The Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT) is a neuropsychological task that has repeatedly been shown to differentiate ADHD from normal groups. Several variables may be derived from the Conners' CPT including errors of omission and commission, mean hit reaction time(RT), mean hit RT standard error, d', and beta. What each CPT parameter actually assesses has largely been based upon clinical assumptions and the face validity of each measure (e.g., omission errors measure inattention, commission errors measure impulsivity). This study attempts to examine relations between various CPT variables and phenotypic behaviors so as to better understand the various CPT variables. An epidemiological sample of 817 children was administered the Conners' CPT. Diagnostic interviews were conducted with parents to determine ADHD symptom profiles for all children. Children diagnosed with ADHD had more variable RTs, made more errors of commission and omission, and demonstrated poorer perceptual sensitivity than nondiagnosed children. Regarding specific symptoms, generalized estimating equations (GEE) and ANCOVAs were conducted to determine specific relationships between the 18 DSM-IV ADHD symptoms and 6 CPT parameters. CPT performance measures demonstrated significant relationships to ADHD symptoms but did not demonstrate symptom domain specificity according to a priori assumptions. Overall performance on the two signal detection measures, d' and beta, was highly related to all ADHD symptoms across symptom domains. Further, increased variability in RTs over time was related to most ADHD symptoms. Finally, it appears that at least 1 CPT variable, mean hit RT, is minimally related to ADHD symptoms as a whole, but does demonstrate some specificity in its link with symptoms of hyperactivity.

The goal of the study was to ascertain the factor structure and prevalence of psychiatric disability in children and adolescents in relation to demographic variables and diagnosis. A representative sample of 1420 children (9-13 years) from 11 countries in North Carolina was followed for up to 6 years. Children and caretakers were interviewed with the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment, which generates DSM-IV diagnoses and includes a measure of disability secondary to psychological symptoms. Three broad areas of disability were identified (relating to family, school, and peers). School disabilities were more common in boys than girls, while the reverse was true of family disability. Effects of age were complex, and partially gender-differentiated. Children from minority ethnic groups had a higher overall prevalence of school disabilities, and were more prone than Whites to the disabling effects of disruptive behavior disorders. Anxiety disorders were as likely to result in disability as depressive disorders, and oppositional defiant disorders were more strongly associated with disability in some areas than was conduct disorder. The areas where disability is manifested are different depending on race, gender, age, and the type of disorder suffered. The implications of these findings for nosology and prevention are discussed.

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) represents a quantitative, noninvasive, nondestructive means of assessing vascular oxygenation, vascularity, and structural properties. However, it is known that such measurements can be influenced by the effects of pressure, which is a major concern for reproducible and operator-independent assessment of tissues. Second, regular calibration is a necessary component of quantitative DRS to account for factors such as lamp decay and fiber bending. Without a means of reliably controlling for these factors, the accuracy of any such assessments will be reduced, and potentially biased. To address these issues, a self-calibrating, pressure-controlled DRS system is described and applied to both a patient-derived xenograft glioma model, as well as a set of healthy volunteers for assessments of oral mucosal tissues. It was shown that pressure had a significant effect on the derived optical parameters, and that the effects on the optical parameters were magnified with increasing time and pressure levels. These findings indicate that not only is it critical to integrate a pressure sensor into a DRS device, but that it is also important to do so in an automated way to trigger a measurement as soon as possible after probe contact is made to minimize the perturbation to the tissue site.

Introduction: Emergency departments (ED) use many medications with a range of therapeutic efficacy and potential significant side effects, and many medications have dosage adjustment recommendations based on the patient’s specific genotype. How frequently medications with such pharmaco-genetic recommendations are used in United States (US) EDs has not been studied. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the 2010–2015 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). We reported the proportion of ED visits in which at least one medication with Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC) recommendation of Level A or B evidence was ordered. Secondary comparisons included distributions and 95% confidence intervals of age, gender, race/ethnicity, ED disposition, geographical region, immediacy, and insurance status between all ED visits and those involving a CPIC medication. Results: From 165,155 entries representing 805,726,000 US ED visits in the 2010–2015 NHAMCS, 148,243,000 ED visits (18.4%) led to orders of CPIC medications. The most common CPIC medication was tramadol (6.3%). Visits involving CPIC medications had higher proportions of patients who were female, had private insurance and self-pay, and were discharged from the ED. They also involved lower proportions of patients with Medicare and Medicaid. Conclusion: Almost one fifth of US ED visits involve a medication with a pharmacogenetic recommendation that may impact the efficacy and toxicity for individual patients. While direct application of genotyping is still in development, it is important for emergency care providers to understand and support this technology given its potential to improve individualized, patient- centered care.

