Hospital length of stay, do not resuscitate orders, and survival for post-cardiac arrest patients in Michigan: A study for the CARES Surveillance Group

OBJECTIVE: Current guidelines recommend deferring prognostic decisions for at least 72 h following admission after Out of Hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Most non-survivors experience withdrawal of life sustaining therapy (WLST), and early WLST may adversely impact survival. We sought to characterize the hospital length of stay (LOS) and timing of Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders (as surrogates for WLST), to assess their relationship to survival following cardiac arrest. DESIGN: We performed a retrospective cohort study of probabilistically linked cardiac arrest registries (Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES) and Michigan Inpatient Database (MIDB) from 2014 to 2017. PATIENTS: Adult (≥18 years) patients admitted following OHCA were included. We considered LOS ≤ 3 days (short LOS) and written DNR order with LOS ≤ 3 days (Early DNR) as indicators of early WLST. Our primary outcome was survival to hospital discharge. We utilized multilevel logistic regression clustered by hospital to examine associations of these variables, patient characteristics and survival to hospital discharge. MEASUREMENT AND MAIN RESULTS: We included 3644 patients from 38 hospitals with \u3e30 patients. Patients mean age was 62.4 years and were predominately male (59.3%). LOS ≤ 3 days (OR(adj) = 0.11) and early DNR (OR(adj) = 0.02) were inversely associated with survival to discharge. There was a non-significant inverse association between hospital rates of LOS ≤ 3 days and survival (p = 0.11), and Early DNR and survival (p = 0.83). In the multilevel model, using median odd ratios to assess variation in LOS ≤ 3 days and survival, patient characteristics contributed more to variability in survival than between-hospital variation. However, between-hospital variation contributed more to variability than patient characteristics in the provision of early DNR orders. CONCLUSIONS: We observed that LOS ≤ 3 days for post-arrest patients was negatively-associated with survival, with both patient characteristics and between-hospital variation associated with outcomes. However, between-hospital variation appears to be more highly-associated with provision of early DNR orders than patient characteristics. Further work is needed to assess variation in early DNR orders and their impact on patient survival

An Initiative to Improve Cultural Competence among GYN/OB Providers

Healthcare cultural competence is defined as a process of delivering care by meeting the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of diverse populations, and should be optimized at all organizational levels to reduce racial disparities and poor patient outcomes. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) recognizes the importance of cultural competence and states that research should be conducted to identify and combat barriers that impede equitable care. In this prospective, pre- and post-intervention study design, we used the Healthcare Provider Cultural Competence Instrument (HPCCI) to measure five dimensions of cultural competence within the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics in a large academic medical center. The intervention was a single Grand Rounds educational presentation on cultural diversity. Baseline survey response rate was 64%. Post-intervention survey response rate was 30%. Post-intervention survey results showed that cultural competence increased by statistically significant amounts across all five dimensions. Our results show an effective and feasible method to assess baseline cultural competency in a large interprofessional clinical department. Our results also indicate that a single intervention may have some positive impact on levels of cultural competence for a diverse interprofessional health care team

Variability of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation utilization for refractory adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: an international survey study.

Objective: A growing interest in extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) as a rescue strategy for refractory adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) currently exists. This study aims to determine current standards of care and practice variation for ECPR patients in the USA and Korea. Methods: In December 2015, we surveyed centers from the Korean Hypothermia Network (KORHN) Investigators and the US National Post-Arrest Research Consortium (NPARC) on current targeted temperature management and ECPR practices. This project analyzes the subsection of questions addressing ECPR practices. We summarized survey. Results: Overall, 9 KORHN and 4 NPARC centers reported having ECPR programs and had complete survey data available. Two KORHN centers utilized extracorporeal membrane oxygenation only for postarrest circulatory support in patients with refractory shock and were excluded from further analysis. Centers with available ECPR generally saw a high volume of OHCA patients (10/11 centers care for \u3e75 OHCA a year). Location of, and providers trained for cannulation varied across centers. All centers in both countries (KORHN 7/7, NPARC 4/4) treated comatose ECPR patients with targeted temperature management. All NPARC centers and four of seven KORHN centers reported having a standardized hospital protocol for ECPR. Upper age cutoff for eligibility ranged from 60 to 75 years. No absolute contraindications were unanimous among centers. Conclusion: A wide variability in practice patterns exist between centers performing ECPR for refractory OHCA in the US and Korea. Standardized protocols and shared research databases might inform best practices, improve outcomes, and provide a foundation for prospective studies

