Effect of Bariatric Surgery on the Sonographic Grade of Metabolic-Associated Fatty Liver Disease at 12-Month Follow-Up.

BACKGROUND: Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is the most prevalent liver disease across the globe. One of the most effective treatments for this disease is weight loss. This study aimed to determine how metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) affects MAFLD sonographic grades. METHODS: In 2021, a pre-post study was conducted on 73 patients who underwent MBS. The study collected demographic information and ultrasound grades of MAFLD before and after MBS. RESULTS: A total of 73 patients underwent MBS, with 58 females and 15 males. The patients had a mean age of 39.8 ± 8.88 years and a mean BMI of 42.12 ± 5.98 kg/m2. Of these patients, 53 (72.6%) underwent SG, while 20 (27.4%) underwent RYGB. The preoperative BMI for females and males decreased significantly at the 12-month follow-up (P = 0.0001). However, males experienced more prominent weight changes (P = 0.009), but there was no statistically significant difference in fatty liver grade changes after MBS between males and females (P = 0.056), which suggests that the effect of MBS on fatty liver grades is not gender-specific. There was a significant reduction in BMI and fatty liver grade for patients under and over 40 years old after surgery (P = 0.0001). However, there was no statistically significant difference in fatty liver grade and BMI changes after MBS between the two age groups. RYGB was found to be more effective than SG in reducing fatty liver grade, BMI, and %TWL (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Bariatric surgery can play a vital role in reducing the weight and severity of metabolic-associated fatty liver disease.

Upper Gastrointestinal Endoscopic Screening in Bariatric Surgery Candidates: Correlating the Findings with GERD symptoms.

INTRODUCTION: The role of routine preoperative esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) in bariatric surgery candidates is controversial. This study compares preoperative EGD outcomes with patient-reported gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) symptoms to determine if a case-based EGD is appropriate. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A prospective cohort study was conducted from April 2022 through September 2023 in Mashhad, Iran. All patients underwent EGD. To assess GERD symptoms, we used the GERD-Health Related Quality of Life questionnaire. Patients were categorized into two groups: the asymptomatic group (GERD-HRQL = 0) and the symptomatic group (GERD-HRQL > 0). RESULTS: A total of 165 patients were included, out of which 133 (80.6%) were in the symptomatic group and 32 (19.4%) were in the asymptomatic group. Esophagitis was present in 41 (24.8%) patients. There was no significant difference in the frequency of esophagitis (18.8% vs. 26.3%, p-value = 0.37), hiatal hernia (18.8% vs. 18.8%, p-value = 1.00), gastritis (56.3% vs. 63.9%, p-value = 0.42), and H. pylori infection (9.4% vs. 12.0%, p-value = 1.00) between the asymptomatic and symptomatic groups, respectively. None of the demographic factors or comorbidities of asymptomatic patients were associated with esophagitis, except for hiatal hernia (OR = 7.67, 95% CI 3.01-19.53, p-value < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the GERD-HRQL total scores, as well as the heartburn and regurgitation subscales, were poor predictors of esophagitis (AUC 0.57, 0.51, and 0.56, respectively). CONCLUSION: EGD findings were not associated with GERD symptoms in candidates for bariatric surgery.

Identifying, Measuring, and Ranking Social Determinants of Health for Health Promotion Interventions Targeting Informal Settlement Residents.

OBJECTIVES: Considering the importance of social determinants of health (SDHs) in promoting the health of residents of informal settlements and their diversity, abundance, and breadth, this study aimed to identify, measure, and rank SDHs for health promotion interventions targeting informal settlement residents in a metropolitan area in Iran. METHODS: Using a hybrid method, this study was conducted in 3 phases from 2019 to 2020. SDHs were identified by reviewing studies and using the Delphi method. To examine the SDHs among informal settlement residents, a cross-sectional analysis was conducted using researcher-made questionnaires. Multilayer perceptron analysis using an artificial neural network was used to rank the SDHs by priority. RESULTS: Of the 96 determinants identified in the first phase of the study, 43 were examined, and 15 were identified as high-priority SDHs for use in health-promotion interventions for informal settlement residents in the study area. They included individual health literacy, nutrition, occupational factors, housing-related factors, and access to public resources. CONCLUSIONS: Since identifying and addressing SDHs could improve health justice and mitigate the poor health status of settlement residents, ranking these determinants by priority using artificial intelligence will enable policymakers to improve the health of settlement residents through interventions targeting the most important SDHs.

