Citations

Objective: To understand the interaction of multimorbidity and functional limitations in determining health-care utilization and survival in older adults. Methods: Olmsted County, Minnesota, residents aged 60–89 years in 2005 were categorized into four cohorts based on the presence or absence of multimorbidity (≥3 chronic conditions from a list of 18) and functional limitations (≥1 limitation in an activity of daily living from a list of 9), and were followed through December 31, 2016. Andersen–Gill and Cox regression estimated hazard ratios (HRs) for emergency department (ED) visits, hospitalizations, and death using persons with neither multimorbidity nor functional limitations as the reference (interaction analyses). Results: Among 13,145 persons, 34% had neither multimorbidity nor functional limitations, 44% had multimorbidity only, 4% had functional limitations only, and 18% had both. Over a median follow-up of 11 years, 5906 ED visits, 2654 hospitalizations, and 4559 deaths occurred. Synergistic interactions on an additive scale of multimorbidity and functional limitations were observed for all outcomes; however, the magnitude of the interactions decreased with advancing age. The HR (95% confidence interval) for death among persons with both multimorbidity and functional limitations was 5.34 (4.40–6.47) at age 60–69, 4.16 (3.59–4.83) at age 70–79, and 2.86 (2.45–3.35) at age 80–89 years. Conclusion: The risk of ED visits, hospitalizations, and death among persons with both multimorbidity and functional limitations is greater than additive. The magnitude of the interaction was strongest for the youngest age group, highlighting the importance of interventions to prevent and effectively manage multimorbidity and functional limitations early in life.

SummaryIbrutinib‐related data in Waldenström macroglobulinaemia (WM) remain sparse, particularly outside of trials. We report on 80 patients [previously treated, n = 67 (84%), treatment‐naïve, n = 13 (16%)] with WM, evaluated consecutively at Mayo Clinic, who received ibrutinib off‐study after its approval in 2015 for WM. Overall response rate (ORR) was 91%; major‐response rate (MRR) was 78%. The median time to first response and best response was 2·9 [95% confidence interval (CI): 2–4] and 5·7 (95% CI: 4–12) months, respectively. The median follow‐up was 19 (95% CI: 14–21) months; 18‐month progression‐free survival (PFS) was 82%. The median time on therapy was 12·5 (95% CI: 9·3–16·7) months, and the median duration‐of‐response was 32 (range: 23–32) months. Twenty‐five patients (31%) had discontinued therapy at last follow‐up (68% due to treatment‐related toxicities) and 18% of patients required dose reduction. Fatigue (12%) and atrial‐fibrillation (11%) were common non‐haematological toxicities. IgM rebound occurred in 36% of patients who abruptly discontinued ibrutinib. Following ibrutinib discontinuation, 84% of patients received subsequent treatment, achieving an ORR of 57% and MRR of 50%. The median PFS from commencement of subsequent salvage therapy was 18 months. Ibrutinib therapy, outside of clinical trials, is effective in WM, but is associated with toxicities and challenges, including IgM rebound and a high drug discontinuation rate for reasons other than disease progression.

Abstract Context Myth busting engages scholars in the critical examination of commonly accepted but poorly evidenced claims with the goal of instilling quality and trust in knowledge making. The debunking of such knowledge “myths” and associated misguided practices purportedly serves to avert resources and attention from wasteful and dangerous scholarship. We address the myth that “all myths in medical education deserve to be busted”. Methods Using a critical narrative approach, we searched the medical education literature for orientations to myths and myth busting, and reviewed this literature analytically drawing from the sociology of science and Merton's concepts of manifest and latent functions. The results of this analysis are presented in the form of a narrative that deploys the articles reviewed to explore the utility of myth busting for medical education reform and begins with a brief exploration of the etymology of “myth” and how meaning making is related to symbols, practices and storytelling. Results Our analysis revealed the important function of myths in the social practice of medical education and practice. A deconstruction of five salient examples of the contemporary myth in medical education (the myth of the “ideal candidate”, the myth of “cut‐throats”, the myth of “cadaver stories”, the myth of “learning styles”, and the myth of “patient information leaflets”) demonstrates that myths continue to have material effects even after they have been busted. Conclusions Our analysis makes evident that myth busting disrupts, renegotiates and reconstitutes socio‐epistemic relationships rather than simply correcting falsehoods. We also argue that myths play important and inescapable roles in the social practice of medical education and the negotiation of values, and in constructing the conditions for group change and transformation. Imperatives related to humanism , compassion and patient engagement offer a healthy humanising counter‐mythologising that we suggest must survive any contemporary myth‐busting endeavour aimed at improving medical education practice.

