Pain control and subconjunctival haemorrhage after intravitreal injection using cooled anaesthetic eyedrops and antiseptics: A prospective, double-blind, randomized controlled trial.

PURPOSE: To evaluate whether cooled anaesthetic eyedrops and antiseptics alleviate pain and minimise subconjunctival haemorrhage following intravitreal injection. METHODS: A prospective, double-masked, randomised controlled trial of 100 participants receiving either cooled (n = 50) or room temperature (n = 50) topical anaesthetic eyedrops and antiseptics before receiving an injection of bevacizumab. Baseline tolerability was estimated using a self-reported pain sensitivity questionnaire. RESULTS: Overall tolerability was comparable between the study group and the control group (0.75 ± 0.13 vs. 0.74 ± 0.14, respectively, p = 0.99). Subconjunctival haemorrhage incidence was similar in both groups (80% vs. 86%, respectively, p = 0.113), as was subconjunctival haemorrhage size (2.75 ± 5.51 mm2 vs. 5.53 ± 10.72 mm2 , respectively, p = 0.11). Sub-group analysis demonstrated that the participants taking daily ocular eyedrops who received cooled anaesthetic eyedrops and antiseptics reported less pain at 10 min and less burning sensation at 24 h compared with matched controls (0.67 ± 1.50 vs. 2.50 ± 3.03, respectively, p = 0.040 and 0.00 ± 0.00 vs. 1.44 ± 2.96, respectively, p = 0.045). Participants who received cooled eyedrops and did not use antithrombotic therapy had smaller-sized subconjunctival haemorrhages compared with matched controls (1.55 ± 1.87 mm2 vs. 8.29 ± 14.61 mm2 , respectively, p = 0.038). Participants with hypertension who received cooled eyedrops had smaller-sized subconjunctival haemorrhage compared with matched controls (2.33 ± 4.99 mm2 vs. 6.89 ± 12.41 mm2 , respectively, p = 0.045). CONCLUSION: The benefit of using cooled anaesthetic eyedrops and antiseptics to alleviate pain and minimise subconjunctival haemorrhage following intravitreal injection was not proven in the general population. It may be beneficial in part for some patients, such as those who regularly use eyedrops, patients with hypertension or those not on antithrombotic therapy.

AREDS2 Supplementation in Patients with Wet Age-Related Macular Degeneration.

BACKGROUND: In recent years, major progress has been made in treating the wet form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) with anti-vascular endothelial growth factors, which reportedly stabilize and improve vision. OBJECTIVES: To examine the effect of dietary supplementation, as recommended by the Age-Related Eye Disease Study 2 (AREDS2), on the number of anti-vascular endothelial growth factor injections administered to patients with wet AMD. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted with 57 participants (27 participants in the study group and 30 in the control group) receiving injections of anti-vascular endothelial growth factors. The study group received dietary supplements for at least one year before the treatment was initiated, while the control group did not. Primary outcome was the number of injections a patient received over a 3-year period. Secondary outcomes were central macular thickness and visual acuity. RESULTS: The average number of injections per patient after 3 years was 21.89 ± 7.85 in the study group and 26.00 ± 5.62 in the control group (P = 0.083). Final visual acuities were 0.45 ± 0.45 and 0.8 ± 0.73 (P = 0.09), and final central macular thicknesses were 288.26 ± 55.38 and 313.12 ± 107.36 (P = 0.38) in the study and control groups, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The average number of injections after 3 years was lower in the study group, but this difference did not reach statistical significance. No statistically significant difference was found in final visual acuity or central macular thickness between the groups.

Effect of socioeconomic status on survival in patients with head and neck cancer.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to assess the survival outcomes of head and neck cancer (HNC) by socioeconomic status. METHODS: A national retrospective population-based cohort of HNC patients diagnosed in Israel between 2000 and 2017 was conducted. Site of residence and socioeconomic status were correlated with overall survival (OS), controlling for prognostic factors that included tumor site, stage, age, sex, and ethnic group. RESULTS: Overall, 11 826 patients were identified. Patients from high socioeconomic areas had better overall 5-year survival than patients from low socioeconomic areas (p < 0.005). Patients in stage 3 from a high socioeconomic status had a longer median survival rate of 1.5 years than patients in the low-status group. In a cox proportional hazards analysis, we found age >65 (HR 2.91, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.75-3.09, p < 0.001) and low socioeconomic group (HR 1.25, 95% CI: 1.18-1.33, p < 0.001) to be correlated with inferior OS. CONCLUSION: Our findings show that patients with HNC living in low socioeconomic areas had worse OS.

JingleBells: A Repository of Immune-Related Single-Cell RNA-Sequencing Datasets.

Recent advances in single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology increase the understanding of immune differentiation and activation processes, as well as the heterogeneity of immune cell types. Although the number of available immune-related scRNA-seq datasets increases rapidly, their large size and various formats render them hard for the wider immunology community to use, and read-level data are practically inaccessible to the non-computational immunologist. To facilitate datasets reuse, we created the JingleBells repository for immune-related scRNA-seq datasets ready for analysis and visualization of reads at the single-cell level (http://jinglebells.bgu.ac.il/). To this end, we collected the raw data of publicly available immune-related scRNA-seq datasets, aligned the reads to the relevant genome, and saved aligned reads in a uniform format, annotated for cell of origin. We also added scripts and a step-by-step tutorial for visualizing each dataset at the single-cell level, through the commonly used Integrated Genome Viewer (www.broadinstitute.org/igv/). The uniform scRNA-seq format used in JingleBells can facilitate reuse of scRNA-seq data by computational biologists. It also enables immunologists who are interested in a specific gene to visualize the reads aligned to this gene to estimate cell-specific preferences for splicing, mutation load, or alleles. Thus JingleBells is a resource that will extend the usefulness of scRNA-seq datasets outside the programming aficionado realm.