Hysterectomies for endometrial hyperplasia decreased during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: where have all the patients gone?

Objectives: To determine change in number of hysterectomies (hyst) and levonorgestrel intrauterine device (IUD) placements as treatment for endometrial hyperplasia (EH), and in the number of diagnostic procedures for abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB) and postmenopausal bleeding (PMB) performed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to pre-pandemic levels. Method(s): Hospitals submitting data to the Vizient database for the period 2/1/19 through 2/1/21 provided the study population. We queried Vizient to identify patients undergoing (1) hyst, (2) IUD placement for EH, and (3) endometrial biopsy (EMB) or dilation and curettage (D&C) for AUB or PMB by month (mo.). We defined the pre-pandemic period as 2/1/19 through 1/31/20;2/1/20 began the pandemic period. Mean number/mo of EH hyst, EH IUD placement, and EMB or D&C for AUB or PMB for the pre-pandemic period established a baseline for comparison to mos during the first pandemic year. Result(s): 314 hospitals reported data on 2,374 EH hysts, 2,006 EH IUD placements, and 99,782 diagnostic procedures for AUB and PMB. The mean number of EH hysts was 118/mo pre-pandemic and 79.9/mo during the pandemic;the mean difference was 38.2/mo (95%CI 23.2- 53.1, p=0.00015). Mean EH IUD placements pre-pandemic were 87.6/ mo, and 79.6/mo during the pandemic;mean difference was 8/mo (95%CI -11-27, p=0.37). The mean number of combined EMBs and D&Cs pre-pandemic was 4,547/mo and 3,768/mo during the pandemic;mean difference was 778/mo (95%CI 80-1477, p=0.032).[Formula presented] Conclusion(s): During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of EH hysts performed per mo decreased. We found no increase in EH IUD placement. Although Vizient does not report the number of patients prescribed oral progesterone as an alternative treatment, we found that the total number of patients undergoing diagnostic procedures for AUB and PMB decreased significantly during the pandemic period, suggesting that the deficit in hysts performed for EH is due, in part, to fewer patients presenting for workup of abnormal bleeding. Together with our earlier report that 20% fewer hysts for EC were done during the first pandemic year, our findings suggest a meaningful delay in care. More research is needed to determine if this delay will impact stage, treatment and outcome. Data for the 2nd pandemic year will be analyzed in time for the meeting.Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc.

Assessing the use of attention weights to interpret BERT-based stance classification

BERT models are currently state-of-the-art solutions for various tasks, including stance classification. However, these models are a black box for their users. Some proposals have leveraged the weights assigned by the internal attention mechanisms of these models for interpretability purposes. However, whether the attention weights help the interpretability of the model is still a matter of debate, with positions in favor and against. This work proposes an attention-based interpretability mechanism to identify the most influential words for stances predicted using BERT-based models. We target stances expressed in Twitter using the Portuguese language and assess the proposed mechanism using a case study regarding stances on COVID-19 vaccination in the Brazilian context. The interpretation mechanism traces tokens' attentions back to words, assigning a newly proposed metric referred to as absolute word attention. Through this metric, we assess several aspects to determine if we can find important words for the classification and with meaning for the domain. We developed a broad experimental setting that involved three datasets with tweets in Brazilian Portuguese and three BERT models with support for this language. Our results are encouraging, as we were able to identify 52-82% of words with high absolute attention contributing positively to stance classification. The interpretability mechanism proved to be helpful to understand the influence of words in the classification, and they revealed intrinsic properties of the domain and representative arguments of the stances. © 2021 ACM.

Quarenteners vs. Chloroquiners: A framework to analyze how political polarization affects the behavior of groups

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has struck people's lives over-night. With an alarming contagious rate and no effective treatments or vaccines, it has evoked all sorts of reactions. In this paper, we propose a framework to analyze and characterize groups' behavior with opposed stances and the relation with the political polarization, using the Brazilian COVID polarized scenario as a case study. The pro/against social distance stances are represented by two Twitter groups referred to as Chloroquiners and Quarenteners. The framework encompasses: a) techniques to automatically infer from users their demographics and political orientation, b) topic modeling to discover the major concerns expressed by each group;c) network analysis and community detection to characterize their behavior as a social network group;d) analysis of linguistic characteristics to identify psychological aspects, and e) the characterization of information sources and external influences to evaluate the "echo chamber effect". These properties aim to explain the group's behavior using the Identity Protective Cognitive theory, in which culturally grouped individuals give biased credit and dismiss evidence according to the predominant group beliefs. Our main findings confirm that the political polarization of Chloroquiners and Quarenteners influence the arguments of economy and life, and support/opposition to the president. As a group, the network of Chloroquiners is more closed and connected, and highly influenced by information passed through social networks. Quarenteners have a more diverse political engagement and are more influenced by formal media. In terms of psychological aspects, the use of Identity Protection Cognition provides more robust arguments to explain these behaviors.

Pacific alliance countries, 2000-2021: Effects of COVID-19 on growth and economic reactivation

This research claims that the four countries that make up the Pacific Alliance (PA) (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) will have an economic recovery in 2021, as evidenced by increases in their respective gross domestic products (GDP). Furthermore, it argues that it is possible to calculate both production decline for those countries during 2020 and recovery reported for the following year. The corresponding calculations were based on economic and socio-political contexts that influenced the measures adopted in the four PA countries in face of the COVID-19 pandemic;in particular, measures that began in early March 2020. The greatest economic reactivation would happen in Mexico, although it is noteworthy that this particular result is closely related to the performance of the US economy, which acts as a natural market for the aforementioned Latin American country. © 2021 Universidad Católica de Colombia.

Psychosocial risks to the infectious threat in nursing personnel in a health center in Ecuador 2020

Developing activities in a health institution, exposes nurses to multiple biological agents of potential infectious threat such as Hepatitis A, B, C, HIV / AIDS, Tuberculosis, Varicella, Tuberculosis, Rubella, Cytomegalovirus, COVID-19, among other communicable diseases, promoting a psychosocial risk to fear of being infected. To determine the psychosocial risks in the face of the infectious threat in nursing personnel of a hospital in Ecuador. It was an epidemiological-descriptive study of a cross-sectional cohort between September and December 2020, with a sample of 74 nurses. Data collection, a survey of 44 closed dichotomous questions was applied. The data were stored in Microsoft Excel and analyzed with Epidat. As a result, 68.92% were female, with ages between 31-35 (33.78%), 58.11% were married, 41.89% were single, and 60.81% had children. The characteristic psychological risks were 24.32% anxiety, 21.62% stress, 18.92% depression, 12.16% sleep disorders, 8.11% eating disorders and consumption of psychotropic drugs, 4.05% thoughts suicides and 2.70% consume alcohol, the most prominent of the social risks was family distancing with 37.84%. It is concluded that biological risk is, without a doubt, the most frequent among the occupational risks of health personnel, raising different levels of anxiety, which puts at stake even the quality of care that can be given to patients. © 2021 Instituto de Altos Estudios de Salud Publica. All rights reserved.