scholarly journals The Management of Acute Colonic Diverticulitis in the COVID-19 Era: A Scoping Review

Medicina ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (10) ◽  
pp. 1127
Author(s):  
Roberto Cirocchi ◽  
Riccardo Nascimbeni ◽  
Gloria Burini ◽  
Carlo Boselli ◽  
Francesco Barberini ◽  
...  

Background and Objective: During the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems worldwide made major changes to their organization, delaying diagnosis and treatment across a broad spectrum of pathologies. Concerning surgery, there was an evident reduction in all elective and emergency activities, particularly for benign pathologies such as acute diverticulitis, for which we have identified a reduction in emergency room presentation with mild forms and an increase with more severe forms. The aim of our review was to discover new data on emergency presentation for patients with acute diverticulitis during the Covid-19 pandemic and their current management, and to define a better methodology for surgical decision-making. Method: We conducted a scoping review on 25 trials, analyzing five points: reduced hospital access for patients with diverticulitis, the preferred treatment for non-complicated diverticulitis, the role of CT scanning in primary evaluation and percutaneous drainage as a treatment, and changes in surgical decision-making and preferred treatment strategies for complicated diverticulitis. Results: We found a decrease in emergency access for patients with diverticular disease, with an increased incidence of complicated diverticulitis. The preferred treatment was conservative for non-complicated forms and in patients with COVID-related pneumonia, percutaneous drainage for abscess, or with surgery delayed or reserved for diffuse peritonitis or sepsis. Conclusion: During the COVID-19 pandemic we observed an increased number of complicated forms of diverticulitis, while the total number decreased, possibly due to delay in hospital or ambulatory presentation because of the fear of contracting COVID-19. We observed a greater tendency to treat these more severe forms by conservative means or drainage. When surgery was necessary, there was a preference for an open approach or a delayed operation.

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. E1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Kelly ◽  
Daniel P. Sulmasy ◽  
Robert J. Weil

Decision making for patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) poses several challenges. Outcomes in this patient population are generally poor, prognostication is often uncertain, and treatment strategies offer limited benefits. Studies demonstrate variability in the type and intensity of treatment offered, which is attributed to clinical uncertainty and habits of training. Research has focused on new techniques and more stringent evidence-based selection criteria to improve outcomes and produce consensus around treatment strategies for patients with ICH. Such focus, however, offers little description of how ICH treatment decisions are made and how such decisions reflect patient preferences regarding medical care. A growing body of literature suggests that the process of decision making in ICH is laden with bias, value assumptions, and subjective impressions. Factors such as geography, cognitive biases, patient perceptions, and physician characteristics can all shape decision making and the selection of treatment. Such factors often serve as a barrier to providing patient-centered medical care. In this article, the authors review how surgical decision making for patients with ICH is shaped by these decisional factors and suggest future research pathways to study decision making in ICH. Such research efforts are important for establishing quality guidelines and pay-for-performance measures that reflect the preferences of individual patients and the contextual nature of medical decision making.


2007 ◽  
Vol 177 (4S) ◽  
pp. 405-405
Author(s):  
Suman Chatterjee ◽  
Jonathon Ng ◽  
Edward D. Matsumoto

2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (S 1) ◽  
Author(s):  
B Osswald ◽  
U Tochtermann ◽  
S Keller ◽  
D Badowski-Zyla ◽  
V Gegouskov ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (s1) ◽  
pp. 60-61
Author(s):  
Kadie Clancy ◽  
Esmaeel Dadashzadeh ◽  
Christof Kaltenmeier ◽  
JB Moses ◽  
Shandong Wu

