Home-based guided hypnotherapy for children with functional abdominal pain and irritable bowel syndrome in primary care: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

INTRODUCTION: Children often present to primary care with functional abdominal pain (FAP) or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and around half still have abdominal complaints 1 year later. Hypnotherapy is an evidence-based treatment that is used in specialist care, but it lacks evidence in primary care. This study will investigate the (cost) effectiveness of home-based guided hypnotherapy for children with FAP or IBS in primary care. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We report the design of a pragmatic randomised controlled trial among children aged 7-17 years, diagnosed with FAP or IBS by their general practitioner (GP), with assessments over 12 months. The control group will receive care as usual (CAU) by their GP (eg, communication, education and reassurance), while the intervention group will receive CAU plus 3 months of home-based guided hypnotherapy via a website. The primary outcome will be the proportion of children with adequate relief from abdominal pain/discomfort at 12 months, analysed on an intention-to-treat basis. Secondary outcomes will include the adequacy of pain relief at 3 and 6 months, pain/discomfort severity, pain frequency and intensity, daily functioning and impact on function, anxiety and depression, pain beliefs, sleep disturbances, school absence, somatisation, and healthcare use and costs. We must include 200 children to determine a 20% difference in those with adequate relief (55% control vs 75% intervention). ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The Medical Ethics Review Committee of the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands, approved this study (METc2020/237). The results will be disseminated to patients, GPs and other stakeholders via email, a dedicated website, peer-reviewed publications and presentations at national and international conferences. We plan to collaborate with the Dutch Society of GPs to implement the results in clinical practice. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05636358.

Rotavirus and illness severity in children presenting with acute gastroenteritis at the primary care out-of-hours service.

BACKGROUND: Rotavirus is a common cause of acute gastroenteritis in young children in the Netherlands, where rotavirus vaccination has not yet been implemented. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate a difference in illness severity course depending on the presence of rotavirus infection and assess the prevalence of viruses and the referral rate in children with acute gastroenteritis. METHODS: A prospective cohort of children aged 6 months to 6 years presenting with acute gastroenteritis to a primary care out-of-hours service from October 2016 to March 2018. Faeces were sampled and sent to a laboratory where viral pathogens were identified and quantified by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Severe course of acute gastroenteritis was defined as a Modified Vesikari Score of ≥11. In addition, we assessed referral rates. Chi-square tests were used to evaluate differences between groups. RESULTS: We included 75 children (34 boys) with a median age of 1.5 years (interquartile range, 0.9-2.0 years). The prevalence of rotavirus was 65.3% (95% confidence interval, 53.5-76.0) with a median cycle threshold of 16.0. Severe course of acute gastroenteritis was present in 31 of 71 children (4 were lost to follow-up). Those with rotavirus (20/47) did not have a severe course more often than those without (11/24): odds ratio, 0.88 (95% confidence interval, 0.33-2.36). Referral rates were comparable for rotavirus (15.2%) and non-rotavirus (14.3%). CONCLUSION: In out-of-hours primary care, rotavirus is common but not associated with increased severity and higher referral rates in children with acute gastroenteritis.

The distress thermometer as a prognostic tool for one-year survival among patients with lung cancer.

INTRODUCTION: The use of patient-reported outcome measures is increasingly advocated to support high-quality cancer care. We therefore investigated the added value of the Distress Thermometer (DT) when combined with known predictors to assess one-year survival in patients with lung cancer. METHODS: All patients had newly diagnosed or recurrent lung cancer, started systemic treatment, and participated in the intervention arm of a previously published randomised controlled trial. A Cox proportional hazards model was fitted based on five selected known predictors for survival. The DT-score was added to this model and contrasted to models including the EORTC-QLQ-C30 global QoL score (quality of life) or the HADS total score (symptoms of anxiety and depression). Model performance was evaluated through improvement in the -2 log likelihood, Harrell's C-statistic, and a risk classification. RESULTS: In total, 110 patients were included in the analysis of whom 97 patients accurately completed the DT. Patients with a DT score ≥5 (N = 51) had a lower QoL, more symptoms of anxiety and depression, and a shorter median survival time (7.6 months vs 10.0 months; P = 0.02) than patients with a DT score <5 (N = 46). Addition of the DT resulted in a significant improvement in the accuracy of the model to predict one-year survival (P < 0.001) and the discriminatory value (C-statistic) marginally improved from 0.69 to 0.71. The proportion of patients correctly classified as high risk (≥85% risk of dying within one year) increased from 8% to 28%. Similar model performance was observed when combining the selected predictors with QoL and symptoms of anxiety or depression. CONCLUSIONS: Use of the DT allows clinicians to better identify patients with lung cancer at risk for poor outcomes, to further explore sources of distress, and subsequently personalize care accordingly.

Attention, arousal and other rapid bedside screening instruments for delirium in older patients: a systematic review of test accuracy studies.

Objective: delirium occurs frequently in frail patients but is easily missed. Screening with a rapid, easy-to-use and highly sensitive instrument might help improve recognition. The aim of this study was to review attention, arousal and other rapid bedside screening instruments for delirium in older patients. Methods: a literature search was performed in PubMed, PsycINFO and Embase. We scrutinized forward citations in Google Scholar, and references of included articles and prior reviews. We included studies among older patients that investigated the sensitivity and specificity of delirium screening instruments that could be administered in 3 min or less, and did not require surrogate information. We extracted study characteristics, risk of bias, sensitivity and specificity. Results: we identified 27 studies among 4,766 patients in hospitals and nursing homes. They tested many different single and several combined screening instruments. Prevalence of delirium varied between 4% and 57%. Only one study scored a low risk of bias on all domains. Sensitivity varied between 17% and 100%, and specificity between 38% and 99%. Of the 22 tests with sensitivity ≥90%, seven also had specificity ≥80% in older patients in general. These results were approximately reproduced for the Observational Scale of Level of Arousal (OSLA) and Richmond Agitation and Sedation Scale (RASS): sensitivity and specificity were >80%. Conclusion: two arousal tests-OSLA and RASS-had reproduced high sensitivity and specificity in older patients. Nurses can administer these tests during daily interaction with patients. Test accuracy studies about rapid screening tools for delirium superimposed on dementia were scarce.