Percutaneous mechanical circulatory support and survival in patients resuscitated from Out of Hospital cardiac arrest: A study from the CARES surveillance group

INTRODUCTION: Maintenance of cardiac function is required for successful outcome after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Cardiac function can be augmented using a mechanical circulatory support (MCS) device, most commonly an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) or Impella®. OBJECTIVE: Our objective is to assess whether the use of a MCS is associated with improved survival in patients resuscitated from OHCA in Michigan. METHODS: We matched cardiac arrest cases during 2014-2017 from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES) in Michigan and the Michigan Inpatient Database (MIDB) using probabilistic linkage. Multilevel logistic regression tested the association between MCS and the primary outcome of survival to hospital discharge. RESULTS: A total of 3790 CARES cases were matched with the MIDB and 1131 (29.8%) survived to hospital discharge. A small number were treated with MCS, an IABP (n = 183) or Impella® (n = 50). IABP use was associated with an improved outcome (unadjusted OR = 2.16, 95%CI [1.59, 2.93]), while use of Impella® approached significance (OR = 1.72, 95% CI [0.96, 3.06]). Use of MCS was associated with improved outcome (unadjusted OR = 2.07, 95% CI [1.55, 2.77]). In a multivariable model, MCS use was no longer independently associated with improved outcome (OR(adj) = 0.95, 95% CI [0.69, 1.31]). In the subset of subjects with cardiogenic shock (N = 725), MCS was associated with improved survival in univariate (unadjusted OR = 1.84, 95% CI [1.24, 2.73]) but not multi-variable modeling (OR(adj) = 1.14, 95% CI [0.74, 1.77]). CONCLUSION: Use of MCS was infrequent in patients resuscitated from OHCA and was not independently associated with improvement in post arrest survival after adjusting for covariates

Simple, high-throughput measurement of gut-derived short-chain fatty acids in clinically relevant biofluids using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

IntroductionThe quantitative measurement of circulating gut bacteria-derived metabolites has increased in recent years due to their associations with health and disease. While much of the previous attention has been placed on metabolites considered as deleterious to health, a shift to the investigation of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) as potential health promotors has been observed.ObjectivesTo develop a simple, high-throughput and quantitative assay to measure gut-derived SCFAs in clinically relevant biofluids using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS).MethodsA short (7.5 min) GC–MS assay was optimized for measurement of seven straight- and branched-chain SCFAs and their deuterated isotopes using a wax-based column for analysis without prior derivatization. The assay was validated using routine criteria to assess precision, accuracy, matrix effects, recovery, and extraction reproducibility. Assay applicability was tested in cohorts of healthy individuals and kidney disease patients.ResultsThe assay was demonstrated to be precise, accurate and reproducible with acceptable levels of matrix effect and analyte recovery. Lower limits of detection and quantitation were in the low ng/mL range. An investigation into different blood collection tube chemistries demonstrated that lithium heparin plasma and serum clotting activator tubes are recommended for use in future cross-study comparisons. Kidney disease patient analyses demonstrated variable differences across SCFAs when comparing hemodialysis to earlier stages of chronic kidney disease, demonstrating the suitability of the assay for translation to clinical analyses.ConclusionThe assay has been validated and identified as reliable for use in larger-scale studies for the analysis of SCFAs in human plasma and serum

Detection of Viruses from Bioaerosols Using Anion Exchange Resin

This protocol demonstrates a customized bioaerosol sampling method for viruses. In this system, anion exchange resin is coupled with liquid impingement-based air sampling devices for efficacious concentration of negatively-charged viruses from bioaerosols. Thus, the resin serves as an additional concentration step in the bioaerosol sampling workflow. Nucleic acid extraction of the viral particles is then performed directly from the anion exchange resin, with the resulting sample suitable for molecular analyses. Further, this protocol describes a custom-built bioaerosol chamber capable of generating virus-laden bioaerosols under a variety of environmental conditions and allowing for continuous monitoring of environmental variables such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, and aerosol mass concentration. The main advantage of using this protocol is increased sensitivity of viral detection, as assessed via direct comparison to an unmodified conventional liquid impinger. Other advantages include the potential to concentrate diverse negatively-charged viruses, the low cost of anion exchange resin (~$0.14 per sample), and ease of use. Disadvantages include the inability of this protocol to assess infectivity of resin-adsorbed viral particles, and potentially the need for the optimization of the liquid sampling buffer used within the impinger

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN