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Background Platelet‐rich plasma (PRP) treatment for androgenetic alopecia (AGA) has been increasingly used, yet there remains a dearth of data on the effectiveness of this approach. Aim To compare the efficacy and safety of physically activated PRP injections vs placebo in the treatment of male AGA. Methods Twenty‐five healthy male patients with AGA were enrolled in a randomized, placebo‐controlled, crossover study with the treatments of PRP and placebo. Treatment efficacy was measured by calculating the hair density as the average of two independent blind measurements. Results In the group that received placebo first (Group 2), we detected a significant increase in hair density at the secondary endpoints after PRP treatment (P = .014). There was a greater proportion of patients with low‐grade alopecia in this group (53.3%) compared to Group 1 (30%). Conclusion This study provides data supporting the positive effects of PRP treatment on AGA in males, but further studies are needed to identify those factors that might affect PRP treatment performance, such as the stage of the disease.

Objective To evaluate a system we developed that connects natural language processing (NLP) for information extraction from narrative text mammography reports with a Bayesian network for decision-support about breast cancer diagnosis. The ultimate goal of this system is to provide decision support as part of the workflow of producing the radiology report. Materials and methods We built a system that uses an NLP information extraction system (which extract BI-RADS descriptors and clinical information from mammography reports) to provide the necessary inputs to a Bayesian network (BN) decision support system (DSS) that estimates lesion malignancy from BI-RADS descriptors. We used this integrated system to predict diagnosis of breast cancer from radiology text reports and evaluated it with a reference standard of 300 mammography reports. We collected two different outputs from the DSS: (1) the probability of malignancy and (2) the BI-RADS final assessment category. Since NLP may produce imperfect inputs to the DSS, we compared the difference between using perfect (“reference standard”) structured inputs to the DSS (“RS-DSS”) vs NLP-derived inputs (“NLP-DSS”) on the output of the DSS using the concordance correlation coefficient. We measured the classification accuracy of the BI-RADS final assessment category when using NLP-DSS, compared with the ground truth category established by the radiologist. Results The NLP-DSS and RS-DSS had closely matched probabilities, with a mean paired difference of 0.004 ± 0.025. The concordance correlation of these paired measures was 0.95. The accuracy of the NLP-DSS to predict the correct BI-RADS final assessment category was 97.58%. Conclusion The accuracy of the information extracted from mammography reports using the NLP system was sufficient to provide accurate DSS results. We believe our system could ultimately reduce the variation in practice in mammography related to assessment of malignant lesions and improve management decisions.

Background Many countries adopt eHealth applications to support patient-centered care. Through information exchange, these eHealth applications may overcome institutional data silos and support holistic and ubiquitous (regional or national) information logistics. Available eHealth indicators mostly describe usage and acceptance of eHealth in a country. The eHealth indicators focusing on the cross-institutional availability of patient-related information for health care professionals, patients, and care givers are rare. Objectives This study aims to present eHealth indicators on cross-institutional availability of relevant patient data for health care professionals, as well as for patients and their caregivers across 14 countries (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong as a special administrative region of China, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States) to compare our indicators and the resulting data for the examined countries with other eHealth benchmarks and to extend and explore changes to a comparable survey in 2017. We defined “availability of patient data” as the ability to access data in and to add data to the patient record in the respective country. Methods The invited experts from each of the 14 countries provided the indicator data for their country to reflect the situation on August 1, 2019, as date of reference. Overall, 60 items were aggregated to six eHealth indicators. Results Availability of patient-related information varies strongly by country. Health care professionals can access patients' most relevant cross-institutional health record data fully in only four countries. Patients and their caregivers can access their health record data fully in only two countries. Patients are able to fully add relevant data only in one country. Finland showed the best outcome of all eHealth indicators, followed by South Korea, Japan, and Sweden. Conclusion Advancement in eHealth depends on contextual factors such as health care organization, national health politics, privacy laws, and health care financing. Improvements in eHealth indicators are thus often slow. However, our survey shows that some countries were able to improve on at least some indicators between 2017 and 2019. We anticipate further improvements in the future.

Background:In order to diagnose child abuse, physicians need to consider the possibility of abuse in every child they encounter, have sufficient information about the topic and manage the cases according to current law.Aims:To determine the knowledge level of physicians on child abuse and to learn their opinions about the procedures when they suspect child abuse.Study Design:A questionnaire (cross-sectional) study.Methods:A detailed questionnaire was applied to 390 physicians of whom 233 were general practitioners. The first part of the questionnaire included demographic variables (age, gender, occupational experience) and the frequency of child physical abuse cases encountered, since that is the most easily diagnosed and proven form of abuse. The second part consisted of 32 questions about diagnosis of physical child abuse and procedures during the follow-up of the cases. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 18.0.Results:Of the participating physicians, 47.4% (n=185) were female and only 13.1% of the physicians had some kind of postgraduate training on child abuse. The correct response rate of specialists compared to general practitioners was significantly higher. A total of 263 (72.3%) physicians thought that there was a specific law on physical child abuse in the Turkish Republic. More than two-thirds of physicians thought that reporting should only be addressed to Social Services and physicians should not be obliged to report to law enforcement.Conclusion:The results of the present study adds to the already known necessity for better training of physicians about physical child abuse and the need to refresh their knowledge through postgraduate courses. According to current regulations, it is obligatory to report abuse cases to the public prosecutor and/or police, therefore physicians also need training in respect of the legal status and medico-legal approach to these cases.