Functional and radiological outcomes of periacetabular osteotomy for hip dysplasia in patients under fifty years using a minimally invasive approach-a single surgeon series with a minimum follow up of two years.

PURPOSE: We conducted a retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data to evaluate (1) the extent of surgical correction following minimally invasive periacetabular osteotomy, (2) improvements in functional outcomes and any potential predictors for favourable outcome, and (3) complications after minimally invasive periacetabular osteotomy. METHODS: A total of 352 minimally invasive periacetabular osteotomy procedures were performed on 312 hip dysplasia patients between 2013 and 2020. Radiological parameters such as lateral centre edge angle, acetabular index, and Tönnis grade of arthritis were calculated. Patients also completed a range of patient reported outcome measures. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were performed to assess for differences between patient reported outcome measures and radiological outcomes across the follow-up periods. Univariate linear regression and logistic regression were used to assess for predictors of change in functional outcome. RESULTS: Patients had a significant correction in mean lateral centre edge angle from 17.2° to 35.3° (p < 0.001) and mean acetabular index from 13.2° to - 0.82°. At one year follow-up all patient reported outcome measures were significantly greater than their baseline measurements and this improvement was maintained at two years. Changes in patient reported outcome measures were independent of radiological parameters such as change in the lateral centre edge angle and acetabular index, pre-operative Tönnis grade, and patient factors such as age and sex. A total of 5.11% of patients developed post-operative complications, with four requiring posterior column fixation. Four patients (1.12%) needed a total hip replacement. CONCLUSION: Minimally invasive periacetabular osteotomy is a safe procedure that provides significant functional outcome improvements following surgery at six months which is maintained at two years. More than three-fourths of patients achieved improvement of iHOT-12 score beyond the minimal clinically important difference and more than half of the patients achieved substantial clinical benefit for iHOT-12 score.

Anti-cholinergic drug burden in patients with dementia increases after hospital admission: a multicentre cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Anticholinergic medications are drugs that block cholinergic transmission, either as their primary therapeutic action or as a secondary effect. Patients with dementia may be particularly sensitive to the central effects of anticholinergic drugs. Anticholinergics also antagonise the effects of the main dementia treatment, cholinesterase inhibitors. Our study aimed to investigate anticholinergic prescribing for dementia patients in UK acute hospitals before and after admission. METHODS: We included 352 patients with dementia from 17 UK hospital sites in 2019. They were all inpatients on surgical, medical or Care of the Elderly wards. Information about each patient's medications were collected using a standardised form, and the anticholinergic drug burden of each patient was calculated with an evidence-based online calculator. Wilcoxon's rank test was used to look at the correlation between two subgroups upon admission and discharge. RESULTS: On admission to hospital, 37.8% of patients had an anticholinergic burden score ≥ 1 and 5.68% ≥3. On discharge, 43.2% of patients with an anticholinergic burden score ≥ 1 and 9.1% ≥3. The increase in scores was statistically significant (p = 0.001). Psychotropics were the most common group of anticholinergic medications prescribed at discharge. Of those patients taking cholinesterase inhibitors, 44.9% were also prescribed anticholinergic medications. CONCLUSIONS: Our cross-sectional, multicentre study found that people with dementia are commonly prescribed anticholinergic medications, even if concurrently taking cholinesterase inhibitors, and are significantly more likely to be discharged from hospital with a higher anticholinergic burden than on admission.

Effect of COVID-19 pandemic on hip preservation surgery-a prospective surveillance from the UK Non-Arthroplasty Hip Registry.

A multi-centre, registry-based cohort study was conducted to assess the effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the provision of non-arthroplasty hip surgery (NAHS) in the UK by (i) comparing the number of NAHS performed during the pandemic to pre-pandemic levels, (ii) prospectively auditing compliance to established guidance and (iii) evaluating post-operative outcomes and their predictors. Patients who underwent NAHS during the pandemic/pre-pandemic were selected from the Non-Arthroplasty Hip Registry, which collects demographic, procedural and pre-operative outcome data. Patients during the pandemic period were emailed separate COVID-19 surveillance questionnaires, which evaluated adherence to guidelines and post-operative outcomes. Fisher's exact tests and logistic regression were used to identify predictors for developing COVID-19 and being re-admitted into hospital, post-surgery. There was a 64% reduction of NAHS performed during the pandemic compared to the pre-pandemic period. Ninety-nine percent of participants self-isolated, and 96.8% received screening, pre-operatively. No participant was COVID-19-positive peri-operatively. Post-operatively, participants had an intensive care unit admission rate of 2%, median hospital stay of 1 day, hospital readmission rate of 4.2%, COVID-19 development rate of 2.3% and a thromboembolic complication rate of 0.32%. No COVID-19-positive patient developed adverse post-operative outcomes. Participants who developed COVID-19 post-operatively had greater odds of having undergone osteotomy in comparison to arthroscopic surgery (P = 0.036, odds ratio = 5.36). NAHS was performed with good compliance to established guidance, and adverse operative outcomes remained low. If guidance is followed, the risk of COVID-19 post-op development is low. Although bigger operations have a slightly higher risk, this does not impact their prognosis.

GenDiS database update with improved approach and features to recognize homologous sequences of protein domain superfamilies.

Since proteins evolve by divergent evolution, proteins with distant homology to each other may or may not bear similar functions. Improved computational approaches are required to recognize distant homologues that are functionally similar. One of the methods of assigning function to sequences is to use profiles derived from sequences of known structure. We describe an update of the Genomic Distribution of protein structural domain Superfamilies (GenDiS) database, namely GenDiS+, which provides a projection of SCOP superfamily members on the sequence space (NR database, NCBI). The sequences are validated using structure-based sequence alignment profiles and domain and full-length sequence alignments. GenDiS+ is a `tour de force' for detecting homologues within around 160 000 taxonomic identifiers, starting from nearly 11 000 domains of known structure. Features, like full-sequence alignment and phylogeny, domain sequence alignment and phylogeny, list of associated structural and sequence domains with strength of interactions, links to databases like Pfam, UniProt and ModBase and list of sequences with a PDB structure, are provided.