Objective To investigate the serum level of surfactant protein D ( SP-D) in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( COPD) and its clinical significance. Methods Serumlevels of SP-D in patients with acute exacerbations of COPD ( n = 29) , stable COPD ( n = 26) , and control subjects ( n = 19 ) were measured by ELISA. Multiple regression modeling was performed to determine the independent relationship between SP-D and lung function variables. Results The serum SP-D levels were significantly increased in the patients who experienced an acute exacerbation [ ( 70. 6 ±20. 7) ng/mL] compared with the patients with stable COPD and the control subjects [ ( 47. 9 ±13. 3) ng/mL and ( 31. 2 ±11. 4) ng/mL] ( both P lt; 0. 01) . The serum SP-D levels in the patients with stable COPD increased significantly than the control subjects ( P lt; 0. 01) . Smoking index and staging of COPD were positively related to SP-D level. Serum SP-D levels were also found to be inversely related to FEV1% pred in stable COPD. Conclusion Serum SP-D may be a potential diagnostic and staging biomarker for COPD.
Hemodynamics plays a vital role in the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases, and is closely associated with changes in morphology and function. Reliable detection of hemodynamic changes is essential to improve treatment strategies and enhance patient prognosis. The combination of computational fluid dynamics with cardiovascular imaging technology has extended the accessibility of hemodynamics. This review provides a comprehensive summary of recent developments in the application of computational fluid dynamics for cardiovascular hemodynamic assessment and a succinct discussion for potential future development.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the effect of implementing the medicines zero mark-up policy in Chinese public hospitals.MethodsCNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, Sinomed, Web of Science, PubMed and EMbase databases were electronically searched to collect quantitative evaluations of the effect of implementing the medicines zero mark-up policy in Chinese public hospitals from inception to October 30th, 2020. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed risk of bias of included studies. Descriptive analysis was then performed.ResultsThe existing evidence on the effect of implementing the medicines zero mark-up policy in Chinese public hospitals was from 3 studies based on national samples and 7 provincial level studies in Beijing, Shannxi and Fujian. After the implementation of the medicines zero mark-up policy, all included studies found that the medicines expenditure and the proportion of medicines expenditure to the total expenditure per outpatient visit or per hospitalization decreased. The expenditures of medical supplies, tests & examinations per outpatient visit or per hospitalization increased, and the medical expenditure per outpatient visit or per hospitalization increased in Beijing. The hospital annual revenue generated from medicines and its proportion to the total annual revenue both decreased across the country. Although the government allocated increased subsidy to compensate the revenue reduction of the public hospitals due to the implementation of the medicines zero-mark-up policy, the total annual revenue of traditional Chinese medicine hospitals at the county level across the country still decreased significantly.ConclusionsBased on the available evidence, we conclude that the policy objective of abolishing the mechanism of "compensating medical care with revenue generated from prescribing medicines" is achieved, while that of establishing a scientific compensation mechanism for public hospitals are partially achieved. Compared with other regions, Beijing has appropriately adjusted the prices of medical care while removing the mark-up of medicines, thus is a contributor to the establishment of a scientific compensation mechanism for public hospitals.
Objective To formulate a medical endoscopy service evaluation system, so as to guide the hospitals to select products, provide advices for manufacturers to improve the service, and finally improve the overall service capacity of medical endoscopy industry. Methods The whole study was conducted from January to December 2018. Firstly, Delphi method was used to establish the evaluation indexes, which helped to get the evaluation scenario. Secondly, the evaluation mechanism was established through the association of three central hospitals with their medical treatment partnerships and collaborative hospitals. Thirdly, the popular medical endoscopy brands in China were evaluated for a long time by means of information technology. Results Finally, more than 80% of the provinces of China were covered by the medical endoscopy services evaluation, and 51 hospitals participated in the evaluation. At the end of 2018, 1 450 valid data were collected, of which the annual average abnormal data was less than 5%. With the score ranking, the highest score was 4.45, the lowest score was 3.27, and the average score was 3.85. The preliminary evaluation results were sent to medical endoscopy manufacturers. Conclusions The " multi-center hospital” medical endoscopy service evaluation system established in this study has the characteristics that the indexes are scientific, and the evaluation is comprehensive and wide-coverage. It provides a feasible and effective solution for medical endoscopy service evaluation and plays an important role in improving the whole medical endoscopy service level and brand value.
