Radiation Risks and Safety

Patient and physician requests for the use of X-Rays, CTs, and other radiation-producing medical imaging are increasing in the US. Both public and physician awareness of radiation knowledge is limited. Studies suggest that the general public is not concerned about exposure to ionizing radiation from medical procedures due to the widespread notion that healthcare professionals have received extensive training in the radiation principles and are competent in minimizing risk. Pamphlets providing simplified information, available for both providers and patients, may provide as an effective intervention to help educate both physicians and the public about radiation risks and safety.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1327/thumbnail.jp

The Effects of Poetry in Elderly Populations with Memory Impairment

Introduction. A small body of research on therapeutic use of poetry in individuals with memory impairment demonstrates benefits similar to that of more widely studied music interventions. This project aims to assess the effects of participation in a poetry group on the residents of a memory care floor within the Converse Home, an assisted living facility in Burlington, Vermont. Methods.. We evaluated the effects of twelve group poetry sessions on residents\u27 well-being in several domains. Each session included a reading and writing portion, which were evaluated separately to assess differences in measures of communication, interest, and enjoyment. These measures, along with negative responses, were recorded on Likert scales. T-tests, ANOVA, and post-hoc comparisons were used to compare behavioral and affective observations in the reading versus writing sessions. Results.. Positive responses were significantly higher in reading sessions (p Conclusion.. Although the limitations of this project preclude us from drawing individual conclusions regarding the therapeutic efficacy of poetry in individuals with memory impairment, we demonstrate that poetry sessions have a positive impact on global quality of life outcomes and introduction of poetry sessions in this population has a beneficial effect.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1242/thumbnail.jp

Investigating and modeling positron emission tomography factors associated with large cell transformation from low‐grade lymphomas

Abstract Low‐grade lymphomas have a 1%–3% annual risk of transformation to a high‐grade histology, and prognostic factors remain undefined. We set to investigate the role of positron emission tomography (PET) metrics in identification of transformation in a retrospective case‐control series of patients matched by histology and follow‐up time. We measured PET parameters including maximum standard uptake value (SUV‐max) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG), and developed a PET feature and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH)‐based model to identify transformation status within discovery and validation cohorts. For our discovery cohort, we identified 53 patients with transformation and 53 controls with a similar distribution of follicular lymphoma (FL). Time to transformation and control follow‐up time was similar. We observed a significant incremental increase in SUV‐max and TLG between control, pretransformation and post‐transformation groups (P < 0.05). By multivariable analysis, we identified a significant interaction between SUV‐max and TLG such that SUV‐max had highest significance for low volume cases (P = 0.04). We developed a scoring model incorporating SUV‐max, TLG, and serum LDH with improved identification of transformation (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.91). Our model performed similarly for our validation cohort of 23 patients (AUC = 0.90). With external and prospective validation, our scoring model may provide a specific and noninvasive tool for risk stratification for patients with low‐grade lymphoma