Antibiotic utilization and symptom improvement in a retrospective cohort of women with urinary tract infection symptoms.

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common bacterial infections in women. We hypothesized that over half of those treated empirically would receive inappropriate antibiotics, those treated expectantly would have lower symptom improvement without antibiotics, and that overall progression to sequelae would be uncommon. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study of women with UTI symptoms, we quantified the proportion who received inappropriate antibiotics in those treated empirically, defined as those with a negative urine culture or antibiotics that were changed according to culture sensitivities, and identified factors associated with symptom improvement during expectant management. Secondarily, we sought to determine the proportion of UTI sequelae in both groups. During the study time frame, a modified UTI Symptom Assessment (UTISA) questionnaire was administered at baseline and again, with a global rating for change instrument, when urine culture results were relayed. RESULTS: Analyses included 152 women, mean age 66.5 (SD 15.0) years, 30 (20%) received empiric antibiotics, and 122 (80%) expectant management. At baseline, the empiric group reported greater mean scores for dysuria (p < 0.01), urgency (p < 0.01), frequency (p < 0.01), and incomplete emptying (p < 0.01). Positive culture results were reported for 16 (53%) in the empiric group and 72 (59%) in the expectant group. Inappropriate antibiotics were prescribed to 18 (60%) of the empiric group. A negative urine culture was associated with improvement in symptoms in the expectant group. No subjects experienced UTI sequelae within 30 days of initial evaluation. CONCLUSION: In our cohort of older women with UTI symptoms, deferring antibiotics until urine culture  resulted appeared to be safe and decreased the use of inappropriate antibiotics.

Intralesional 5-Fluorouracil for Keloids: A Systematic Review.

Keloids are benign, fibroproliferative dermal tumours, often arising after trauma, that are more common in darker skin types. Numerous therapeutic options have been employed for the treatment of keloids; however, there is no one gold standard approach. Five-fluorouracil, a potent chemotherapeutic agent, has emerged as a promising therapeutic option. Therefore, this systematic review, using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, focused on providing a broad overview of the use of 5-fluorouracil for the management of keloids. Forty studies (2325 patients) met inclusion criteria and investigated 5-fluorouracil for keloid management, with 19 studies (1043 patients) including a 5-fluorouracil monotherapy group. Five-fluorouracil monotherapy demonstrated consistent keloid improvement with >254 keloids injected across various anatomical regions. Five-fluorouracil monotherapy was most often compared to intralesional triamcinolone acetonide, utilizing the Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale and the Vancouver Scar Scale. The most common keloid parameters assessed were height, size, volume, width, length, induration, pruritus, and erythema. Five-fluorouracil monotherapy exhibited substantial improvements, with weight averages of 73% of patients experiencing >25% improvement and 67% achieving >50% improvement. Relapse rate was 16% at 27 weeks after 5-fluorouracil monotherapy treatment. Limitations included potential selection bias, language restrictions, and heterogenous data analysis among studies. Overall, our findings underscore the potential effectiveness of 5-fluorouracil monotherapy in the management of keloids, with an encouraging safety profile. Larger prospective trials are needed to determine optimal therapy or combination therapy for the management of keloids. This detailed compilation of treatment protocols, outcomes, and relapse rates stand as a valuable resource for further research and clinical applications.

The diagnostic accuracy of saliva testing for SARS-CoV-2: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Early detection of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is paramount for controlling the progression and spread of the disease. Currently, nasopharyngeal swabbing (NPS) is the standard method for collecting specimens. Saliva was recently proposed as an easy and safe option with many authorities adopting the methodology despite the limited evidence of efficacy. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this review was to systematically evaluate the current literature on the use of saliva test for detecting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and carry out a meta-analysis to determine its diagnostic accuracy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Prospective studies were searched for in electronic databases, complemented by hand-searching relevant journals. The risk of bias and applicability were assessed using the revised Quality Assessment of Studies of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS-2) tool. Meta-analyses and meta-regression modeling were performed to calculate the diagnostic accuracy and examine sources of heterogeneity. RESULTS: A total of 16 studies were included with 2928 paired samples. The overall meta-analysis showed a high sensitivity and specificity for saliva test at 0.88 (95% CI 0.82-0.92) and 0.92 (95% CI 0.75-0.98), respectively. The diagnostic odds ratio was calculated at 87 (95% CI 19-395) and area under the curve was calculated as 0.92 (95% CI 0.90-0.94) suggesting very good performance of the saliva tests in detecting SARS-CoV-2. CONCLUSION: Saliva testing has a very good discriminative and diagnostic ability to detect of SARS-CoV-2. Additional large and well-designed prospective studies are needed to further validate the diagnostic accuracy and determine a safe sample collection method prior to its recommendation for mass application. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Saliva demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity. The use of saliva will allow for self-collection of specimens and specimen collection in outpatient and community clinics.

