Methods: This is a multinational, multicenter, longitudinal, and observational registry of PC patients presenting to participating tertiary-care hospitals in eight Asian countries (www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT02546908. Registry Identifier: NOPRODPCR4001). Approximately 3500-4000 eligible patients with existing or newly diagnosed high-risk localized PC (cohort 1), nonmetastatic biochemically recurrent PC (cohort 2), or metastatic PC (cohort 3) will be consecutively enrolled and followed-up for 5 years. An enrollment cap of 600 patients each will be applied to cohorts 1 and 2. Disease status is collected at enrollment, and outcome variables captured at 3-monthly intervals include diagnostic/staging, treatments including reason for change, laboratory results, comorbidities, and concomitant medications. Treatments and survival outcomes will be captured real time until study end. Patient-reported quality-of-life will be measured every 6 months, and medical resource utilization summarized at study end. Data analysis will include exploratory analyses of potential associations between multiple risk factors and socioeconomic variables with disease progression and evaluation of various treatments for PC including novel therapies on clinical outcome and health-related quality-of-life outcomes.
Results: 3636 men with PC were enrolled until July 2018; 416 in cohort 1, 399 in cohort 2 and 2821 in cohort 3.
Discussion: A total of 3636 patients were enrolled until July 2018. The prospective disease registry will provide comprehensive and wide-ranging real-world information on how PC is diagnosed and treated in Asia. Such information can be used to inform policy development for best practice and direct clinical study design evaluating new treatments.
Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in the ED of the largest tertiary medical center in Taiwan. Trends of adult, non-trauma patients who visited the ED during February-April 2019 were compared with those during February-April 2020. The number of visits, their dispositions, crowding parameters, and turnover rates were analyzed. The primary outcome was the change in ED attendance between the two periods. The secondary outcomes were changes in hospital admission rates, crowding parameters, and turnover rates.
Results: During the outbreak, there were decreased non-trauma ED visits by 33.45% (p < 0.001) and proportion of Taiwan Triage and Acuity Scale (TTAS) 3 patients (p=0.02), with increased admission rates by 4.7% (p < 0.001). Crowding parameters and turnover rate showed significant improvements.
Conclusion: Comparison of periods before and during the COVID-19 outbreak showed an obvious decline in adult, non-trauma ED visits. The reduction in TTAS 3 patient visits and the increased hospital admission rates provide references for future public-health policy-making to optimise emergency medical resource allocations globally.
Data Sources and Methods: A retrospective study based on telephone calls reported on poisoning caused by pharmaceutical products undertaken by the National Poisoning Centre (NPC) in Penang (Malaysia) was used as the basis of this study covering the period between 2010 and 2015. The study included the mode and type of poisoning, exposure routes as well as the incidence locations.
Results: A total of 10,998 cases were examined, finding that females represented 5,899 cases (53.6%) being intoxicated more frequently compared to the number of males, 3,839 (34.9%). The age group of poisoning cases ranged between 20 and 29 years representing 2,579 (23.4%) of reported cases. The common mode of poisoning was attributed to suicide 5,203 (47.3%) from among the 10,998 cases and the highest poisoning agents reported were from the psychiatric group of pharmaceutical products of 2,287 (21%).
Conclusion and Implications: These findings indicate a rising trend of suicidal poisoning attempts between 2013 and 2015, which emphasizes the need for more stringent and effective enforcement protocols to limit the rising incidence of poisoning. As such, analyzing the trends in poisoning in a particular zone periodically could help health policy-makers to develop management policies and prevention strategies.
OBJECTIVES: In this paper, the Advanced Human-Robot Collaboration Model (AHRCM) approach is to enhance the risk assessment and to make the workplace involving security robots. The robots use perception cameras and generate scene diagrams for semantic depictions of their environment. Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have utilized to develop a highly protected security robot based risk management system in the workplace.
RESULTS: The experimental results show that the proposed AHRCM method achieves high performance in human-robot mutual adaption and reduce the risk.
CONCLUSION: Through an experiment in the field of human subjects, demonstrated that policies based on the proposed model improved the efficiency of the human-robot team significantly compared with policies assuming complete human-robot adaptation.
Methodology: This paper examined the coronavirus pandemic and spirituality sociologically in southwest Nigeria, using secondary and primary data. Secondary data includes a review of literature, social media comments, official records, and newspaper reports. Primary data entails using google form (questionnaire) circulated via social media with 221 responses retrieved and analyzed using the frequency distribution tables and bar charts. Also, a one-sample t-test was used for further statistical analysis.
Results: Findings show that rather than attributing coronavirus incidence to spirituality alone, most of the respondents also see it as a public health concern, and precautionary measures should adhere. They see the government ban on social gathering, which affected the religious houses as the right thing to do and not solely targeted as religious houses. However, most believe that religious houses provide 'essential' emotional and spiritual support to the people. Respondents also believe they can get their healing from their place of worship even if infected with the coronavirus.
Conclusion: Based on the findings it was recommended that religious organizations should source valid data so that policy-makers can make informed decisions. Also, there is a need to have an accurate record of the number of infected persons and death rates to know the right time to ease lockdown and lift the social gathering measures. There should also be a place for easy and free testing for people. This will help the government ascertain the number of infected persons, reduce the associated fear with the pandemic, and lessen the people's economic, social, and religious effects.
Materials and Methods: Data of five strong opioids consumption (morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl, pethidine, and methadone) between 2005 and 2014 from Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam were extracted from the Pain and Policy Studies Group. Defined daily doses per 1000 inhabitants per day (DDD/1000 inhabitants/day) was used for calculating the annual amount of opioid use.
Results: The total consumption of five strong opioids was increased in all five Southeast Asian countries during a 10-year study period. Malaysia was recorded with the largest increase of the opioid consumption (993.18%), followed by Indonesia (530.34%), Vietnam (170.17%), Singapore (116.16%), and Thailand (104.66%). Malaysia also had the highest total strong opioid consumption (11.2 DDD/1000 inhabitants/day), primarily for methadone. Among the opioids used for pain management, fentanyl was primarily used in Malaysia and Singapore but the greatest increase in these two countries was for oxycodone. Fentanyl was also primarily used in Indonesia while morphine was predominantly used in Thailand and Vietnam.
Conclusion: Growing trends of strong opioids consumption in all five Southeast Asian countries demonstrated in this study may indicate improved access to opioid analgesics in these countries. Given the increasing trends, it is important to ensure that the utilization of opioids is according to the guideline to prevent the negative consequences of opioids particularly when used in chronic non-cancer pain.