Background: Barriers to care cause delays in seeking, reaching, and getting care. These delays affect low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), where 9 out of 10 LMIC inhabitants have no access to basic surgical care. Knowledge of healthcare utilization behavior within underserved communities is useful when developing and implementing health policies. Little is known about the neurosurgical health-seeking behavior of African adults. This study evaluates public awareness, knowledge of availability, and readiness for neurosurgical care services amongst African adults. Methodology:The cross-sectional study will be run using a self-administered e-survey hosted on Google Forms (Google, CA, USA) disseminated from 10th May 2021 to 10th June 2021. The Questionnaire would be in two languages, English and French. The survey will contain closed-ended, open-ended, and Likert Scale questions. The structured questionnaire will have four sections with 42 questions; Sociodemographic characteristics, Definition of neurosurgery care, Knowledge of neurosurgical diseases, practice and availability, and Common beliefs about neurosurgical care. All consenting adult Africans will be eligible. A minimum sample size of 424 will be used. Data will be analyzed using SPSS version 26 (IBM, WA, USA). Odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals, Chi-Square test, and ANOVA will be used to test for associations between independent and dependent variables. A P-value <0.05 will be considered statistically significant. Also, a multinomial regression model will be used. Dissemination:The study findings will be published in an academic peer-reviewed journal, and the abstract will be presented at an international conference. Highlights • • The burden of neurosurgical diseases is enormous in low-and middle-income countries, especially in Africa. • Unfortunately, most neurosurgical needs in Africa are unmet because of delays in seeking, reaching, and getting care. • Most efforts aimed at reducing barriers to care have focused on improving the neurosurgical workforce density and infrastructure. Little or no efforts have been directed towards understanding or reducing the barriers to seeking care.
Background The increasing shift toward a more generalized medical undergraduate curriculum has led to limited exposure to subspecialties, including neurosurgery. The lack of standardized teaching may result in insufficient coverage of core learning outcomes. Social media (SoMe) in medical education are becoming an increasingly accepted and popular way for students to meet learning objectives outside formal medical school teaching. We delivered a series of case-based discussions (CbDs) over SoMe to attempt to meet core learning needs in neurosurgery and determine whether SoMe-based CbDs were an acceptable method of education. Methods Twitter was used as a medium to host 9 CbDs pertaining to common neurosurgical conditions in practice. A sequence of informative and interactive tweets were formulated before live CbDs and tweeted in progressive order. Demographic data and participant feedback were collected. Results A total of 277 participants were recorded across 9 CbDs, with 654,584 impressions generated. Feedback responses were received from 135 participants (48.7%). Participants indicated an increase of 77% in their level of knowledge after participating. Of participants, 57% ( n = 77) had previous CbD experience as part of traditional medical education, with 62% ( n = 84) receiving a form of medical education previously through SoMe. All participants believed that the CbDs objectives were met and would attend future sessions. Of participants, 99% ( n = 134) indicated that their expectations were met. Conclusions SoMe has been shown to be a favorable and feasible medium to host live, text-based interactive CbDs. SoMe is a useful tool for teaching undergraduate neurosurgery and is easily translatable to all domains of medicine and surgery.
