From text to interaction: The digital advance directive method for advance directives

Advance directives allow people to specify individual treatment preferences in case of decision-making incapacity involving decisions of utmost importance. There are many tools that provide information on the topic, digital forms for structured data input, or platforms that support data storage and availability. Yet, there is no tool supporting the innermost process of an advance directive: decision making itself. To address this issue, we developed a visual-interactive, semi-quantitative method for generating digital advance directives (DiADs) that harnesses the potential of digitalization in healthcare. In this article, we describe the DiAD method and its app lined with the exemplary narrative of user Mr S. linking the theory to an exemplary use case. The DiAD method is intended to lower barriers and increase comfort in creating an advance directive by shifting the focus from heavily text-based processes to visual representation and interaction, that is, from text to reflection. Keywords: Advance directive; data model; data representation; digital healthcare; visual-interactive application

The Advance Care Compass- A New Mechanics for Digitally Transforming Advance Directives

Advance directives allow people to declare their treatment preferences for a potential future state of incompetency. Covid-19, with its high numbers of quickly deteriorating patients requiring intensive care, has acutely demonstrated how helpful it would be for clinicians to have reliable, readily available, up-to-date information at hand to be able to act in accordance with what the individual patient would have wanted. Yet for the past few decades advance directives have fallen short of their potential, for various reasons. At worst, advance directives are perceived as unwieldy legal documents that put excessive demands on patients without providing useful guidance for better care. Recent efforts such as advance care planning have tried to remedy some of these shortcomings but have so far met with limited success. We suggest a new concept-the Advance Care Compass-that harnesses the potential of digitalization in healthcare to overcome many of difficulties encountered so far

Manifestations of early brain recovery associated with abstinence from alcoholism

Chronic alcohol abuse results in morphological, metabolic, and functional brain damage which may, to some extent, be reversible with early effects upon abstinence. Although morphometric, spectroscopic, and neuropsychological indicators of cerebral regeneration have been described previously, the overall amount and spatial preference of early brain recovery attained by abstinence and its associations with other indicators of regeneration are not well established. We investigated global and local brain volume changes in a longitudinal two-timepoint study with T1-weighted MRI at admission and after short-term (6-7 weeks) sobriety follow-up in 15 uncomplicated, recently detoxified alcoholics. Volumetric brain gain was related to metabolic and neuropsychological recovery. On admission and after short-term abstinence, structural image evaluation using normalization of atrophy (SIENA), its voxelwise statistical extension to multiple subjects, proton MR spectroscopy (1H-MRS), and neuropsychological tests were applied. Upon short-term sobriety, 1H-MRS levels of cerebellar choline and frontomesial N-acetylaspartate (NAA) were significantly augmented. Automatically detected global brain volume gain amounted to nearly two per cent on average and was spatially significant around the superior vermis, perimesencephalic, periventricular and frontal brain edges. It correlated positively with the percentages of cerebellar and frontomesial choline increase, as detected by 1H-MRS. Moreover, frontomesial NAA gains were associated with improved performance on the d2-test of attention. In 10 age- and gender-matched healthy control subjects, no significant brain volume or metabolite changes were observed. Although cerebral osmotic regulations may occur initially upon sobriety, significant increases of cerebellar choline and frontomesial NAA levels detected at stable brain water integrals and creatine concentrations, serum electrolytes and red blood cell indices in our patient sample suggest that early brain recovery through abstinence does not simply reflect rehydration. Instead, even the adult human brain and particularly its white matter seems to possess genuine capabilities for regrowth. Our findings emphasize metabolic as well as regionally distinct morphological capacities for partial brain recovery from toxic insults of chronic alcoholism and substantiate early measurable benefits of therapeutic sobriety. Further understanding of the precise mechanisms of this recovery may become a valuable model of brain regeneration with relevance for other disorder

Effect of Acute Ozone Induced Airway Inflammation on Human Sympathetic Nerve Traffic: A Randomized, Placebo Controlled, Crossover Study