Fate of abstracts presented at the 2004-2008 International Liver Transplantation Society meetings.

Only 20.5% to 61.6% of abstracts presented at biomedical meetings are subsequently published as full-length articles. The aim of this study was to analyze the abstract-to-publication rate of International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS) meeting abstracts. Abstracts presented at 5 consecutive annual ILTS meetings (2004-2008) were included to ensure a minimum follow-up period of 4 years. For each abstract, a PubMed Central search was conducted with the first author's name and affiliation along with keywords from the title. The following abstract characteristics were examined and used to obtain the abstract-to-publication rate: (1) the year of presentation, (2) the presentation category (plenary session, concurrent oral presentation, or poster presentation), (3) the type of study (randomized clinical study, case report, other clinical study, or basic science study), (4) the first author's discipline (surgery, medicine, anesthesiology/critical care medicine, pathology, radiology, or pharmacology), and (5) the location of the authors (ie, an English-speaking or non-English-speaking country). A total of 2345 abstracts (469 ± 144 abstracts per meeting) were presented, and 913 of those abstracts (38.9%) were expanded into full-length publications. It took 46 months for 90% of the abstracts to be published as full-length journal articles. The abstract-to-publication rates differed with the year of abstract presentation (50.2% in 2004, 45.9% in 2005, 47.6% in 2006, 30.6% in 2007, and 30.3% in 2008; P < 0.001), with the presentation category (49.6% for plenary sessions, 48.5% for concurrent oral presentations, and 34.8% for poster presentations; P < 0.001), and with the type of study (66.7% for randomized clinical studies, 63.1% for basic science studies, 36.7% for other clinical studies, and 35.0% for case reports; P < 0.001). Abstracts from authors from non-English-speaking countries had a higher publication rate (41.1% versus 33.6%, P < 0.001). No differences were found between first authors' disciplines.

Rapid resolution of erythrodermic atopic dermatitis with upadacitinib: A case report.

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that may progress to erythroderma in severe cases. Biologic agents such as dupilumab have recently become the mainstay of systemic treatment for moderate-to-severe cases, yet many patients remain refractory to therapy. Here, we present a case of erythrodermic atopic dermatitis, resistant to prednisone and dupilumab, with remarkably rapid achievement of remission following treatment with upadacitinib, an oral selective Janus kinase 1 inhibitor.

Pharmacologic Management of Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome.

Interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS) is defined as persistent or chronic discomfort perceived to be related to the urinary bladder accompanied by urinary urgency or frequency. Pharmacotherapies used to treat IC/BPS include oral and intravesical agents. Oral therapies include amitriptyline, hydroxyzine, cyclosporine A, and pentosan polysulfate sodium (PPS), although the recent finding of pigmented maculopathy with chronic PPS is very concerning and must be discussed with patients, many of whom will choose to either come off this medicine or not even start it. Certolizumab pegol is a pharmacologic therapy that is currently in clinical development for treatment of IC/BPS symptoms.

Risk factors of lower urinary tract injury with laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy.

