OBJECTIVES There is wide variability in the discussion of code status by residents among hospitalized patients. The primary objective of this study was to determine the effect of a scripted code status explanation on patient understanding of choices pertaining to code status and end-of-life care. METHODS This was a single center, randomized trial in a teaching hospital. Patients were randomiz...

BACKGROUND Japanese cedar (JC) pollinosis is the most common seasonal allergic rhinitis in Japan. Standardized JC pollen extract is available for subcutaneous immunotherapy, but this treatment is limited by potentially serious side effects. The aim of this double-blind, randomized comparative study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of standardized JC pollen extract in a new oral formulati...

PURPOSE We tested the effect of team-based learning (TBL) on medical education through the second-year premedical students' TBL scores in biochemistry classes over 5 years. METHODS We analyzed the results based on test scores before and after the students' debate. The groups of students for statistical analysis were divided as follows: group 1 comprised the top-ranked students, group 3 compri...

OBJECTIVE To develop, standardize, and partly validate a developmental scale for toddlers (age, 1.6 to 3 years) attending anganwadis in India. METHODS After the development of the 12-item Developmental Assessment Tool for Anganwadis (DATA), its internal consistency, face validity, content validity and construct validity were studied in 100 toddlers in anganwadis and were found to be appropria...

aims: the revised geneva score (rgs), a standardized clinical prediction rule for pulmonary embolism (pe), was recently developed. we have measured its predictive accuracy, performing an external retrospective validation in a cohort of emergency department (ed) patients, filtered by symptomatology and not by clinical suspicion, to allow its use in nursing practice.   methods: the clinical proba...

OBJECTIVES We sought to quantify the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and physical function among endometrial cancer survivors. Understanding this relationship would help healthcare providers target efforts to refer obese endometrial cancer survivors to weight loss and exercise interventions. METHODS We conducted a survey of 213 endometrial cancer survivors who received cancer care ...

CONTEXT Performance on the Osteopathic General Surgery In-Service Examination (ISE) has been shown to improve over time for osteopathic general surgery residents. The training level-specific concurrent validity of the ISE, however, has not been evaluated. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether residents' scores will improve as they move from level 1 through level 5 of the ISE. METHODS In this ret...

BACKGROUND The clinical significance of metabolic syndrome (MS) score, MS, and its individual components with respect to risk prediction of coronary artery disease (CAD) remains unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate whether and to what extent MS score, MS, and its individual components were related to the risk of CAD. METHODS Among 1191 participants who underwent coronary an...

We investigated the associations between the self-evaluated pain status and two pain biomarker candidates, nerve growth factor and S100A8/A9, in exudate from venous leg ulcer to finally develop an objective pain evaluation method. Patients with venous leg ulcer participated in this cross-sectional observational study conducted between April and October 2014 at two medical facilities. During rou...

Purpose To evaluate the visual performance and optical quality of a standardized asymmetric soft contact lens (SCL) used for correction of higher-order aberrations (HOAs) in eyes with keratoconus. Methods We included 30 eyes (26 patients) with keratoconus (average K: 45.7 ± 2.3 diopters [D]). The patients were subjected to corneal tomography, aberrometry, measurements of manifest refraction a...