Objective To investigate the current status and needs of epilepsy management among patients and primary healthcare workers in rural Northwest China, providing data support for the development of an intelligent medical assistant tailored for rural epilepsy care. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted from March 22 to April 22, 2025, targeting patients (or their caregivers) and healthcare workers in eight regions of the Shaanxi Rural Epilepsy Prevention and Management Project. The patient/caregiver questionnaire covered basic information, disease-related information, and functional needs; the healthcare worker questionnaire included basic information, job responsibilities, and functional suggestions. Questionnaires were distributed via the Wenjuanxing platform. Python was used for descriptive statistics and correlation analysis. Results A total of 1 154 valid patient/caregiver questionnaires (response rate 59.45%) and 337 valid healthcare worker questionnaires (response rate 100%) were collected. The main difficulties reported by patients/caregivers were psychological stress (58.75%), financial burden (47.05%), and lack of disease knowledge (38.82%). 87.09% of respondents expressed willingness to use an intelligent assistant, with the highest demand for psychological support (56.33%), medication reminders (52.51%), and condition monitoring (45.06%). The primary difficulties reported by healthcare workers were poor patient adherence (75.96%), insufficient professional training (62.62%), and ineffective communication (55.79%). 87.83% of healthcare workers were willing to use an intelligent assistant and expected it to feature patient information management (92.58%), remote follow-up (77.15%), and condition monitoring (74.48%) to improve work efficiency. Conclusion Patients and healthcare workers in rural Northwest China show high acceptance and clear demand for an intelligent medical assistant for epilepsy. Future development should prioritize core modules such as medication management, health education, and psychological support, adopting a minimalist design to enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of long-term epilepsy management.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the association between obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and levels of thyroid hormone.MethodsWe electronically searched databases including PubMed, The Cochrane Library (Issue 6, 2016), Web of Science, VIP, CNKI, WanFang Data, CBM and the relevant conference abstracts and unpublished literatures from inception to June, 2016 to collect the case-control studies about the levels of thyroid hormones with OSAS. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed by RevMan 5.2 software.ResultsA total of 8 RCTs involving 1 519 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: there were no significant differences of levels of FT3 between OSAS group and control group (mild: SMD=–0.01, 95%CI –0.21 to 0.20, P=0.93; moderate: SMD=0.15, 95%CI –0.34 to 0.64, P=0.55; severe: SMD=0.12, 95%CI –0.32 to 1.25, P=0.08). There were significant differences of levels of FT4 between mild and moderate OSAS groups with control group (mild: SMD=–0.49, 95%CI –0.74 to –0.25, P<0.000 1; moderate: SMD=–0.86, 95%CI –1.69 to –0.02, P=0.04), but no significant difference in severe group (SMD=–1.06, 95%CI –2.16 to 0.03, P=0.06). There were no significant differences of levels of TSH between OSAS group and control group (mild: SMD=–0.03, 95%CI –0.13 to 0.20, P=0.69; moderate: SMD=–0.09, 95%CI –0.27 to –0.10, P=0.35; severe: SMD=–0.02, 95%CI –0.26 to –0.22, P=0.88).ConclusionsThe current evidence shows that, OSAS is associated with lower levels of FT4. Due to the limited quality and quantity of included studies, the above results are needed to validate by more studies.
ObjectiveTo investigate the differences in middle ear function between adenoid hypertrophy (AH) children with type A tympanogram and normal children, and to evaluate the value of wideband acoustic immittance (WAI) in diagnosing middle ear dysfunction in AH children with type A tympanogram. MethodsThis retrospective cohort study included 96 children (192 ears) with AH and 40 healthy children (80 ears) as the control group. All children underwent pure tone audiometry, 226 Hz tympanometry, WAI, otoscopy, and electronic nasopharyngoscopy. Type A AH children were selected as the study group (AH group) to compare the 226 Hz tympanometry index and WAI between the two groups. A binary logistic regression model was constructed after dimensionality reduction by principal component analysis of the frequencies with statistical significance, and the diagnostic value of the model was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. ResultsThere was no significant difference in 226 Hz tympanometry between the two groups (P>0.05). This study found that there were significant differences in WAI between children with AH and healthy children. Under tympanic peak pressure, the wideband absorbance (WBA) of the AH group was significantly higher than that of the control group at 226～630 Hz and 3 150～6 000 Hz; Under ambient pressure, the WBA of the AH group was significantly lower than that of the control group at 1 250～1 600 Hz and significantly higher than that of the control group at 4 000～6 000 Hz. The dimensionality of 15 statistically significant frequencies was reduced to 3 principal components (89.79% of the original information) by principal component analysis. The binary logistic regression model constructed after dimensionality reduction by principal component analysis had a high diagnostic value, with an AUC of 0.813, a sensitivity of 62.18%, and a specificity of 87.50%. ConclusionWAI can be used as an effective method for evaluating the middle ear function of AH children with type A tympanogram.