BACKGROUND: Lower urinary tract injuries can occur during pelvic reconstructive surgery, including sacrocolpopexy. The reported injury rates range from 0.4% to 10.6% with laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy, 1.1% to 3.3% with abdominal sacrocolpopexy, and 2.3% to 10% with robotic sacrocolpopexy. Specific literature identifying the risk factors for lower urinary tract injury during pelvic reconstructive surgery is lacking; therefore; we aim to identify the patient characteristics predisposing a patient to lower urinary tract injury during laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy. OBJECTIVE: The primary objective of this study was to identify the patient-specific risk factors for lower urinary tract injury with laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy. STUDY DESIGN: This was an age-matched, case-control study including patients who underwent laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy from July 2014 to December 2017 in a high-volume female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery practice. The patients were excluded if they underwent laparoscopic uterosacral ligament suspension, had abnormal urinary tract anatomy, or for incorrect, incomplete, or duplicated data. Risk factors such as race, body mass index, pelvic organ prolapse quantification stage, previous abdominal and/or vaginal surgeries, and concurrent procedures (lysis of adhesions, adnexal surgery, midurethral sling placement, and anterior or posterior colporrhaphy) were analyzed. Groups were compared using the Student t-test for independent samples and chi-square tests. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the crude and adjusted odds ratios. RESULTS: A total of 930 patients were identified during electronic medical record chart review using the current procedural terminology code 57425 (laparoscopic colpopexy). A total of 167 patients met the exclusion criteria, resulting in a total of 763 patients for primary analysis. The prevalence of lower urinary tract injury was 2.4% (17 bladder injuries and 1 ureteral injury out of 763 laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy procedures). These 18 cases were age-matched to 72 controls. The mean age and body mass index of all patients was 64.8 years (±9.32) and 26.5 kg/m2 (±3.99), respectively. Most of the patients were Caucasian, had previously undergone abdominal and/or vaginal surgery, had pelvic organ prolapse stage 3 or greater, and underwent concurrent surgeries, including adnexal surgery and midurethral sling placement at the time of laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy. A history of previous hysterectomy (odds ratio, 19.94; 95% confidence interval, 2.48-160.38; P=.005) and lysis of adhesions at the time of laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy (odds ratio, 4.94; 95% confidence interval, 1.05-23.19; P=.043) were associated with an increased odds of lower urinary tract injury in unadjusted models. In a multivariable logistic regression model controlling for the previously listed variables, a history of previous hysterectomy remained significantly associated with lower urinary tract injury (adjusted odds ratio, 162.41; 95% confidence interval, 3.21-8227; P=.011). Race, body mass index, pelvic organ prolapse quantification system stage, previous abdominal and/or vaginal surgery, and concurrent procedures were not associated with an increased risk of lower urinary tract injury. CONCLUSION: Although lower urinary tract injury with laparoscopic sacrocolpopexy only occurred in 2.4% of patients, previous hysterectomy increased this risk substantially. As sacrocolpopexy is the common treatment for prolapse after hysterectomy or recurrent prolapse, this increased risk of lower urinary tract injuries can guide surgical counseling on the basis of patient-specific risk factors and aid in setting appropriate postoperative patient expectations.

Factors Associated With a Positive Urine Culture in Women Seeking Urogynecologic Care for Urinary Tract Infection Symptoms.

IMPORTANCE: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common bacterial infections and more frequently affect women than men. OBJECTIVES: Our objective was to determine clinical characteristics associated with a positive urine culture in women seeking treatment for symptoms of UTI. STUDY DESIGN: In this prospective cohort study, women seeking treatment for UTI symptoms were administered the Urinary Tract Infection Symptom Assessment questionnaire at baseline and at the time of culture results. Participants were grouped by history of recurrent UTI (rUTI) based on chart review. Our primary outcome was the proportion of "positive" urine cultures (≥10 3 colony-forming units) compared between rUTI groups. Characteristics were compared and the relative odds of a positive culture were calculated with a logistic regression model. RESULTS: Analyses included 152 women, 79 (52%) with rUTI and 73 (48%) with no history of rUTI. Overall, 90 (59.2%) had a positive culture. Participants with a positive culture were more likely to report history of rUTI ( P = 0.01). There was a 2.45-fold increased adjusted odds of a positive culture in those with a history of rUTI (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 2.45; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.34-5.03; P = 0.01) when controlling for confounding variables, including scores on the Urinary Tract Infection Symptom Assessment for frequency (aOR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.40-0.91), dysuria (aOR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.10-2.12), and age (aOR, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01-1.05). CONCLUSIONS: In a cohort of women seeking care for UTI symptoms, older women, those with a history of rUTI and those presenting with dysuria are more likely to have a positive urine culture compared with those with urinary frequency.