Biomedical subjects

Gregory Brown

Publications and source records attributed to Gregory Brown.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Wound documentation: managing risk.

PURPOSE: To provide the physician and registered professional nurse with an understanding of consistent wound documentation and the potential for legal issues to arise. TARGET AUDIENCE: This continuing education activity is intended for physicians and nurses with an interest in better understanding and improving policies and procedures related to wound documentation. OBJECTIVES: After reading the article and taking the test, the participant should be able to: 1. Discuss wound assessment and documentation relative to current practices and potential legal implications. 2. Describe recommendations to improve the consistency and accuracy of wound assessment and documentation.

Chronic Disease↗

PubMed2006

Skin fails too: acute, chronic, and end-stage skin failure.

OBJECTIVE: To identify what has been published in the literature about acute and chronic skin failure and to propose a working definition of this phenomenon. DESIGN: A systematic review of MEDLINE and CINAHL to determine what has been published in the literature on the topics of skin failure, acute skin failure, chronic skin failure, multiple organ failure, end-of-life skin deterioration, and pressure ulcers in hospice from 1984 to 2005. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Published papers were reviewed for content related to acute, chronic, and end-stage skin failure. MAIN RESULTS: Seven articles were identified that referenced either acute, chronic, or end-stage skin failure. Additional information was identified that discussed the processes of acute and chronic skin failure and pressure ulcers in individuals in hospice care or at the end of life. Care considerations and dilemmas related to a curative versus palliative goal in wound healing were discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Minimal literature exists on skin failure, yet caregivers and the public must be aware of, assess for, and consider this phenomenon in their care. Based on this literature review, skin failure was defined by the authors as an event in which the skin and underlying tissue die due to hypoperfusion that occurs concurrent with severe dysfunction or failure of other organ systems. Skin failure can be categorized as acute, chronic, or end stage. Pressure ulcers, a type of skin death, frequently occur in persons with a heavy disease burden, especially those at or near the end of life, despite good care.

Acute Disease↗

PubMed2005

Reliability in multi-site structural MRI studies: effects of gradient non-linearity correction on phantom and human data.

Longitudinal and multi-site clinical studies create the imperative to characterize and correct technological sources of variance that limit image reproducibility in high-resolution structural MRI studies, thus facilitating precise, quantitative, platform-independent, multi-site evaluation. In this work, we investigated the effects that imaging gradient non-linearity have on reproducibility of multi-site human MRI. We applied an image distortion correction method based on spherical harmonics description of the gradients and verified the accuracy of the method using phantom data. The correction method was then applied to the brain image data from a group of subjects scanned twice at multiple sites having different 1.5 T platforms. Within-site and across-site variability of the image data was assessed by evaluating voxel-based image intensity reproducibility. The image intensity reproducibility of the human brain data was significantly improved with distortion correction, suggesting that this method may offer improved reproducibility in morphometry studies. We provide the source code for the gradient distortion algorithm together with the phantom data.

Calibration↗

PubMed2003

Worst-point suicidal plans: a dimension of suicidality predictive of past suicide attempts and eventual death by suicide.

Among 440 psychiatric outpatients with current suicidal ideation, we examined the empirical distinction between the "plans" vs. "desire" dimensions of suicidality, focusing for conceptual and empirical reasons on a worst-point assessment strategy. Factor analyses were consistent with the distinction, but more importantly, among the current ideators included in this study, the worst-point "plans" dimension was the only predictor significantly related to both of two important indices, history of past attempt and eventual suicide. These findings bear on the trajectory of suicidal behavior over time, as well as inform the clinical assessment of suicidal patients.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

Long-term outcomes of full-thickness pressure ulcers: healing and mortality.

A non-experimental, retrospective analysis of pressure ulcer quality-assurance data was conducted from October 1997 to October 2002 to ascertain the relationship between the occurrence of nosocomial full-thickness pressure ulcers, healing, and mortality. The records of 74 patients (one woman, 73 men) who developed full-thickness pressure ulcers as inpatients at a regional Veterans Affairs medical center with acute, intensive, and long-term care units were assessed. Start day was the day that the ulcer was determined to have occurred and end day was the date the patient was pronounced dead. Major diagnoses for all patients, 70.7% for whom end-of-life planning was in effect, were cerebrovascular accident, diabetes, and cancer. The majority of ulcers were located in the sacral/coccygeal area (66.2%) and heel (16.2%). None of the ulcers healed in patients who died within 180 days of ulcer onset. A 180-day mortality rate of 68.9% was noted in people who developed nosocomial full-thickness pressure ulcers, with an average of 47.0 days from ulcer onset to death. No deaths were related to the presence of the pressure ulcer. In this data set of people with a heavy disease burden who were approaching the end of life, the development of full-thickness pressure ulcers appeared to be a comorbid pathologic process. Collecting and analyzing long-term pressure ulcer healing and mortality outcomes is a missing component of pressure ulcer quality-assurance data.

Female↗

PubMed2002

Numerical confirmation of late-time t(1/2) growth in three-dimensional phase ordering.

Results for the late-time regime of phase ordering in three dimensions are reported, based on numerical integration of the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation with nonconserved order parameter at zero temperature. For very large systems (700(3)) at late times, t> or =150, the characteristic length grows as a power law, R(t) approximately t(n), with the measured n in agreement with the theoretically expected result n=1/2 to within statistical errors. In this time regime R(t) is found to be in excellent agreement with the analytical result of Ohta, Jasnow, and Kawasaki [Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1223 (1982)]. At early times, good agreement is found between the simulations and the linearized theory with corrections due to the lattice anisotropy.

Journal Article↗