Cuffless blood pressure estimation using chaotic features of photoplethysmograms and parallel convolutional neural network.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: As a nonlinear framework in dynamical system analysis, chaotic approaches are mainly applied to evolve the complexity of biological systems. Due to the chaotic nature of the cardiovascular systems, the nonlinear features can intuitively provide a reliable framework in blood pressure (BP) estimation. Cuffless BP estimation is usually carried out by establishing deep neural network models estimating the BP values through machine-learned features of photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals. METHODS: In this study, a novel parallel deep architecture is proposed to handle the machine-learned and chaotic features of PPG signals in estimating the actual BP values. The chaotic handcrafted features were the signal properties associated with the Poincare sections in the phase space and the recurrence plot-based measures called recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). Moreover, the measures quantifying the nonlinear properties of the temporal sequences such as correlation dimension, fractal dimension, Lyapunov exponent, and entropy-based quantities were also employed. The parallel architecture not only embedded the chaotic nature of PPG signals but also provided a facility to include the pseudo-periodic variations of PPGs by utilizing a concatenating layer. RESULTS: Our framework was examined on the public dataset, namely, Multi-Parameter Intelligent in Intensive Care II contained the recording of PPG, ECG and arterial blood pressure. The performance of the employed handcrafted features in distinguishing between the levels of BP values was investigated based on Spearman's statistics. In addition, our proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of Pearson's correlation coefficient (R), root mean square error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE). The best performance was achieved when the employed handcrafted features accompanied by PPG sequences were applied to the parallel deep network. In particular, the values of R, RMSE, and MAE were obtained 0.9529, 2.76 mmHg, and 1.73 mmHg for diastolic BP, and 0.9444, 6.18 mmHg, and 3.8 mmHg for systolic BP, respectively. Moreover, based on the requirements of the standards set by the British Hypertension Society (BHS), the proposed scheme achieved a grade of A. CONCLUSIONS: Our proposed scheme outperformed the state-of-the-art BP estimation methods. In addition, the results confirmed that the concatenation of the PPG-related machine-learned and nonlinear handcrafted features can be properly applied in continuous BP monitoring.

The Most Important Social Determinants of Slum Dwellers' Health: A Scoping Review.

OBJECTIVES: Given the importance of social determinants of health in promoting the health of slum residents, this study was conducted with the aim of identifying the main dimensions and components of these determinants. METHODS: This scoping review study was conducted according to the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews). A comprehensive search was performed of PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, and Web of Science for articles conducted from 2010 to the end of 2019. Studies were selected based on inclusion criteria, with a special focus on studies dealing with the social determinants of physical and mental health or illness. RESULTS: Thirty-three articles were selected to extract information on the social determinants of health. After reviewing the articles, 7 main dimensions (housing, socioeconomic status of the family, nutrition, neighborhood characteristics, social support and social capital, occupational factors, and health behaviors) and 87 components were extracted as social determinants of health among slum dwellers. CONCLUSIONS: This framework could be used by planners, managers, and policy-makers when making decisions affecting the health of these settlements' residents due to the common characteristics of slums around the world, especially in developing countries.

A review on wearable photoplethysmography sensors and their potential future applications in health care.

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is an uncomplicated and inexpensive optical measurement method that is often used for heart rate monitoring purposes. PPG is a non-invasive technology that uses a light source and a photodetector at the surface of skin to measure the volumetric variations of blood circulation. Recently, there has been much interest from numerous researchers around the globe to extract further valuable information from the PPG signal in addition to heart rate estimation and pulse oxymetry readings. PPG signal's second derivative wave contains important health-related information. Thus, analysis of this waveform can help researchers and clinicians to evaluate various cardiovascular-related diseases such as atherosclerosis and arterial stiffness. Moreover, investigating the second derivative wave of PPG signal can also assist in early detection and diagnosis of various cardiovascular illnesses that may possibly appear later in life. For early recognition and analysis of such illnesses, continuous and real-time monitoring is an important approach that has been enabled by the latest technological advances in sensor technology and wireless communications. The aim of this article is to briefly consider some of the current developments and challenges of wearable PPG-based monitoring technologies and then to discuss some of the potential applications of this technology in clinical settings.

A Survey on Wireless Body Area Networks for eHealthcare Systems in Residential Environments.

