Comparative efficacy of various art therapies for patients with dementia: A network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

BackgroundDementia have brought great challenges to patients, families and society. Numerous art therapies for patients with dementia have been developed in recent years. However, it is still unclear which art therapy represents the optimal strategy for promoting physical and mental health.ObjectivesTo compare the efficacy of various art therapies in improving cognitive function, activity of daily living, depression, anxiety, agitation behavior and quality of life, and rank the art therapies for practice consideration.MethodsA comprehensive literature search was performed in eight electronic databases from their inception to April 2022. Two authors independently completed study selection, data extraction, and assessed methodological quality according to the revised version of the Cochrane tool (RoB 2). Comparative evaluation of different art therapies’ effect was performed by conducting network meta-analysis. The study protocol was registered at PROSPERO.ResultsA total of 39 randomized controlled trials involving 2801 participants were included. Calligraphy therapy (MD = 4.39) and reminiscence therapy (MD = 2.53) significantly improved cognitive function compared with the usual care, and reminiscence therapy (MD = 1.75) significantly enhanced cognitive function compared with music therapy. Horticultural therapy significantly decreased agitation behavior compared with the usual care (MD = −31.34), music therapy (MD = −26.66), reading therapy (MD = −28.44) and reminiscence therapy (MD = −27.32). In addition, calligraphy therapy (MD = 9.00) improved quality of life compared with the usual care.ConclusionCalligraphy therapy might be the most effective art therapy for improving cognitive function and quality of life. Horticultural therapy might be the best art therapy for decreasing agitation behavior. Health-care professionals could consider applying these art therapies to improve cognitive function, agitation behavior and quality of life in patients with dementia

Long-term efficacy of hydrotherapy on balance function in patients with Parkinson’s disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundHydrotherapy can improve the motor and non-motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD), but the long-term effects of hydrotherapy on PD are still unclear.ObjectiveThe purpose of this systematic evaluation and meta-analysis was to explore the long-term effects of hydrotherapy on balance function in PD patients.MethodsA systematic search of five databases was conducted to identify appropriate randomized controlled trials (RCTs) according to the established inclusion and exclusion criteria. The general characteristics and outcome data (balance, exercise, mobility, quality of life, etc.) of the included studies were extracted, and the quality of the included studies was evaluated using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. Finally, the outcome data were integrated for meta-analysis.ResultsA total of 149 articles were screened, and 5 high-quality RCTs involving 135 PD patients were included. The results of the meta-analysis showed positive long-term effects of hydrotherapy on balance function compared to the control group (SMD = 0.69; 95% CI = 0.21, 1.17; p = 0.005; I2 = 44%), However, there were no significant long-term effects of hydrotherapy on motor function (SMD = 0.06; 95% CI = −0.33, 0.44; p = 0.77; I2 = 0%), mobility and quality of life (SMD = −0.21; 95% CI = −0.98, 0.57; p = 0.6; I2 = 71%). Interestingly, the results of the sensitivity analysis performed on mobility showed a clear continuation effect of hydrotherapy on mobility compared to the control group (SMD = −0.80; 95% CI = −1.23, −0.37; p < 0.001; I2 = 0%).ConclusionThe long-term effects of hydrotherapy on PD patients mainly focus on balance function, and the continuous effects on motor function, mobility, and quality of life are not obvious

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

Correction to: Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake

Prevalence, associated factors and outcomes of pressure injuries in adult intensive care unit patients: the DecubICUs study

Funder: European Society of Intensive Care Medicine; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100013347Funder: Flemish Society for Critical Care NursesAbstract: Purpose: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients are particularly susceptible to developing pressure injuries. Epidemiologic data is however unavailable. We aimed to provide an international picture of the extent of pressure injuries and factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries in adult ICU patients. Methods: International 1-day point-prevalence study; follow-up for outcome assessment until hospital discharge (maximum 12 weeks). Factors associated with ICU-acquired pressure injury and hospital mortality were assessed by generalised linear mixed-effects regression analysis. Results: Data from 13,254 patients in 1117 ICUs (90 countries) revealed 6747 pressure injuries; 3997 (59.2%) were ICU-acquired. Overall prevalence was 26.6% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.9–27.3). ICU-acquired prevalence was 16.2% (95% CI 15.6–16.8). Sacrum (37%) and heels (19.5%) were most affected. Factors independently associated with ICU-acquired pressure injuries were older age, male sex, being underweight, emergency surgery, higher Simplified Acute Physiology Score II, Braden score 3 days, comorbidities (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, immunodeficiency), organ support (renal replacement, mechanical ventilation on ICU admission), and being in a low or lower-middle income-economy. Gradually increasing associations with mortality were identified for increasing severity of pressure injury: stage I (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% CI 1.2–1.8), stage II (OR 1.6; 95% CI 1.4–1.9), and stage III or worse (OR 2.8; 95% CI 2.3–3.3). Conclusion: Pressure injuries are common in adult ICU patients. ICU-acquired pressure injuries are associated with mainly intrinsic factors and mortality. Optimal care standards, increased awareness, appropriate resource allocation, and further research into optimal prevention are pivotal to tackle this important patient safety threat