Background: Ozone concentrations in ambient air are related to cardiopulmonary perturbations in the aging population. Increased central sympathetic nerve activity induced by local airway inflammation may be one possible mechanism. Methodology/Principal Findings: To elucidate this issue further, we performed a randomized, double-blind, cross-over study, including 14 healthy subjects (3 females, age 22-47 years), who underwent a 3 h exposure with intermittent exercise to either ozone (250 ppb) or clean air. Induced sputum was collected 3 h after exposure. Nineteen to 22 hours after exposure, we recorded ECG, finger blood pressure, brachial blood pressure, respiration, cardiac output, and muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) at rest, during deep breathing, maximum-inspiratory breath hold, and a Valsalva maneuver. While the ozone exposure induced the expected airway inflammation, as indicated by a significant increase in sputum neutrophils, we did not detect a significant estimated treatment effect adjusted for period on cardiovascular measurements. Resting heart rate (clean air: 59 +/- 62, ozone 60 +/- 62 bpm), blood pressure (clean air: 121 +/- 3/71 +/- 2 mmHg; ozone: 121 +/- 2/71 +/- 2mmHg), cardiac output (clean air: 7.42 +/- 0.29 mmHg; ozone: 7.98 +/- 0.60 l/min), and plasma norepinephrine levels (clean air: 213 +/- 21 pg/ml; ozone: 202 +/- 16 pg/ml), were similar on both study days. No difference of resting MSNA was observed between ozone and air exposure (air: 2362, ozone: 2362 bursts/min). Maximum MSNA obtained at the end of apnea (air: 44 +/- 4, ozone: 48 +/- 4 bursts/min) and during the phase II of the Valsalva maneuver (air: 64 +/- 5, ozone: 57 +/- 6 bursts/min) was similar. Conclusions/Significance: Our study suggests that acute ozone-induced airway inflammation does not increase resting sympathetic nerve traffic in healthy subjects, an observation that is relevant for environmental health. However, we can not exclude that chronic airway inflammation may contribute to sympathetic activation

sj-docx-1-dhj-10.1177_20552076221147414 - Supplemental material for From text to interaction: The digital advance directive method for advance directives

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-dhj-10.1177_20552076221147414 for From text to interaction: The digital advance directive method for advance directives by Armin Biller and Nikola Biller-Andorno in Digital Health</p

Neural correlates of reward processing in schizophrenia--relationship to apathy and depression

The present study employs a new framework to categorise the heterogeneous findings on the relationship between impaired reward processing and negative and affective symptoms of schizophrenia. Based on previous behavioural and neuroimaging studies we postulate that "wanting" (i.e. anticipation) of a reward is specifically related to apathy, whereas "liking" (i.e. hedonic impact) is related to anhedonia and depression--symptoms commonly observed in schizophrenia. Fifteen patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder treated with atypical antipsychotic drugs and fifteen healthy controls performed a probabilistic monetary incentive delay task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. At the group level we found no significant differences between patients and controls in neural activation during anticipation or receipt of a reward. However, in patients with schizophrenia specific relationships between ventral-striatal activation and symptoms were observed. Ventral-striatal activation during reward anticipation was negatively correlated with apathy, while activation during receipt of reward was negatively correlated with severity of depressive symptoms. These results suggest that the link between negative symptoms and reward anticipation might specifically relate to apathy, i.e. a lack of motivation and drive. Impaired hedonic reward processing might contribute to the development of depressive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia, but it is not directly associated with self-rated anhedonia. These results indicate the necessity of more specifically differentiating negative and affective symptoms in schizophrenia in order to understand the role of the reward system in their pathogenesis

Combined Acquisition Technique (CAT) for Neuroimaging of Multiple Sclerosis at Low Specific Absorption Rates (SAR)

<div><p>Purpose</p><p>To compare a novel combined acquisition technique (CAT) of turbo-spin-echo (TSE) and echo-planar-imaging (EPI) with conventional TSE. CAT reduces the electromagnetic energy load transmitted for spin excitation. This radiofrequency (RF) burden is limited by the specific absorption rate (SAR) for patient safety. SAR limits restrict high-field MRI applications, in particular.</p><p>Material and Methods</p><p>The study was approved by the local Medical Ethics Committee. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. T2- and PD-weighted brain images of n = 40 Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients were acquired by CAT and TSE at 3 Tesla. Lesions were recorded by two blinded, board-certificated neuroradiologists. Diagnostic equivalence of CAT and TSE to detect MS lesions was evaluated along with their SAR, sound pressure level (SPL) and sensations of acoustic noise, heating, vibration and peripheral nerve stimulation.</p><p>Results</p><p>Every MS lesion revealed on TSE was detected by CAT according to both raters (Cohen’s kappa of within-rater/across-CAT/TSE lesion detection κ_CAT = 1.00, at an inter-rater lesion detection agreement of κ_LES = 0.82). CAT reduced the SAR burden significantly compared to TSE (p<0.001). Mean SAR differences between TSE and CAT were 29.0 (±5.7) % for the T2-contrast and 32.7 (±21.9) % for the PD-contrast (expressed as percentages of the effective SAR limit of 3.2 W/kg for head examinations). Average SPL of CAT was no louder than during TSE. Sensations of CAT- vs. TSE-induced heating, noise and scanning vibrations did not differ.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>T2−/PD-CAT is diagnostically equivalent to TSE for MS lesion detection yet substantially reduces the RF exposure. Such SAR reduction facilitates high-field MRI applications at 3 Tesla or above and corresponding protocol standardizations but CAT can also be used to scan faster, at higher resolution or with more slices. According to our data, CAT is no more uncomfortable than TSE scanning.</p></div