Advances in Technology Promote Patient-Centered Care in Cardiac Rehabilitation.

Patient-centered health care (PCC) is a framework of clinical care focused on the patient's individual health care needs. In particular, it emphasizes the development of a partnership between the patient, physician, and healthcare workers to actively involve and empower the patient in their health care decisions. Additionally, PCC goals include ensuring access to care, emotional support, engaging patient support systems, physical comfort, and continuity of care. Technology also provides a platform to engage patients and their families in their care and can be a useful tool to gauge their level of interest, knowledge, and motivations to adequately educate them on the many factors that contribute to their disease, including diet, exercise, medication adherence, psychological support, and early symptom detection. In this article, we summarize the importance of technology in promoting PCC in cardiac rehabilitation and the impact technology may have on the different aspects of patient and physician relationships. Modern technological devices including smartphones, tablets, wearables, and other internet-enabled devices have been shown to help patient-staff communication, cater to patients' individual needs, increase access to health care, and implement aspects of PCC domains.

MUM-1 immunohistochemistry has high accuracy and reliability in the diagnosis of chronic endometritis: a multi-centre comparative study with CD-138 immunostaining.

PURPOSE: The current gold standard for chronic endometritis (CE) diagnosis is immunohistochemistry (IHC) for CD-138. However, IHC for CD-138 is not exempt from diagnostic limitations. The aim of our study was to evaluate the reliability and accuracy of MUM-1 IHC, as compared with CD-138. METHODS: This is a multi-centre, retrospective, observational study, which included three tertiary hysteroscopic centres in university teaching hospitals. One hundred ninety-three consecutive women of reproductive age were referred to our hysteroscopy services due to infertility, recurrent miscarriage, abnormal uterine bleeding, endometrial polyps or myomas. All women underwent hysteroscopy plus endometrial biopsy. Endometrial samples were analysed through histology, CD138 and MUM-1 IHC. The primary outcome was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of MUM-1 IHC for CE, as compared with CD-138 IHC. RESULTS: Sensitivity and specificity of CD-138 and MUM-1 IHC were respectively 89.13%, 79.59% versus 93.48% and 85.03%. The overall diagnostic accuracy of MUM-1 and CD-138 IHC were similar (AUC = 0.893 vs AUC = 0.844). The intercorrelation coefficient for single measurements was high between the two techniques (ICC = 0.831, 0.761-0.881 95%CI). However, among CE positive women, MUM-1 allowed the identification of higher number of plasma cells/hpf than CD-138 (6.50 [SD 4.80] vs 5.05 [SD 3.37]; p = 0.017). Additionally, MUM-1 showed a higher inter-observer agreement as compared to CD-138. CONCLUSION: IHC for MUM-1 and CD-138 showed a similar accuracy for detecting endometrial stromal plasma cells. Notably, MUM-1 showed higher reliability in the paired comparison of the individual samples than CD-138. Thus, MUM-1 may represent a novel, promising add-on technique for the diagnosis of CE.

Effect of general anesthesia in infancy on long-term recognition memory in humans and rats.

Anesthesia in infancy impairs performance in recognition memory tasks in mammalian animals, but it is unknown if this occurs in humans. Successful recognition can be based on stimulus familiarity or recollection of event details. Several brain structures involved in recollection are affected by anesthesia-induced neurodegeneration in animals. Therefore, we hypothesized that anesthesia in infancy impairs recollection later in life in humans and rats. Twenty eight children ages 6-11 who had undergone a procedure requiring general anesthesia before age 1 were compared with 28 age- and gender-matched children who had not undergone anesthesia. Recollection and familiarity were assessed in an object recognition memory test using receiver operator characteristic analysis. In addition, IQ and Child Behavior Checklist scores were assessed. In parallel, thirty three 7-day-old rats were randomized to receive anesthesia or sham anesthesia. Over 10 months, recollection and familiarity were assessed using an odor recognition test. We found that anesthetized children had significantly lower recollection scores and were impaired at recollecting associative information compared with controls. Familiarity, IQ, and Child Behavior Checklist scores were not different between groups. In rats, anesthetized subjects had significantly lower recollection scores than controls while familiarity was unaffected. Rats that had undergone tissue injury during anesthesia had similar recollection indices as rats that had been anesthetized without tissue injury. These findings suggest that general anesthesia in infancy impairs recollection later in life in humans and rats. In rats, this effect is independent of underlying disease or tissue injury.