There was a higher proportion of SKOA than AsKOA (72.1% vs 41.6%), and SKOA was significantly more associated with disability (81.0% vs 26.9%, P<0.01). The prevalence of SKOA increased with age, from 1.3% in the 40-49-year-old age group to 13.2% in the 70+ group. Age, body mass index, and female gender were associated risk factors for knee OA.

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Background. Living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) in children has achieved promising outcomes during the past few decades. However, it still poses various challenges. This study aimed to analyze perioperative risk factors for postoperative death in pediatric LDLT. Methods. We retrospectively analyzed medical records of pediatric patients who underwent LDLT surgery from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016, in our hospital. Predictors of mortality following LDLT were analyzed in 430 children. Cox regression and Kaplan–Meier curve analysis were used for covariates selection. A nomogram was developed to estimate overall survival probability. The performance of the nomogram was assessed using calibration curve, decision curve analysis, and time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve. Results. Among the 430 patients in this cohort (median [interquartile range] age, 7 [6.10] mo; 189 [43.9%] female; 391 [90.9%] biliary atresia), the overall survival was 91.4% (95% confidence interval, 89.2-94.4), and most of the death events (36/37) happened within 6 months after the surgery. Multivariate analysis indicated that the Pediatric End-stage Liver Disease score, neutrophil lymphocyte ratio, graft-to-recipient weight ratio, and intraoperative norepinephrine infusion were independent prognostic factors. A novel nomogram was developed based on these prognostic factors. The C index for the final model was 0.764 (95% confidence interval, 0.701-0.819). Decision curve analysis and time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve suggested that this novel nomogram performed well at predicting mortality of pediatric LDLT. Conclusions. We identified several perioperative risk factors for mortality of pediatric LDLT. And the newly developed nomogram can be a convenient individualized tool in estimating the prognosis of pediatric LDLT.

Contextual bandits are widely used in Internet services from news recommendation to advertising, and to Web search. Generalized linear models (logistical regression in particular) have demonstrated stronger performance than linear models in many applications where rewards are binary. However, most theoretical analyses on contextual bandits so far are on linear bandits. In this work, we propose an upper confidence bound based algorithm for generalized linear contextual bandits, which achieves an Õ( √ dT ) regret over T rounds with d dimensional feature vectors. This regret matches the minimax lower bound, up to logarithmic terms, and improves on the best previous result by a √ d factor, assuming the number of arms is fixed. A key component in our analysis is to establish a new, sharp finite-sample confidence bound for maximumlikelihood estimates in generalized linear models, which may be of independent interest. We also analyze a simpler upper confidence bound algorithm, which is useful in practice, and prove it to have optimal regret for certain cases.

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BACKGROUND Carotid artery cross-clamping during carotid endarterectomy (CEA) may damage local cerebral perfusion and induce cerebral ischemia–reperfusion injury to activate local inflammatory responses. Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is an indicator that reflects systemic inflammation. However, the correlation between NLR and complications after CEA remains unclear. AIM To investigate the association between NLR and major complications after surgery in patients undergoing CEA. METHODS This retrospective cohort study included patients who received CEA between January 2016 and July 2018 at Beijing Tiantan Hospital. Neutrophil and lymphocyte counts in whole blood within 24 h after CEA were collected. The primary outcome was the composite of major postoperative complications including neurological, pulmonary, cardiovascular and acute kidney injuries. The secondary outcomes included infections, fever, deep venous thrombosis, length of hospitalization and cost of hospitalization. Statistical analyses were performed using EmpowerStats software and R software. RESULTS A total of 224 patients who received CEA were screened for review and 206 were included in the statistical analyses; of whom, 40 (19.42%) developed major postoperative complications. NLR within 24 h after CEA was significantly correlated with major postoperative complications ( P = 0.026). After confounding factors were adjusted, the odds ratio was 1.15 (95%CI: 1.03–1.29, P = 0.014). The incidence of major postoperative complications in the high NLR group was 8.47 times that in the low NLR group ( P = 0.002). CONCLUSION NLR is associated with major postoperative complications in patients undergoing CEA.

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This article addresses the distributed Nash equilibrium (NE) seeking problem for multiagent networked games with partial decision information. We employ a quadratically approximated alternating direction method of multipliers together with an augmented consensus procedure to compute the NE of games with twice differentiable cost functions. The resulting second‐order proximal algorithm enjoys relatively fast convergence rate and less burden on step size selection compared with the existing works. Numerical simulations are consistent with our theoretical analysis.