Reliability, validity, and sensitivity of short-form 36 health survey (SF-36) in patients with sick sinus syndrome

Long term outcomes of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in post covid condition: longitudinal follow-up of a randomized controlled trial

In our previous randomized controlled trial, we documented significant improvements in cognitive, psychiatric, fatigue, sleep, and pain symptoms among long Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID) patients who underwent hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). The primary objective of the present study was to evaluate the enduring 1 year long term effects of HBOT on long COVID syndrome. This longitudinal long-term follow-up included 31 patients with reported post COVID-19 cognitive symptoms, who underwent 40 daily sessions of HBOT. Participants were recruited more than one year (486 ± 73) after completion of the last HBOT session. Quality of life, assessed using the short form-36 (SF-36) questionnaire revealed, that the long-term results exhibited a similar magnitude of improvement as the short-term outcomes following HBOT across most domains. Regarding sleep quality, improvements were observed in global score and across five sleep domains with effect sizes of moderate magnitude during the short-term evaluation, and these improvements persisted in the long-term assessment (effect size (ES1) = 0.47-0.79). In the realm of neuropsychiatric symptoms, as evaluated by the brief symptom inventory-18 (BSI-18), the short-term assessment following HBOT demonstrated a large effect size, and this effect persisted at the long-term evaluation. Both pain severity (ES1 = 0.69) and pain interference (ES1 = 0.83), had significant improvements during the short-term assessment post HBOT, which persisted at long term. The results indicate HBOT can improve the quality of life, quality of sleep, psychiatric and pain symptoms of patients suffering from long COVID. The clinical improvements gained by HBOT are persistent even 1 year after the last HBOT session.

Network analysis of depression and anxiety symptoms in Chinese rheumatoid arthritis patients

Background

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients are susceptible to comorbid anxiety and depression. From the network model perspective, comorbidity is due to direct interactions between depression and anxiety symptoms. The objective of this study was to assess the network structure of depression and anxiety symptoms in Chinese RA patients and identify the central and bridge symptoms as well as how depression and anxiety symptoms are related to quality of life (QoL) in the network.

Methods

A total of 402 Chinese RA patients were included in this study. Depression and anxiety symptoms were measured by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). R software was used to estimate the network. Specifically, we computed the predictability, expected influence (EI) and bridge expected influence (BEI) for each symptom and showed a flow network of "QoL".

Results

Our network revealed that the strongest edge was D2 "See the bad side of things" and D3 "Not feeling cheerful" across the whole network. For centrality indices, D3 "Not feeling cheerful" and D6 "Feeling down" had the highest EI values in the network, while A4 "Trouble relaxing" and D6 "Feeling down" had the highest BEI values of their respective community. As to "QoL", the strongest direct edge related to it was A1 "Nervousness".

Conclusions

"Feeling down" and "Not feeling cheerful" emerged as the strongest central symptoms, while "Trouble relaxing" and "Feeling down" were bridge symptoms in the anxiety-depression network of RA patients. Intervention on depression and anxiety symptoms in nurses should prioritize these symptoms.