient history, surgical management including intraoperative and post-operative photography, and complications were reviewed. Seven patient cases were reviewed. The average age at time of surgery was 44 with a mean weight of 344 pounds and an average BMI of 48. Severe scrotal lymphedema and hidradenitis were common concurrent comorbidities. Concurrent scrotoplasty and infraumbilical panniculectomy were standard parts of the operations. Native glans skin was salvageable in all but one case. Penile shaft skin was reconstructed with skin grafts or adjacent tissue transfer. 88% of the cases had some element of wound dehiscence post-operatively. Surgical management of an acquired buried penis can be challenging. The patient demographic with the disease is frequently complicated by morbid obesity, concurrent lymphedema, or hidradenitis. Post-operative complications are expected. The surgical techniques presented can aid in simplifying the management of this challenging surgical population.

An Overview of the Use of Precision Population Medicine in Cancer Care: First of a Series.

Advances in science and technology in the past century and a half have helped improve disease management, prevention, and early diagnosis and better health maintenance. These have led to a longer life expectancy in most developed and middle-income countries. However, resource- and infrastructure-scarce countries and populations have not enjoyed these benefits. Furthermore, in every society, including in developed nations, the lag time from new advances, either in the laboratory or from clinical trials, to using those findings in day-to-day medical practice often takes many years and sometimes close to or longer than a decade. A similar trend is seen in the application of "precision medicine" (PM) in terms of improving population health (PH). One of the reasons for such lack of application of precision medicine in population health is the misunderstanding of equating precision medicine with genomic medicine (GM) as if they are the same. Precision medicine needs to be recognized as encompassing genomic medicine in addition to other new developments such as big data analytics, electronic health records (EHR), telemedicine, and information communication technology. By leveraging these new developments together and applying well-tested epidemiological concepts, it can be posited that population/public health can be improved. In this paper, we take cancer as an example of the benefits of recognizing the potential of precision medicine in applying it to population/public health. Breast cancer and cervical cancer are taken as examples to demonstrate these hypotheses. There exists significant evidence already to show the importance of recognizing "precision population medicine" (PPM) in improving cancer outcomes not only in individual patients but also for its applications in early detection and cancer screening (especially in high-risk populations) and achieving those goals in a more cost-efficient manner that can reach resource- and infrastructure-scarce societies and populations. This is the first report of a series that will focus on individual cancer sites in the future.

Changing Role of PET/CT in Cancer Care With a Focus on Radiotherapy.

Positron emission tomography (PET) integrated with computed tomography (CT) has brought revolutionary changes in improving cancer care (CC) for patients. These include improved detection of previously unrecognizable disease, ability to identify oligometastatic status enabling more aggressive treatment strategies when the disease burden is lower, its use in better defining treatment targets in radiotherapy (RT), ability to monitor treatment responses early and thus improve the ability for early interventions of non-responding tumors, and as a prognosticating tool as well as outcome predicting tool. PET/CT has enabled the emergence of new concepts such as radiobiotherapy (RBT), radioimmunotherapy, theranostics, and pharmaco-radiotherapy. This is a rapidly evolving field, and this primer is to help summarize the current status and to give an impetus to developing new ideas, clinical trials, and CC outcome improvements.

Relación entre la exposición ocupacional a Campos Electromagnéticos y riesgo de desarrollar cáncer: una Revisión Sistemática / Relation Between the Occupational Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields and the Risk of Developing Cancer: A Systematic Review

Los campos electromagnéticos (CEM) están presentes en todos los ambientes en dónde se utiliza energía eléctrica. Toda la población se encuentra expuesta a CEM, pudiendo éstos producir efectos en la salud. Este trabajo pretende constatar si existe relación entre la exposición ocupacional a CEM y el desarrollo de cáncer. Se realizó una búsqueda bibliográfica en siete bases de datos: MEDLINE, COCHRANE, WOK, IBECS, LILACS, EMF-portal y SCOPUS. Como criterio de inclusión, se tuvieron en cuenta los artículos publicados entre 2000 y 2017, el tipo de artículo, el idioma y que la población expuesta a CEM fuese únicamente ocupacional. La presente revisión sistemática encuentra resultados contradictorios entre la exposición ocupacional a CEM y el desarrollo de cáncer, por tanto, no se puede llegar a una conclusión sólida. La evidencia parece demostrar que altos niveles de exposición a CEM podrían aumentar el riesgo de padecer ciertos tipos de cánceres. Debido a la diversidad de resultados obtenidos, se deberían realizar nuevos estudios con una mejor calidad metodológica y con un número suficiente de trabajadores expuestos a dosis altas de CEM. Por último, deberían aplicarse en todos los estudios medidas o matrices de exposición homogéneas para permitir la mejor comparación de resultados

Electromagnetic fields (EMF) are present at any place where electric energy is used. There is a permanent risk of developing adverse health consequences, since population is exposed to EMF. This work aims to investigate if any relation between the occupational exposure to EMF and its cancer associated risks took place. A systematic review of the literature was carried out in seven databases: MEDLIE, COCHRANE, WOK, IBECS, LILACS, EMF-portal and SCOPUS. The articles published between 2000 and 2017, the article type, language, and just occupationally exposure population were taken into account in the inclusion criteria. Contradictory results between occupational EMF exposure and the risk of developing cancer were found by this systematic criteria. Nevertheless, evidence seems to demonstrate that high-level EMF exposure might arise the risk of causing any type of cancer. Given that diversity of results found, new studies should be done with a better methodological quality and an enough number of workers exposed to EMF high levels. In closing and in order to obtain a better result comparison, standard EMF exposure measurements should in every single future study be applied

The impact of initial antibiotic therapy (linezolid, vancomycin, daptomycin) on hospital length of stay for complicated skin and soft tissue infections.

BACKGROUND: Empiric therapy of inpatient skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) generally require methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) coverage. Limited data are available to directly compare the effect of initial antibiotic choice on treatment outcomes and length of stay (LOS). OBJECTIVE: To assess potential differences in length of hospital stay when inpatients with complex skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) were initially treated with either vancomycin, linezolid, or daptomycin. METHODS: A retrospective review of 219 patients diagnosed with inpatient SSTI who received linezolid, vancomycin, or daptomycin for >48 hours was performed. Data collected included demographics, comorbidities, microbiologic/laboratory data, additional management (surgical, non-study antibiotics), hospital LOS, treatment outcome and morbidity/mortality. RESULTS: The three groups evaluated were linezolid (n = 45), vancomycin (n = 90) daptomycin (n = 84). There was no difference between the three groups with respect to gender, age, comorbidities, leukocytosis, fever, antibiotics prior to admission, site of infection culture results and surgical intervention. One death was recorded, not associated with diagnosis of SSTI. No significant difference in LOS was found (P = 0.525) between the 3 groups. The mean LOS in entire cohort was 4.5 days (SD ± 2.5); thirty patients had prolonged LOS for non-SSTI reasons; reanalyzing the data without these 30 patients did not produce any difference in the mean LOS between the 3 groups. Switching vancomycin just prior to discharge to facilitate outpatient therapy was common but did not impact LOS. CONCLUSIONS: No difference was detected in hospital length of stay with respect to the initial choice of antibiotic (linezolid, vancomycin, or daptomycin) for SSTI. The three antibiotic regimens were equally effective in treating SSTIs as judged by LOS, irrespective of age, gender, comorbidities or baseline severity of SSTI. Given the large standard deviation in LOS, this result should be confirmed by larger studies.