Charleston Area Medical Center (CAMC) is the name of a complex of hospitals in Charleston, West Virginia, formed via a merger of previously independent facilities. It is the state's largest hospital.Charleston Area Medical Center is the primary medical facility for the city of Charleston. There is a combined total of 838 staffed beds between three facilities. In 2008, there were 98,103 emergency department visits, 3,131 births, 33,132 ambulatory surgeries, 557,867 outpatient visits, along with 35,294 inpatient discharges, 26,597 general operating room procedures, 1,687 open-heart bypass procedures and 8,294 procedures performed in cardiac cath labs.CAMC consists of four locations: Memorial Hospital, General Hospital, Women and Children's Hospital and Teays Valley Hospital. The largest branch is the CAMC Memorial Hospital, located in the Kanawha City neighborhood. It primarily hosts cardiac, oncology, and internal medicine cases. The second largest is CAMC General Hospital, located downtown, which focuses on neurology, orthopedics, trauma, and rehabilitation care. The third is Women and Children's Hospital, which is located on the banks of the Elk River. CAMC's fourth campus is the CAMC-Teays Valley Hospital, located in Putnam County to the west of Charleston, and serves that suburban area.CAMC is a tertiary, teaching institution with numerous educational affiliations, the most significant of which is an affiliation arrangement with West Virginia University, in which CAMC hospitals are training sites for WVU medical students and WVU faculty supervise CAMC residents and fellows. CAMC is the home of the Marshall University Doctor of Nurse Anesthesia Practice (DNAP) nurse anesthesia program.CAMC provides the most uncompensated care in the state of West Virginia, with a total benefit to the community over $115 million per year.
There is significant heterogeneity related to the use of prophylactic antiseizure medications (ASM) following supratentorial craniotomy. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis assessing ASM primary prophylaxis in adults hospitalized following supratentorial neurosurgery with no prior seizure history. The following population, intervention, comparator, and outcome (PICO) questions were assessed: (1) Should ASM versus no ASM be used as seizure prophylaxis in adult patients undergoing supratentorial neurosurgery? (2) If an ASM is used, should levetiracetam (LEV) or phenytoin/fosphenytoin (PHT) be preferentially used? and (3) Should a long (> 7 days) versus short (≤ 7 days) duration of prophylaxis be used? The main outcomes were early seizure (≤ 14 days), late seizures (> 14 days), adverse events, mortality, and functional and cognitive outcomes. We utilized Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) methodology to generate recommendations. The initial literature search yielded 1988 articles, and 16 formed the basis of the recommendations. PICO 1: while meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrated a significant benefit for early seizure prevention, meta-analyses including all study designs was nonsignificant. Further, there were no differences in late seizure or mortality rates, and there was a trend toward higher adverse event rates with ASM. PICO 2: LEV was associated with significantly lower early seizure rates than PHT, and there were trends toward fewer late seizures and adverse events with LEV. PICO 3: only three studies examined the duration of ASM treatment, and there was no significant difference in seizure events between subjects treated for a short versus long duration. We suggest that either prophylactic ASM or no ASM be used for seizure prophylaxis in patients undergoing supratentorial neurosurgery (conditional recommendation, low quality of evidence). If an ASM is used, we suggest LEV over PHT (conditional recommendation, very low quality of evidence) for a short duration (conditional recommendation, very low quality of evidence).
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly central to clinician workflows, spanning clinical decision support, medical education, and patient communication. However, current evaluation methods for medical LLMs rely heavily on static, templated benchmarks that fail to capture the complexity and dynamics of real-world clinical practice, creating a dissonance between benchmark performance and clinical utility. To address these limitations, we present MedArena, an interactive evaluation platform that enables clinicians to directly test and compare leading LLMs using their own medical queries. Given a clinician-provided query, MedArena presents responses from two randomly selected models and asks the user to select the preferred response. Out of 1571 preferences collected across 12 LLMs up to November 1, 2025, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and GPT-4o were the top three models by Bradley-Terry rating. Only one-third of clinician-submitted questions resembled factual recall tasks (e.g., MedQA), whereas the majority addressed topics such as treatment selection, clinical documentation, or patient communication, with 20
Background: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is the leading cause of chronic liver disease (CLD) globally and is closely linked to metabolic risk factors and systemic inflammation. Emerging evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency may influence MASLD severity and outcomes, though limited real-world data often assess long-term clinical outcomes in MASLD patients stratified by vitamin D status. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the TriNetX US Collaborative Network (2006–2025). Adult patients with MASLD were stratified into two cohorts based on serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels: normal (≥30 ng/mL) and deficient (<20 ng/mL). Patients with other CLD, malignancy, decompensated cirrhosis, and relevant confounding conditions were excluded. Primary outcomes included all-cause mortality, hospital readmissions, and ICU admissions at 1-year and 5-year follow-up. Results: After propensity score matching, 6959 patients were included in each cohort. Compared with patients with normal vitamin D levels, those with vitamin D deficiency had significantly higher rates of hospital readmissions, ICU admissions, and all-cause mortality at both 1-year and 5-year follow-up. A 1 year, readmissions occurred in 10% vs. 6%, ICU admissions 2.6% vs. 1.2%, and mortality 1.5% vs. 0.5% of patients (p = 0.01). Similar findings were observed at 5 years, with higher rates of readmissions 15% vs. 10%, ICU admissions 4.4% vs. 2.4% and mortality 3.2% vs. 1.3% in the vitamin D-deficient cohort (p = 0.01). Conclusions: Vitamin D deficiency was associated with significantly increased mortality, hospital readmissions, and ICU admissions among patients with MASLD. Our findings suggest that vitamin D status may represent a valuable prognostic indicator in this population. Although the observational nature of this study precluded establishing causality, our results support the consideration of routine assessment of vitamin D levels in patients with MASLD. Further prospective and mechanistic studies are needed to determine whether vitamin D supplementation can improve outcomes in this population.
BACKGROUND:The locking attachment washer (LAW) plate offers an advancement in fixation techniques for supracondylar distal femur fractures. This study compared fixation outcomes for supracondylar distal femur fractures managed with traditional fixation techniques (ie, retrograde intramedullary nail, locking plate) versus DePuy Synthes RFN-ADVANCED Retrograde Femoral Nailing System incorporating the LAW plate. MATERIALS AND METHODS:A retrospective single-center comparative analysis was conducted of adult patients with supracondylar distal femur fractures treated between December 2022 and December 2024. Patients were divided into two groups: (1) traditional fixation and (2) nail plate construct using retrograde femoral nail with LAW plate. Outcomes focused on surgical parameters, functional recovery, and clinical implications. RESULTS:Forty-five patients met inclusion criteria: 17 treated with traditional fixation, 28 with the LAW construct. Patients in the LAW group were significantly more likely to have an estimated 76.43-minute reduction in operative time compared to patients in the traditional group (P = .009). Hospital length of stay trended shorter with LAW (7.5 vs 15.2 days) but failed to achieve statistical significance in both univariate and multivariate analyses. Postoperative weight bearing was significantly more common with LAW (67.8% vs 23.6%, P = .032), and the rate of radiographic union trended lower with LAW but did not achieve statistical significance. CONCLUSION:The LAW construct demonstrated shorter operative times and earlier advancement in weight-bearing protocols, despite use in an older cohort. Radiographic union and complication rates were comparable. Potential advantages of the LAW construct lend to clinical and research opportunities for these complex injuries.
