No Shriners Hospitals Closing; Some May Be Outpatient-Only
"All 22 Shriners Hospitals for Children will stay open, but some eventually might become outpatient-only surgery facilities, the system that offers free specialty pediatric care said Thursday," CNN reports. "The system, which has covered all costs of its patients" care throughout its 87-year history, eventually will accept insurance from patients who have it, members of the Shriners fraternity decided in their annual convention in San Antonio, Texas. Accepting money from insurers and finding other ways to cut costs will help Shriners retain their presence in all 22 locations, said Doug Maxwell, the new president and CEO of Shriners Hospitals."
Endocrinology
Pages: 1 2 [3]
Alzheimer's Prediction And Diagnosis May Be Improved By Brain Imaging And Proteins In Spinal Fluid
to 196 depending on the measure) controlling for age, education, and sex. Results: 26.1% of MCI patients converted from MCI to AD over 2 years. Low baseline FDG-ROI values predicted both conversion to AD and cognitive decline in all models (p Hippocampal glucose metabolism predicts cognitive decline and correlates to disease progression in the ADNI population Dawn C. Matthews1, Lisa Mosconi2, Randolph Andrews1, Karl Rickert1, Wai H. Tsui2, Yi Li2, Rachel Mistur2, Mony J. de Leon2, the Alzheimer"s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative 1Abiant, Inc., Deerfield, IL, USA; 2New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY. Disclosure Block: D.C. Matthews, Abiant, Employee; Abiant, Stock Shareholder (directly purchased); Abiant, Board Member/Officer; L. Mosconi, Abiant, Consultant; R. Andrews, Abiant, Employee; K. Rickert, Abiant, Employee; W.H. Tsui, None; Y. Li, None; R. Mistur, None; M.J. de Leon, None. Background: Declines in regional cerebral metabolism (rCMglc) measured with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging have been demonstrated to predict and correlate to the progression of Alzheimer"s Disease (AD), and to differentiate between dementias. Recent studies have shown that the diagnostic accuracy is improved by including measurement of the hippocampus (HIP) (Mosconi et al, 2005, 2008). However, HIP rCMglc cannot be accurately and practically sampled in broad populations using conventional techniques. An automated method has been developed and demonstrated that achieves accurate, rapid sampling, and optimize sensitivity and specificity without compromise from spatial normalization, smoothing, spillover, and atrophy (Mosconi, 2005). By including HIP rCMglc, highly sensitive and specific differential diagnostic accuracies have been achieved (Mosconi, 2008). Methods: We applied our automated sampling method to 250 subjects from the ADNI database (78 female, 172 male, age 59 - 88, average 76 years; 79 NL, 111 MCI, 60 AD at initial diagnosis). Using the automated sampling approach, rCMglc was measured in 32 regions of interest in the baseline FDG-PET scans of 250 ADNI subjects. Regions included left and right hippocampi (HIP), amygdala, posterior cingulate cortex, inferior parietal lobes, medial, lateral, and superior temporal lobes, normalized to the cerebellum and age-corrected. Subjects were stratified into 7 subgroups across normal (NL), MCI, and AD categories, based upon initial diagnosis and progressive CDR, GDS scale, and MMSE scores. Results: We observed a significant correlation between rCMglc in several regions and the clinical progression from stable NL (NL-nonDecl, n=14) to NL with subsequent clinical decline (NL-Decl, n=74, subdivided by extent of decline), to subcategories of MCI (MCI-nonDecl, n=77 and MCI-Decl and mild-AD, n=37) and AD. HIP rCMglc was found to be the most sensitive predictor of decline and discriminator between disease stages. As compared to the stable NL, HIP CMRglc was reduced by 5% in NL-Decl, 12% in stable MCI, 14% in MCI-Decl (PPages: 1 2 [3]