PURPOSE: We aimed to better understand how similarly patients with colorectal cancer and caregivers view care quality and to assess factors that may influence concordance. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a secondary analysis of paired patient and caregiver quality ratings of colorectal cancer care in three specific domains: surgery, chemotherapy overall, and chemotherapy nursing. Agreement was assessed with difference scores, concordance with Gwet second-order agreement statistics (AC2), and variation in agreement with stratified analyses. We examined whether the care experiences of patients and caregivers were associated with top-box (most-positive) ratings and examined variations in concordance on the basis of the presence of a top-box score. RESULTS: Four hundred seventeen patient-caregiver dyads completed the surveys. Quality-of-care ratings were positively skewed, with most dyads indicating top-box ratings. Patient and caregiver care experiences were highly associated with top-box ratings. Overall patient-caregiver concordance was very high for all three care domains (surgery: AC2, 0.87 [95% CI, 0.83 to 0.90]; chemotherapy overall: AC2, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.79 to 0.88]; chemotherapy nursing: AC2, 0.91 [95% CI, 0.87 to 0.94]). Stratified analyses of patient and caregiver characteristics did not identify any patterns that consistently affected concordance. The concordance statistic significantly decreased for all three outcomes ( P < .001), however, when the patient or caregiver assessed quality as anything other than top box. CONCLUSION: Caregiver and patient reports on care quality were highly concordant for top-box care and did not vary with patient or caregiver factors. Additional exploration is needed to identify reasons for increased variability when the quality scores were less than a top-box response.

Background: Female patients have historically received less aggressive lipid management than male patients. Contemporary care patterns and the potential causes for these differences are unknown. Methods and Results: Examining the Patient and Provider Assessment of Lipid Management Registry—a nationwide registry of outpatients with or at risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease—we compared the use of statin therapy, guideline-recommended statin dosing, and reasons for undertreatment. We specifically analyzed sex differences in statin treatment and guideline-recommended statin dosing using multivariable logistic regression. Among 5693 participants (43% women) eligible for 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Cholesterol Guideline–recommended statin treatment, women were less likely than men to be prescribed any statin therapy (67.0% versus 78.4%; P <0.001) or to receive a statin at the guideline-recommended intensity (36.7% versus 45.2%; P <0.001). Women were more likely to report having previously never been offered statin therapy (18.6% versus 13.5%; P <0.001), declined statin therapy (3.6% versus 2.0%; P <0.001), or discontinued their statin (10.9% versus 6.1%; P <0.001). Women were also less likely than men to believe statins were safe (47.9% versus 55.2%; P <0.001) or effective (68.0% versus 73.2%; P <0.001) and more likely to report discontinuing their statin because of a side effect (7.9% versus 3.6%; P <0.001). Sex differences in both overall and guideline-recommended intensity statin use persisted after adjustment for demographics, socioeconomic factors, clinical characteristics, patient beliefs, and provider characteristics (adjusted odds ratio, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.61–0.81; P <0.001; and odds ratio, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.73–0.92; P <0.01, respectively). Sex differences were consistent across primary and secondary prevention indications for statin treatment. Conclusions: Women eligible for statin therapy were less likely than men to be treated with any statin or guideline-recommended statin intensity. A combination of women being offered statin therapy less frequently, while declining and discontinuing treatment more frequently, accounted for these sex differences in statin use.

AbstractBackgroundReflecting (“stop‐and‐think”) before rating may help patients consider the quality of shared decision making (SDM) and mitigate ceiling/halo effects that limit the performance of self‐reported SDM measures.MethodsWe asked a diverse patient sample from the United States to reflect on their care before completing the 3‐item CollaboRATE SDM measure. Study 1 focused on rephrasing CollaboRATE items to promote reflection before each item. Study 2 used 5 open‐ended questions (about what went well and what could be improved upon, signs that the clinician understood the patient's situation, how the situation will be addressed, and why this treatment plan makes sense) to invite reflection before using the whole scale. A linear analogue scale assessed the extent to which the plan of care made sense to the patient.ResultsIn Study 1, 107 participants completed surveys (84% response rate), 43 (40%) rated a clinical decision of which 27 (63%) after responding to reflection questions. Adding reflection lowered CollaboRATE scores (“less” SDM) and reduced the proportion of patients giving maximum (ceiling) scores (not statistically significant). In Study 2, 103 of 212 responders (49%) fully completed the version containing reflection questions. Reflection did not significantly change the distribution of CollaboRATE scores or of top scores. Participants indicated high scores on the sense of their care plan (mean 9.7 out of 10, SD 0.79). This rating was weakly correlated with total CollaboRATE scores (rho = .4, P = .0001).ConclusionReflection‐before‐quantification interventions may not improve the performance of patient‐reported measures of SDM with substantial ceiling/halo effects.