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Introduction: Millions of people present to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain annually. Accurate and timely risk stratification is important to identify potentially life-threatening conditions such as acute coronary syndrome (ACS). An ED-based observation unit can be used to rapidly evaluate patients and reduce ED crowding, but the practice is not universal. We estimated the number of current hospital admissions in the United States (US) eligible for ED-based observation services for patients with symptoms of ACS. Methods: In this cross-sectional analysis we used data from the 2011-2015 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). Visits were included if patients presented with symptoms of ACS (eg, chest pain, dyspnea), had an electrocardiogram (ECG) and cardiac markers, and were admitted to the hospital. We excluded patients with any of the following: discharge diagnosis of myocardial infarction; cardiac arrest; congestive heart failure, or unstable angina; admission to an intensive care unit; hospital length of stay > 2 days; alteplase administration, central venous catheter insertion, cardiopulmonary resuscitation or endotracheal intubation; or admission after an initial ED observation stay. We extracted data on sociodemographics, hospital characteristics, triage level, disposition from the ED, and year of ED extracted from the NHAMCS. Descriptive statistics were performed using sampling weights to produce national estimates of ED visits. We provide medians with interquartile ranges for continuous variables and percentages with 95% confidence intervals for categorical variables. Results: During 2011-2015 there were an estimated 675,883,000 ED visits in the US. Of these, 14,353,000 patients with symptoms of ACS and an ED order for an ECG or cardiac markers were admitted to the hospital. We identified 1,883,000 visits that were amenable to ED observation services, where 987,000 (52.4%) were male patients, and 1,318,000 (70%) were White. Further-more, 739,000 (39.2%) and 234,000 (12.4%) were paid for by Medicare and Medicaid, respectively. The majority (45.1%) of observation-amenable hospitalizations were in the Southern US. Conclusion: Emergency department-based observation unit services for suspected ACS appear to be underused. Over half of potentially observation-amenable admissions were paid for by Medicare and Medicaid. Implementation of ED-based observation units would especially benefit hospitals and patients in the American South.

patients who are hospitalized following a return visit to the ED using a national database. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study using the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. One-third of ED visits from 2011 to 2013 were randomly selected and their hospitalizations were included. The in-hospital outcomes (mortality and intensive care unit [ICU] admission) and resource use (length of stay and cost) were analyzed comparing patients who were hospitalized after a return visit to the ED within 3 days vs. patients who were hospitalized during the index ED visit. Multivariable regression models were used to adjust for differences in patient mix. Results: There were 5,575,044 index ED visits during the 3-year study period. Of them, 1,075,892 (19%) were admitted to the hospital following the index ED visit. Among the 4,499,152 patients who were discharged during the index ED visit, 319,772 had a return visit to the ED within 3 days. Of them, 79,999 (25%) were admitted to the hospital. The in-hospital mortality rates were similar between the two groups (3% in the revisit-admission group vs 3% in the direct-admission group, p¼0.79). Compared with the direct-admission group, the revisit-admission group had a lower ICU admission rate (2.5% vs. 3.0%, p<0.001), a shorter mean length of stay (8.4 vs. 8.6 days, p<0.001) and lower mean costs (40,954 vs. 48,146 TWD, p<0.001). After adjusting for age, sex, and 29 comorbidities, the patterns of outcome differences persisted, with similar inpatient mortality between the two groups and slightly better outcomes and lower resource use in the revisit-admission group. Conclusion: Patients who were hospitalized after a return visit to the ED within 3 days did not experience worse outcomes or consume more resources than those who were directly admitted during the index ED visit. Our findings suggest that ED revisit is multifactorial and does not necessarily relate to emergency care quality.