Background: Exposure to inhaled allergens in patients with allergic rhinitis results in IgE mediated hypersensitivity of nasal mucosa. The mainstay of management is allergen identification and avoidance, pharmacotherapy with antihistamines, corticosteroids and nasal douching and immunotherapy. Patients refractory to medical management can be offered surgical interventions aimed at providing symptom relief. The objective of this review is to evaluate the effectiveness of surgical intervention on functional and symptomatic outcomes in patients with allergic rhinitis that have failed medical management. Methods:Prospective and retrospective studies that assess the effectiveness of intranasal surgery to include inferior turbinate surgery, posterior nerve resection, vidian neurectomy, septoplasty and endoscopic sinus surgery (ESS) in patients that have failed medical treatment for proven allergic rhinitis. Medline, Web of Science and Embase will be searched for studies published in English from 1990. Two authors will independently screen the search results and assess the full text of potentially relevant studies. Studies that meet the inclusion criteria will be critically appraised and the data will be extracted and synthesised by two authors.Ethics and Dissemination: Ethical approval was not required for this study as secondary data will be collected. The results will be disseminated through peer-reviewed medical journal. Systematic Review Registration:This protocol has been registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO; registration number: CRD42020223773). Highlights:• Allergic rhinitis (AR) is a chronic immune-mediated inflammatory nasal condition with hallmark symptoms of sneezing, nasal obstruction, mucus discharge and anosmia in adverse cases. • A plethora of interventions are at the hands of otolaryngologists in order to relieve symptoms of AR, however literature is yet to determine which method is best for patient outcome and quality of life. • The primary objective of this study is to convey a systematic qualitative analysis of all the surgical interventions used in AR management.
Introduction Global surgery is a growing movement worldwide, but its expansion has not been quantified. Google Search is the most popular search engine worldwide, and Google Trends analyzes its queries to determine popularity trends. We used Google Trends to analyze the regional and temporal popularity of global surgery (GS). Furthermore, we compared GS with global health (GH) to understand if the two were correlated. Methods This is a retrospective cross-sectional study examining Google Trends of GS and GH. We searched the terms “global surgery” and “global health” on Google Trends (Google Inc., CA, USA) from January 2004 to May 2021. We identified time trends and compared the two search terms using SPSS v26 (IBM, WA, USA) to run summary descriptive analyses and Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. Results The ten countries most interested in GS were India (5.0%), the United Kingdom (5.0%), Ireland (4.0%), the United States (4.0%), Australia (3.0%), Canada (3.0%), New Zealand (3.0%), Germany (2.0%), South Africa (2.0%), and Nigeria (1.0%). GS became more popular after 2015 (2.3% vs. 1.3%, P < 0.001) and was consistently less popular than GH (1.6% vs. 45.3%, P = 0.04). The difference between GS and GH interest levels increased after 2015 (45.4% vs. 42.9%, P = 0.04). Conclusion GS is less popular than GH, more popular in high-income countries, and has become more popular after 2015 when the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery published its seminal report. The World Health Organization passed resolution WHA 68.15. Future advocacy efforts should target low- and middle-income countries primarily.
Introduction Hydrocephalus persists in 10-40% of children with posterior fossa tumours (PFT). A delay in commencement of adjuvant therapy (AT) can negatively influence survival. The objective of this study was to determine whether postoperative cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) diversion procedures caused potentially preventable delays in AT. Methods A retrospective study of children diagnosed with PFT requiring AT from 2004 to 2018 from two large centres was conducted. Data on histology, timing of ventriculo-peritoneal shunt (VPS) insertion, and AT was collected. The modified Canadian Preoperative Prediction Rule for Hydrocephalus (mCPPRH) score was calculated. The primary outcome was delay in AT beyond 40 days post-resection. Progression-free and overall survival were assessed. Results Out of 196 primary PFT resections, 144 fitted the inclusion criteria. Mean age was 6.57 ± 4.62. Histology was medulloblastoma (104), ependymoma ( 27), and others (13). Forty patients had a VPS inserted; 17 of these experienced a delay in AT. A total of 104 patients were not shunted; 15 of these had delayed AT (p = 0.0007). Patients who had a VPS insertion had longer intervals from surgery to commencement of AT (34.5 vs 30.8, p = 0.05). There was no significant difference in mCPPRH score between those who had a VPS (4.03) and those who did not (3.61; p = 0.252). Multivariable linear regression modelling did not show a significant effect of VPS or mCPPRH on progression-free survival or OS. Conclusion CSF diversion procedures may cause a preventable delay in the initiation of adjuvant therapy. Early post-operative VP shunt insertion, rather than a 'wait and see policy' should be considered in order to reduce this delay.
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