Patient Education on the Shingrix Vaccine

The CDC recommends that most adults over the age of 50 get the Shingrix vaccine for protection against shingles (herpes zoster). Many patients at the WCHN Southbury Primary Care clinic in Connecticut are eligible for vaccination but are unaware of this newer vaccine or are unsure if they need the vaccine based on their past medical history and vaccination history. A brief, easy to understand handout was made to educate patients on the Shingrix vaccine and address frequently asked questions.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1467/thumbnail.jp

Exploring the experiences of Canadian medical students with a background in the arts and humanities

Background: Arts and Humanities (A/H) training is a powerful strategy to help medical students develop key competencies which align with the CanMEDS roles that Canadian physicians are expected to embody. Students with backgrounds in A/H may enter medical school with the skills and dispositions that A/H training provides. This paper explores the varied experiences of medical students with prior A/H backgrounds, with an emphasis on how they navigate relationships with their student cohorts and participate in undergraduate medical training environments. Methods: Descriptive qualitative research methodology was used to conduct and analyze semi-structured interviews exploring the perspectives of Canadian medical students with either a A/H degree or training in A/H (n = 13). Domains such as identity, integration of interests, and challenges in maintaining A/H interests during medical training were explored. Results: Participants described their A/H identity as intertwined with their identity as medical trainees and described their sense of interconnection between the disciplines. Challenges included imposter syndrome and difficulties in relating with peers from science backgrounds. Participants described returning to their A/H interests as a tool for wellness amidst medical training. Conclusions: Medical students with a background in A/H training describe this background as offering both affordances and challenges for their sense of identity, belonging, and wellness. These students offer an untapped resource: they come with dispositions of value to medicine, and they perceive a positive, hidden A/H curriculum that supports their maintenance of these dispositions during training. Understanding more about these hidden treasures could help foster the development of well-rounded and humanistic physicians in the entire medical class

Effects of Caffeinated Energy Drink and Alcohol Usage on Perceived Stress and Burnout In Undergraduate Students

Caffeinated energy beverages (CEDs) are a growing supplement being consumed by a large number of young adults aged 18 to 24 years of age. As these CEDs contain nutritional supplements, they are not classified the same way other beverages such as sodas are and they can thus bypass regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. Without regulation by this governing body, it is important to understand how these supplements may be affecting their target population. In this study, students from a large university were recruited in order to determine patterns of CED usage as well as how CED usage may affect perceived stress and burnout. Alcohol usage, another type of beverage commonly consumed in this population, was also assayed in this group in order to determine how perceived stress and burnout are affected. The study was case-control in nature, as regular users of CEDs were compared against students who were not regular consumers. From the data, no major relationships could be identified in regards to perceived stress, burnout, and CED usage. However, extracurricular activity was found to be somewhat predictive of CED usage while alcohol usage was found to be negatively correlated with perceived stress

Supporting Vermont Families in Packing Healthy Lunches for Children in Childcare

Introduction. Partnering with Hunger Free Vermont, an organization that works to end hunger and malnutrition across the state, we investigated the nutritional value of the packed meals parents provide for their children in early childcare. The USDA\u27s My Plate resource was used as a measure to assess variety, dividing foods into five groups: grains, dairy, vegetables, fruits, and protein. The results will help Hunger Free Vermont design nutrition education materials for childcare centers to provide to the families they serve. Methods. Online surveys were distributed, asking parents to report the foods they recently provided for their children in packed lunches, to rate how \u27healthy\u27 they thought those lunches were, and to note any barriers they experience to packing healthy foods. Results. Survey results showed that the average number of sweets packed by parents who had low confidence in their ability to pack healthy meals was significantly higher than the average number packed by parents with high confidence (p \u3c 0.05). Additionally, the total number of cited barriers was significantly higher in parents who had low confidence in their ability to pack healthy meals (p \u3c 0.01). Conclusions. Many parents cited time constraints and ‘picky’ children as barriers to providing healthy meals, with concerns about the expense of healthy items and lack of childcare for shopping or food-prep time following close behind. In the future, education materials that address children’s unhealthy food preferences or further investigations into barriers to providing healthy lunches may facilitate development of resources for Vermont families.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1259/thumbnail.jp

Factors determining failure of intertrochanteric fracture fixation with a dynamic hip screw: a retrospective analysis