Current progress in wearable and implanted health monitoring technologies has strong potential to alter the future of healthcare services by enabling ubiquitous monitoring of patients. A typical health monitoring system consists of a network of wearable or implanted sensors that constantly monitor physiological parameters. Collected data are relayed using existing wireless communication protocols to a base station for additional processing. This article provides researchers with information to compare the existing low-power communication technologies that can potentially support the rapid development and deployment of WBAN systems, and mainly focuses on remote monitoring of elderly or chronically ill patients in residential environments.

A Comparison of Type II Diabetic Patients With Healthy People: Coping Strategies, Hardiness, and Occupational Life Quality.

BACKGROUND: Due to the epidemiologic transition and a rise in the prevalence of non-communicable diseases different coping strategies have been studied and developed. These strategies may help the affected people to conduct a normal life style. OBJECTIVES: This research was conducted in Qazvin, Iran to determine the relationship between coping strategies, hardiness, and occupational life quality in Type II diabetic patients and healthy people. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Questionnaires such as Valton's on "occupational life quality," Billings and Moos' examination of "Coping strategies," and Kobasa's investigation of "hardiness" were applied to collect the data needed for the present study. In this regard, 80 people were randomly selected from employees of offices in Qazvin, Iran. RESULTS: The results of this research indicated that there is a significant relationship between problem-focused strategies, emotion-focused strategies, hardiness, and occupational life quality in people suffering from Type II diabetes and healthy people (P ≤ 0.05). These results also indicated that hardiness does not predict occupational life quality of people suffering from Type II diabetes. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the present study give some evidence that allows us to conclude that hardiness and coping strategies affect occupational life quality for both people suffering from Type II diabetes and healthy people. Therefore, it is proposed that people strengthen their hardiness and coping strategies, in order to improve their occupational life quality.

The Effect of Neoadjuvant Therapy on Early Complications of Esophageal Cancer Surgery.

INTRODUCTION: Early diagnosis and appropriate treatment is required in esophageal cancer due to its invasive nature. The aim of this study was to evaluate early post-esophagectomy complications in patients with esophageal cancer who received neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NACR). MATERIALS AND METHODS: This randomized clinical trial was carried out between 2009 and 2011. Patients with lower-third esophageal cancer were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group consisted of 50 patients receiving standard chemoradiotherapy (Group A) and then undergoing surgery, and the second group consisted of 50 patients undergoing surgery only (Group B). Patients were evaluated with respect to age, gender, clinical symptoms, type of pathology, time of surgery, perioperative blood loss, and number of lymph nodes resected as well as early post-operative complicate including leakage at the anastomosis site, chylothorax and pulmonary complications, hospitalization period, and mortality rate within the first 30 days after surgery. RESULTS: The mean age of patients was 55 years. Seventy-two patients had squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and 28 patients had adenocarcinoma (ACC). There was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to age, gender, time of surgery, complications including anastomotic leakage, chylothorax, pulmonary complications, cardiac complications, deep venous thrombosis (DVT), or mortality. However, there was a significant difference between the two groups regarding hospital stay, time of surgery, perioperative blood loss, and number of lymph nodes resected. CONCLUSION: The use of NACR did not increase early post-operative complications or mortality among patients with esophageal cancer.

Esophageal diverticula: Analysis of 25 cases.

BACKGROUND: esophageal diverticula are classified as 2 types: true diverticula and pseudodiverticula. These disorders result in clinical manifestations such as dysphagia and esophageal reflux. In this study, we evaluated the results of surgical treatment for diverticula. METHODS: all patients suffering from symptomatic esophageal diverticulum, who underwent surgical treatment in Ghaem Hospital from 2000 to 2012 and were followed up for at least for one year, were included in the study. Age, sex, clinical manifestations, location, surgical approach, and mortality were evaluated. There were 25 patients (15 men and 10 women) with a mean age of 41 ± 8.3 years. RESULTS: the most common site of involvement was inferior (epiphrenic diverticulum). Barium swallow was diagnostic. After surgical treatment, complications occurred in 4 (16%) patients, comprising anastomosis site leakage, hoarseness, atelectasis, and wound infection; all were treated medically. There was no postoperative mortality. All patients experienced an improvement in symptoms during one year of follow-up. CONCLUSION: due to the good results and minimal complications postoperatively, surgical treatment is recommended for patients with symptomatic esophageal diverticulum.