YOLO-DFAN: Effective High-Altitude Safety Belt Detection Network

This paper proposes the You Only Look Once (YOLO) dependency fusing attention network (DFAN) detection algorithm, improved based on the lightweight network YOLOv4-tiny. It combines the advantages of fast speed of traditional lightweight networks and high precision of traditional heavyweight networks, so it is very suitable for the real-time detection of high-altitude safety belts in embedded equipment. In response to the difficulty of extracting the features of an object with a low effective pixel ratio—which is an object with a low ratio of actual area to detection anchor area in the YOLOv4-tiny network—we make three major improvements to the baseline network: The first improvement is introducing the atrous spatial pyramid pooling network after CSPDarkNet-tiny extracts features. The second is to propose the DFAN, while the third is to introduce the path aggregation network (PANet) to replace the feature pyramid network (FPN) of the original network and fuse it with the DFAN. According to the experimental results in the high-altitude safety belt dataset, YOLO-DFAN improves the accuracy by 5.13% compared with the original network, and its detection speed meets the real-time demand. The algorithm also exhibits a good improvement on the Pascal voc07+12 dataset

Comparative Study on the Influence of Different Forms of New Tubular Roof Method Construction on Railway Tracks

Through the research on the effect of underpass construction using the New Tubular Roof Method on the overlying strata and railway tracks, the characteristics and pros/cons of three forms of the New Tubular Roof Method are analyzed. Based on the geological conditions and structural dimensions of the Taiyuan Yingze Street Underpass Project, by analogy to the structural sections of Shenyang Metro Xinle Ruins Station and Seoul Metro Lot 923 Station, three research cases were designed: “Taiyuan method”, “Shenyang method” and “Seoul method”. The numerical models are established, and the construction process of three cases are simulated. The results show that the three forms of the New Tubular Roof Method have different characteristics. The impact of construction on the rail is mainly reflected in the absolute settlement, while the offset of the rail and the relative displacement between the rails are small, which are not enough to pose a threat to the driving safety. “Taiyuan method” has the best control effect on the deformation of the rails in general, but there is a complex superimposed interference effect during tube jacking, and the settlement in the tube jacking stage accounts for a large proportion. “Taiyuan method” and “Shenyang method” adopt the integrated inner-connecting tube roof structure to cover the entire excavation area, which have excellent effect of isolating excavation disturbance. However, “Shenyang method” has the problem of excessive settlement during the stage of steel tube incision. The settlement caused by the construction of “Seoul method” in the tube jacking stage is relatively small, and there is no need to perform the complicated and dangerous tube incision. However, the excavation disturbance of “Seoul method” will partially escape from the side of the structure, and the excavation influence range is significantly larger than other methods

Semi-Symmetrical, Fully Convolutional Masked Autoencoder for TBM Muck Image Segmentation

Deep neural networks are effectively utilized for the instance segmentation of muck images from tunnel boring machines (TBMs), providing real-time insights into the surrounding rock condition. However, the high cost of obtaining quality labeled data limits the widespread application of this method. Addressing this challenge, this study presents a semi-symmetrical, fully convolutional masked autoencoder designed for self-supervised pre-training on extensive unlabeled muck image datasets. The model features a four-tier sparse encoder for down-sampling and a two-tier sparse decoder for up-sampling, connected via a conventional convolutional neck, forming a semi-symmetrical structure. This design enhances the model’s ability to capture essential low-level features, including geometric shapes and object boundaries. Additionally, to circumvent the trivial solutions in pixel regression that the original masked autoencoder faced, Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) descriptors and Laplacian features have been integrated as novel self-supervision targets. Testing shows that the proposed model can effectively discern essential features of muck images in self-supervised training. When applied to subsequent end-to-end training tasks, it enhances the model’s performance, increasing the prediction accuracy of Intersection over Union (IoU) for muck boundaries and regions by 5.9% and 2.4%, respectively, outperforming the enhancements made by the original masked autoencoder