Background: The intertrochanteric fractures are extra capsular fractures of proximal femur in the trochanteric region. Different fixation techniques were tried for intertrochanteric fractures, with variety of implants but the dynamic hip screw fixation is most widely accepted treatment. However, several authors have concluded that sliding compression screws may be associated with several complications such as perforation of the femoral head, loss of reduction caused by excessive sliding of the lag screw, non-union, shortening of the affected limb and pain. This study was carried out to ascertain the factors that contributed to mechanical failure at our institute.Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 92 patients with unilateral intertrochanteric fracture treated with a sliding hip screw between July 2015 and April 2017. Postoperative radiographs were studied for any loss of reduction, which was defined as a varus deformity greater than 10°, perforation of the femoral head, extrusion of the lag screw of more than 20 mm, or metal failure. The Pearson chi-square test was used to assess the relationship between failure and osteoporosis. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered to be significant.Results: Results revealed a significant relationship between failure and osteoporosis. A possible relationship between the stability of the fracture on Evans’ classification and osteoporosis on Singh’s index was investigated which revealed a high positive correlation between the failure rates of unstable fractures with osteoporosis.Conclusions: An unstable fracture combined with osteoporosis, has higher percentage of fixation failure leading to other methods of treatment like hemiarthroplasty.

Percutaneous retrieval of a Mobin-Uddin inferior vena cava filter 42 years following implantation

Inferior vena cava filters (IVCFs) are an established alternative for protection from thromboembolism when anticoagulation fails or is contraindicated. Before the creation of retrievable IVCFs, patients received filters that were permanent or designed without standardized retrieval options. Although these filters were implanted for prolonged protection, chronic vena caval occlusion and post-thrombotic syndrome are potential sequelae. We present a 53-year-old patient with a Mobin-Uddin permanent IVCF placed 42 years prior complicated by acute iliocaval thrombosis following more than 40 years of filter dwell time. She was successfully treated with thrombolysis, thrombectomy, endobronchial forceps assisted IVCF removal, and iliocaval stent reconstruction

EFFECT OF PARTHENIUM HYSTEROPHORUS ON OXIDATIVE STRESS IN PANCREATIC TISSUE OF DIABETIC RATS

Increased oxidative stress and decreased endogenous antioxidant defense has been shown to be a prominent and early features in diabetes mellitus. The present study focused on investigating the possible protective role of Parthenium hysterophorus against free radical mediated damage in pancreatic tissue of alloxan induced diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced in rats by injecting 150 mg/kg Alloxan monohydrate IP. The results revealed that administration of 50 mg/kg & 100 mg/kg of Parthenium hysterophorus extract significantly increased pancreatic glutathione, superoxide dismutase, catalase level (p<0.01) as well as significantly reduced pancreatic total nitrate/nitrite content and lipid peroxidation (p<0.01) after 72 hr. In conclusion, the study suggests that Parthenium hysterophorus is effective in significantly reducing the oxidative stress in pancreatic tissue of diabetes rats as evidenced by the increase in antioxidant enzymes, reduction of lipid peroxidation and total nitrate/nitrite level

Exploring Embeddings for Measuring Text Relatedness: Unveiling Sentiments and Relationships in Online Comments

After the COVID-19 pandemic caused internet usage to grow by 70%, there has been an increased number of people all across the world using social media. Applications like Twitter, Meta Threads, YouTube, and Reddit have become increasingly pervasive, leaving almost no digital space where public opinion is not expressed. This paper investigates sentiment and semantic relationships among comments across various social media platforms, as well as discusses the importance of shared opinions across these different media platforms, using word embeddings to analyze components in sentences and documents. It allows researchers, politicians, and business representatives to trace a path of shared sentiment among users across the world. This research paper presents multiple approaches that measure the relatedness of text extracted from user comments on these popular online platforms. By leveraging embeddings, which capture semantic relationships between words and help analyze sentiments across the web, we can uncover connections regarding public opinion as a whole. The study utilizes pre-existing datasets from YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, and more. We made use of popular natural language processing models like Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to analyze sentiments and explore relationships between comment embeddings. Additionally, we aim to utilize clustering and Kl-divergence to find semantic relationships within these comment embeddings across various social media platforms. Our analysis will enable a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of online comments and will investigate the notion of the internet functioning as a large interconnected brain.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 3 tables, accepted to the Second International Conference on Informatics (ICI-2023