Results. The prevalence of cannabis use among patients prescribed chronic opioid therapy in these studies ranged from 6.2% to 39%, compared with 5.8% in the general United States population. Furthermore, cannabis use in chronic opioid patients shows statistically significant associations Selleckchem A 1155463 with present and future aberrant opioid-related behaviors.
Conclusion. Cannabis use is prevalent
in patients prescribed chronic opioid therapy and is associated with opioid misuse. Further research is necessary to clarify the strength and the nature of the association between cannabis use and opioid misuse, and to address additional questions about the consequences of cannabis use in the context of chronic opioid therapy.”
“Objective: Patients with moderate-to-severe mixed hearing losses (MHLs) are hard to provide sufficient benefit with currently available conventional
hearing aids. Here, the long-term safety of a direct acoustic cochlear stimulator (DACS) and the effectiveness compared with conventional “”high-performance” hearing aids were investigated.
Study Design: Prospective, within patient reference, nonrandomized, interventional multicenter clinical study performed at these 3 centers: Medical University Hannover, University of Heidelberg, and Helios Hospital Krefeld.
Patients and Intervention: Ten otosclerosis patients with severe-to-profound MHL were preoperatively fitted with state-of-the-art conventional hearing aids (HA). After 2 months of testing conventional HA, 9 of the patients decided to be implanted with a DACS.
Main Outcome Measures: Air conduction (AC) and www.selleckchem.com/products/bmn-673.html bone conduction (BC) aided and unaided thresholds, speech discrimination
before and after implantation and at 3, 6, and 12 months after activation. The subjective benefit was assessed by the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB).
Results: Preoperative hearing thresholds were preserved over the 12 month observation time after activation. Average functional gain (0.5-4 kHz) achieved with conventional HA was 47 dB compared with 56 dB with the DACS. Speech-in-noise tests revealed a lower SNR for DACS (3.1 dB) than for the HA (6.6 dB) and patients were more satisfied with the DACS.
Conclusion: The DACS significantly improved hearing, speech intelligibility, and satisfaction in patients with a severe-to-profound mixed hearing loss and can be considered selleck kinase inhibitor a safe and useful alternative to conventional hearing aids.”
“We developed a new individually customized contrast-injection protocol for coronary computed tomography (CT) angiography based on the time-attenuation response in a test bolus, and investigated its clinical applicability. We scanned 60 patients with suspected coronary diseases using a 64-detector CT scanner, who were randomly assigned to one of two protocols. In protocol 1 (P1), we estimated the contrast dose to yield a peak aortic attenuation of 400 HU based on the time-attenuation response to a small test-bolus injection (0.