AbstractEpidemiologic studies show an increased risk of non‐Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in patients with autoimmune disease (AD), due to a combination of shared environmental factors and/or genetic factors, or a causative cascade: chronic inflammation/antigen‐stimulation in one disease leads to another. Here we assess shared genetic risk in genome‐wide‐association‐studies (GWAS).Secondary analysis of GWAS of NHL subtypes (chronic lymphocytic leukemia, diffuse large B‐cell lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, and marginal zone lymphoma) and ADs (rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and multiple sclerosis). Shared genetic risk was assessed by (a) description of regional genetic of overlap, (b) polygenic risk score (PRS), (c)"diseasome", (d)meta‐analysis.Descriptive analysis revealed few shared genetic factors between each AD and each NHL subtype. The PRS of ADs were not increased in NHL patients (nor vice versa). In the diseasome, NHLs shared more genetic etiology with ADs than solid cancers (p = .0041). A meta‐analysis (combing AD with NHL) implicated genes of apoptosis and telomere length.This GWAS‐based analysis four NHL subtypes and three ADs revealed few weakly‐associated shared loci, explaining little total risk. This suggests common genetic variation, as assessed by GWAS in these sample sizes, may not be the primary explanation for the link between these ADs and NHLs.

Abstract Lung cancer (LC) is the primary cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Whereas smoking and other environmental factors strongly increase LC risk, multiple genetic variants also contribute to risk in smokers. Furthermore, among smokers, some families have been identified with an abnormally high prevalence of LC, suggesting that unknown genetic factors can greatly increase LC risk in smokers. The typically short survival after LC diagnosis impedes collection of detailed genotypic information on any single large family pedigree, impairing the identification of putative high-risk factors. Therefore, the Genetic Epidemiology of LC Consortium has collected epidemiological and genetic data from a number of families with high numbers of LC cases from eight different sites across the US. In this study, we have obtained whole exome sequences (WES) from 290 members of 28 families, including 66 LC cases. We used a gene-based approach to allow for the possibility that different families may contain different variants of the same gene. Variants were filtered for i) allele frequency, ii) functional effect using combined annotation-dependent depletion (CADD), and, iii) affecting a gene with either a known or suspected role in cancer. We further selected variants based on their segregation in family pedigrees in a pattern consistent with a large effect on LC risk. Candidate LC risk genes were then identified as those represented in at least two families by the same or different variants. We further culled the list of genes by requiring the presence of at least one rare, functional variant enriched in the WES of 1060 cases relative to 899 controls from the Transdisciplinary Research on Cancer of the Lung consortium. This analysis narrowed our results to two genes, one being E2A, a member of the E family of bHLH transcription factors. Whereas loss-of-function mutations in E2A drive lymphoid cancers, the E2A protein also participates in an oncogenic heterodimer with TWIST1 that promotes the epithelial-mesenchymal transition and is implicated in multiple cancer types. Furthermore, the E2A/TWIST1 heterodimer is the primary TWIST1-containing complex implicated in oncogenesis, and silencing of E2A in KRAS-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines results in oncogene-stimulated senescence and apoptosis. Our data identified three distinct E2A variants present in all 10 sequenced LC cases in the 5 families in which those variants are found. Finally, two of these E2A variants are located only 57 nucleotides from each other, immediately adjacent to sequences encoding a transcription activation domain, suggesting that both variants alter the same specific protein function. These data identify E2A variants as likely high risk factors for LC in smokers and validate our general approach for identifying genetic factors with a large impact on LC risk. Citation Format: Claudio W. Pikielny, Anthony M. Musolf, Mariza de Andrade, Diptasri Mandal, Colette Gaba, Ping Yang, yafang Li, Ming You, Richard Wilson, Elena Y. Kupert, Marshall W. Anderson, Ann G. Schwartz, Susan M. Pinney, Ambrose I. Granizo-Mackenzie, Yanhong Liu, Ramaswamy Govindan, James McKay, Rayjean Hung, John K. Field, David C. Christiani, Joan E. Bailey-Wilson, Christopher I. Amos. Familial studies identify variants in the E2A transcription factor as putative risk factors for lung cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-053.