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Background: While videostroboscopy is recognized as the most popular approach for investigating vocal fold function, evaluating the numerical values, such as the membranous glottal gap area, remains too time consuming for clinical applications. Methods: We used a total of 2507 videostroboscopy images from 137 patients and developed five U‐Net‐based deep‐learning image segmentation models for automatic masking of the membranous glottal gap area. To further validate the models, we used another 410 images from 41 different patients. Results: During development, all five models exhibited acceptable and similar metrics. While the VGG19 U‐Net had a long inference time of 1654 ms, the other four models had more practical inference times, ranging from 16 to 138 ms. During further validation, Efficient U‐Net demonstrated the highest intersection over union of 0.8455, the highest Dice coefficient of 0.9163, and the lowest Hausdorff distance of 1.5626. The normalized membranous glottal gap area index was also calculated and validated. Efficient U‐Net and VGG19 U‐Net exhibited the lowest mean squared errors (3.5476 and 3.3842) and the lowest mean absolute errors (1.8835 and 1.8396). Conclusions: Automatic segmentation of the membranous glottal gap area can be achieved through U‐net‐based architecture. Considering the segmentation quality and speed, Efficient U‐Net is a reasonable choice for this task, while the other four models remain valuable competitors. The models' masked area enables possible calculation of the normalized membranous glottal gap area and analysis of the glottal area waveform, revealing promising clinical applications for this model. Level of Evidence: NA Laryngoscope, 134:2835–2843, 2024 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives/hypothesis: The risk factors associated with suicidal ideation among patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) have rarely been investigated. Thus, this study proposed an effective screening model to facilitate the identification of patients with HNC who are at risk of committing suicide.Study Design: Retrospective longitudinal study.Methods: We recruited 286 inpatients with HNC who were referred to the psychiatry department for an emotional distress assessment during cancer treatment. Sociodemographic and clinical factors, as well as Distress Thermometer (DT) scoring, were gathered and analyzed using multivariate logistic regression.Results: Among the patients, 27 (9.4%) were recognized as having suicidal ideation. A logistic regression analysis revealed five significant indicators associated with suicidal ideation, namely depression (odds ratio [OR]: 42.83), dysphoria (OR: 8.06), hypopharyngeal cancer (OR: 4.61), cancer history (OR: 4.53), and average DT scores (OR: 1.84). Based on the receiver operating characteristic and logistic regression, the model can predict suicidal ideation with 93.4% accuracy (area under the curve value).Conclusions: Our findings provide strong evidence that patients with depression, hypopharyngeal cancer, higher DT scores, and previous cancer history can be quickly screened for suicidal ideation, which may help to prevent suicide events in patients with HNC.Level Of Evidence: 3b Laryngoscope, 129:2491-2495, 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is uncommon in western countries, it is endemic in Southeast Asia and Southern China. Previous study of norcantharidin (NCTD), isolated from blister beetles, has proved its anticancer effect on various tumors. However, the effect of NCTD in NPC has never been studied. The purpose of this study is to inspect the suppression activity of NCTD on NPC, along with the underlying mechanism. NPC cell line NPC‐BM was treated with NCTD. NCTD remarkably inhibited proliferation and induce apoptosis in NPC‐BM cell. Activation of caspase‐3, −8, −9 was observed through western blotting. The expression of antiapoptotic protein Bcl‐XL was significantly reduced, but expression of proapoptotic protein Bak was increased after treatment of NCTD. The cytotoxic effect of NCTD on NPC‐BM cell is mainly due to apoptosis, mediated by caspase and mitochondrial pathway. These results suggested that NCTD could be a potential anticancer agent for NPC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]