ObjectiveTo summarize the characteristics of bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) aortopathy and analyze the association between aortopathy and BAV phenotype and patterns of valvular dysfunction.MethodsClinical data of 191 patients who underwent the first aortic valve replacement in Fuwai Hospital from June 2017 to March 2018 were retrospectively analyzed, including 143 males and 48 females with an average age of 53.91±12.52 years. All patients underwent multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) and echocardiography before the operation, excluding patients with aortic coarctation. The BAV aortopathy phenotype was classified during operation. The characteristics of BAV aortopathy were analyzed by cluster and artificial analysis. BAV anatomic phenotype was divided into two types according to the direction of valve opening: BAV-AP and BAV-LR.ResultsFour distinct BAV aortopathy phenotypes were identified: a common type (n=70, 36.6%), with no dilation or mild dilation of aorta; a root type (n=24, 12.6%), with predominant dilatation of aortic sinus; an ascending aorta type (n=72, 37.7%), with predominant dilatation of ascending aorta; an arch type (n=25, 13.1%), with predominant dilatation of aortic arch dilatation. The root type was mainly in young patients, while the arch type was mainly in elderly patients (P<0.05). BAV-AP and aortic insufficiency were most prevalent in root type, while BAV-LR and aortic stenosis were most prevalent in arch type (P<0.05). There were 111 (58.1%) patients undergoing aortic surgery, and the coincidence rate of BAV aortopathy phenotype and aortic surgery was 80.6%.ConclusionAccording to the location of aortic dilation, BAV aortopathy can be divided into four types. There is an association between BAV aortopathy and valvular phenotype and dysfunction.
Malignant tumors are the major diseases which threat human beings. Anti-cancer medicines play important roles in the treatment of malignant tumors, especially for the new targeted therapies. They bring the life hope for cancer patients who were sentenced to death, and improve quality of life, and some patients may achieve normal lifetime. However, the new anti-cancer medicines are usually too expensive to afford, and most of them have not yet been included in Chinese public health security system, the accessibility of the new anti-cancer medicines is seriously limited. This paper introduces the accessibility of high-cost anti-cancer medicines in China, analyzes the influence factors, and proposes policy recommendations to improve the accessibility of high-cost anti-cancer medicines in China.
ObjectiveTo evaluate the safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of different uses of oxidized regenerated cellulose (ORC) in video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) for lung cancer resection to provide a reference for the selection, clinical use, and rational utilization of absorbable hemostatic materials. MethodsA retrospective analysis of relevant data from inpatients who underwent VATS for lung cancer resection at a tertiary hospital from July 2019 to January 2020 and from July 2020 to December 2020 was conducted. Patients were divided into two groups based on the use of ORC: 1) combined use group (ORC and collagen sponge) and 2) sole-use group (ORC). Safety, efficacy, and economic outcome indicators were compared between the two groups. ResultsThe main analysis included a total of 904 patients, with 466 in the combined use group and 438 in the sole-use group. Compared to the combined use group, the sole-use group had a significantly longer hospital stay, used fewer hemostatic drugs, had a lower average cost of hemostatic materials, and a lower median total hospitalization cost (P<0.05). No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of intraoperative blood loss volume, massive blood loss rate, perioperative transfusion rate, reoperation rate, postoperative 48-hour drainage volume, bloody drainage fluid rate, or postoperative laboratory test indicators. ConclusionThere was no significant difference in the safety or efficacy of VATS for lung cancer resection between the sole use of ORC and the combined use of ORC, but the sole use of ORC was associated with a lower cost of hemostatic materials and a lower total hospitalization cost. The sole use of hemostatic gauze in VATS for lung cancer resection may be a more cost-effective choice.
Aiming at the problems of obscure clinical auscultation features of pulmonary hypertension associated with congenital heart disease and the complexity of existing machine-aided diagnostic algorithms, an algorithm based on the statistical characteristics of the high-frequency components of the second heart sound signal is proposed. Firstly, an endpoint detection adaptive segmentation method is employed to extract the second heart sounds. Subsequently, the high-frequency component of the heart sound is decomposed using the discrete wavelet transform. Statistical features including the Hurst exponent, Lempel-Ziv information and sample entropy are extracted from this component. Finally, the extracted features are utilized to train an extreme gradient boosting algorithm (XGBoost) classifier, which achieves an accuracy of 80.45% in triple classification. Notably, this method eliminates the need for a noise reduction algorithm, allows for swift feature extraction, and achieves effective multi-classification using only three features. It is promising for early screening of pulmonary hypertension associated with congenital heart disease.
The multi-window time-frequency reassignment helps to improve the time-frequency resolution of bark-frequency spectral coefficient (BFSC) analysis of heart sounds. For this purpose, a new heart sound classification algorithm combining feature extraction based on multi-window time-frequency reassignment BFSC with deep learning was proposed in this paper. Firstly, the randomly intercepted heart sound segments are preprocessed with amplitude normalization, the heart sounds were framed and time-frequency rearrangement based on short-time Fourier transforms were computed using multiple orthogonal windows. A smooth spectrum estimate is calculated by arithmetic averaging each of the obtained independent spectra. Finally, the BFSC of reassignment spectrum is extracted as a feature by the Bark filter bank. In this paper, convolutional network and recurrent neural network are used as classifiers for model comparison and performance evaluation of the extracted features. Eventually, the multi-window time-frequency rearrangement improved BFSC method extracts more discriminative features, with a binary classification accuracy of 0.936, a sensitivity of 0.946, and a specificity of 0.922. These results present that the algorithm proposed in this paper does not need to segment the heart sounds and randomly intercepts the heart sound segments, which greatly simplifies the computational process and is expected to be used for screening of congenital heart disease.