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: This retrospective study aims to create and train machine learning models using a radiomic-based feature extraction method for two classification tasks: benign vs. pathologic PI and operation of benefit vs. operation not needed. The long-term goal of our study is to build a computerized model that incorporates both radiomic features and critical non-imaging clinical factors to improve current surgical decision-making when managing PI patients. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Searched radiology reports from 2010-2012 via the UPMC MARS Database for reports containing the term “pneumatosis” (subsequently accounting for negations and age restrictions). Our inclusion criteria included: patient age 18 or older, clinical data available at time of CT diagnosis, and PI visualized on manual review of imaging. Cases with intra-abdominal free air were excluded. Collected CT imaging data and an additional 149 clinical data elements per patient for a total of 75 PI cases. Data collection of an additional 225 patients is ongoing. We trained models for two clinically-relevant prediction tasks. The first (referred to as prediction task 1) classifies between benign and pathologic PI. Benign PI is defined as either lack of intraoperative visualization of transmural intestinal necrosis or successful non-operative management until discharge. Pathologic PI is defined as either intraoperative visualization of transmural PI or withdrawal of care and subsequent death during hospitalization. The distribution of data samples for prediction task 1 is 47 benign cases and 38 pathologic cases. The second (referred to as prediction task 2) classifies between whether the patient benefitted from an operation or not. “Operation of benefit” is defined as patients with PI, be it transmural or simply mucosal, who benefited from an operation. “Operation not needed” is defined as patients who were safely discharged without an operation or patients who had an operation, but nothing was found. The distribution of data samples for prediction task 2 is 37 operation not needed cases and 38 operation of benefit cases. An experienced surgical resident from UPMC manually segmented 3D PI ROIs from the CT scans (5 mm Axial cut) for each case. The most concerning ~10-15 cm segment of bowel for necrosis with a 1 cm margin was selected. A total of 7 slices per patient were segmented for consistency. For both prediction task 1 and prediction task 2, we independently completed the following procedure for testing and training: 1.) Extracted radiomic features from the 3D PI ROIs that resulted in 99 total features. 2.) Used LASSO feature selection to determine the subset of the original 99 features that are most significant for performance of the prediction task. 3.) Used leave-one-out cross-validation for testing and training to account for the small dataset size in our preliminary analysis. Implemented and trained several machine learning models (AdaBoost, SVM, and Naive Bayes). 4.) Evaluated the trained models in terms of AUC and Accuracy and determined the ideal model structure based on these performance metrics. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Prediction Task 1: The top-performing model for this task was an SVM model trained using 19 features. This model had an AUC of 0.79 and an accuracy of 75%. Prediction Task 2: The top-performing model for this task was an SVM model trained using 28 features. This model had an AUC of 0.74 and an accuracy of 64%. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to use radiomic-based machine learning models for the prediction of tissue ischemia, specifically intestinal ischemia in the setting of PI. In this preliminary study, which serves as a proof of concept, the performance of our models has demonstrated the potential of machine learning based only on radiomic imaging features to have discriminative power for surgical decision-making problems. While many non-imaging-related clinical factors play a role in the gestalt of clinical decision making when PI presents, we have presented radiomic-based models that may augment this decision-making process, especially for more difficult cases when clinical features indicating acute abdomen are absent. It should be noted that prediction task 2, whether or not a patient presenting with PI would benefit from an operation, has lower performance than prediction task 1 and is also a more challenging task for physicians in real clinical environments. While our results are promising and demonstrate potential, we are currently working to increase our dataset to 300 patients to further train and assess our models. References DuBose, Joseph J., et al. “Pneumatosis Intestinalis Predictive Evaluation Study (PIPES): a multicenter epidemiologic study of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma.” Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery 75.1 (2013): 15-23. Knechtle, Stuart J., Andrew M. Davidoff, and Reed P. Rice. “Pneumatosis intestinalis. Surgical management and clinical outcome.” Annals of Surgery 212.2 (1990): 160.


2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 619-625 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hari Nathan ◽  
John F.P. Bridges ◽  
Richard D. Schulick ◽  
Andrew M. Cameron ◽  
Kenzo Hirose ◽  
...  

Purpose The choice between liver transplantation (LT), liver resection (LR), and radiofrequency ablation (RFA) as initial therapy for early hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is controversial, yet little is known about how surgeons choose therapy for individual patients. We sought to quantify the impact of both clinical factors and surgeon specialty on surgical decision making in early HCC by using conjoint analysis. Methods Surgeons with an interest in liver surgery were invited to complete a Web-based survey including 10 case scenarios. Choice of therapy was then analyzed by using regression models that included both clinical factors and surgeon specialty (non-LT v LT). Results When assessing early HCC occurrences, non-LT surgeons (50% LR; 41% LT; 9% RFA) made significantly different recommendations compared with LT surgeons (63% LT; 31% LR; 6% RFA; P < .001). Clinical factors, including tumor number and size, type of resection required, and platelet count, had significant effects on the choice between LR, LT, and RFA. After adjusting for clinical factors, non-LT surgeons remained more likely than LT surgeons to choose LR compared with LT (relative risk ratio [RRR], 2.67). When the weight of each clinical factor was allowed to vary by surgeon specialty, the residual independent effect of surgeon specialty on the decision between LR and LT was negligible (RRR, 0.93). Conclusion The impact of surgeon specialty on choice of therapy for early HCC is stronger than that of some clinical factors. However, the influence of surgeon specialty does not merely reflect an across-the-board preference for one therapy over another. Rather, certain clinical factors are weighed differently by surgeons in different specialties.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander R Vaccaro ◽  
Moe R Lim ◽  
R John Hurlbert ◽  
Ronald A Lehman ◽  
James Harrop ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. S58-S59
Author(s):  
Theresa Williamson ◽  
Kelly Murphy ◽  
Isaac O. Karikari ◽  
Clifford L. Crutcher ◽  
Tara Dalton ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. S2193-S2194
Author(s):  
R. Yip ◽  
K. Li ◽  
C. Henschke ◽  
D. Yankelevitz

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