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Background: Clinicians' research activities reportedly improve their healthcare performance. Presenting research at conferences may be related to improved patient care outcomes; however, few studies have investigated this relationship. Thus, we examined the association between presenting at conferences and the mortality of patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction. Methods: We analyzed an administrative database of acute care hospitals in Japan. The study compared patients admitted to hospitals in which physicians made at least one conference presentation during the patient's admission year (Presentation Group) with those admitted to hospitals with no conference presentations (Control group). We performed multivariable logistic regression analyses to estimate the risk of all-cause in-hospital mortality. Five models were fitted: a Crude model, unadjusted; Model 1, adjusted for personal factors, including sex, age, Killip classification, and so on; Model 2, adjusted for Model 1 plus hospital factors; Model 3 was a multilevel analysis clustered by hospital codes and adjusted for the same variables as Model 1; Model 4 was adjusted for Model 1 plus evidence-based practices through causal mediation analysis. Results: After excluding 3,544 patients with missing Killip classification or ambulance use, data for 56,923 patients in 384 acute care hospitals were analyzed. Drug prescription in accordance with the evidence was significantly greater in the Presentation group than in the Control group. Moreover, conference presentation was significantly associated with lower in-hospital mortality in all models (Odds ratios (OR) = 0.68, 95% Confidence intervals (CIs): 0.65 to 0.72 in the Crude model; OR = 0.73, 95% CIs: 0.68 to 0.79 in Model 1; OR = 0.76, 95% CIs: 0.70 to 0.82 in Model 2; OR = 0.84, 95% CIs: 0.76 to 0.92 in Model 3; OR = 1.00, 95% CIs: 0.92 to 1.09 in Model 4). Conclusion: The promotion of scholarly activities such as conference presentations might improve patient outcomes through increased evidence-based practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Biosimilars have the potential to save a significant amount of money in cancer treatment costs. However, barriers exist in the adoption of biosimilar products. Japan introduced a new health policy in 2022 to promote the use of biosimilars in oncology by offering financial incentives to eligible hospitals. This study aims to examine the association between these financial incentives and prescription patterns. Methods: The study analyzed Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC) data to assess the impact of the new health policy on the use of biosimilar products in oncology. The policy provided an additional fee for hospitals using biosimilar products. The study included patients with specific types of cancer and analyzed the proportion of monthly biosimilar prescriptions using the number of prescriptions of reference and biosimilar products. A generalized synthetic control method was used for analysis. Results: From April 2020 to March 2023, the study involved 27,737 patients in 114 hospitals, with 63 eligible hospitals receiving financial incentives. The average number of prescriptions of the drugs (rituximab, trastuzumab, and bevacizumab) increased gradually in both eligible and ineligible hospitals. The financial incentives were associated with a significant increase in the proportion of biosimilar product prescriptions, with a monthly increase of 0.092 per month (95% CI, 0.040–0.145) [9.2%, 95% CI, 4.0–14.5] compared to ineligible hospitals. Conclusion: Our study indicates that providing financial incentives to hospitals to utilize biosimilar products increased their prescriptions. Japan's recent health policy of moderate financial incentives is an effective approach to increasing prescriptions of biosimilar products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Previous studies have demonstrated geographical disparities regarding the quality of care for acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The aim of this study was two-fold: first, to calculate the proportion of patients with AMI who received primary percutaneous coronary interventions (pPCIs) by secondary medical areas (SMAs), which provide general inpatient care, as a quality indicator (QI) of the process of AMI practice. Second, to identify patterns in their trajectories and to investigate the factors related to regional differences in their trajectories. Methods: We included patients hospitalized with AMI between April 2014 and March 2020 from the national health insurance claims database in Japan and calculated the proportion of pPCIs across 335 SMAs and fiscal years. Using these proportions, we conducted group-based trajectory modeling to identify groups that shared similar trajectories of the proportions. In addition, we investigated area-level factors that were associated with the different trajectories. Results: The median (interquartile range) proportions of pPCIs by SMAs were 63.5% (52.9% to 70.5%) in FY 2014 and 69.6% (63.3% to 74.2%) in FY 2020. Four groups, named low to low (LL; n = 48), low to middle (LM; n = 16), middle to middle (MM; n = 68), and high to high (HH; n = 208), were identified from our trajectory analysis. The HH and MM groups had higher population densities and higher numbers of physicians and cardiologists per capita than the LL and LM groups. The LL and LM groups had similar numbers of physicians per capita, but the number of cardiologists per capita in the LM group increased over the years of the study compared with the LL group. Conclusion: The trajectory of the proportion of pPCIs for AMI patients identified groups of SMAs. Among the four groups, the LM group showed an increasing trend in the proportions of pPCIs, whereas the three other groups showed relatively stable trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Living‐donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is a highly effective life‐saving procedure; however, it requires substantial medical resources, and the cost‐effectiveness of LDLT versus conservative management (CM) for adult patients with end‐stage liver disease (ESLD) remains unclear in Japan. Methods: We performed a cost‐effectiveness analysis using the Diagnostic Procedure Combination (DPC) data from the nationwide database of the DPC research group. We selected adult patients (18 years or older) who were admitted or discharged between 2010 and 2021 with a diagnosis of ESLD with Child–Pugh class C or B. A decision tree and Markov model were constructed, and all event probabilities were computed in 3‐month cycles over a 10‐year period. The willingness‐to‐pay per quality‐adjusted life‐year (QALY) was set at 5 million Japanese yen (JPY) (49,801 US dollars [USD]) from the perspective of the public health‐care payer. Results: After propensity score matching, we identified 1297 and 111,849 patients in the LDLT and CM groups, respectively. The incremental cost‐effectiveness ratio for LDLT versus CM for Child–Pugh classes C and B was 2.08 million JPY/QALY (20,708 USD/QALY) and 5.24 million JPY/QALY (52,153 USD/QALY), respectively. The cost‐effectiveness acceptability curves showed the probabilities of being below the willingness‐to‐pay of 49,801 USD/QALY as 95.4% in class C and 48.5% in class B. Tornado diagrams revealed all variables in class C were below 49,801 USD/QALY while their ranges included or exceeded 49,801 USD/QALY in class B. Conclusions: Living‐donor liver transplantation for adult patients with Child–Pugh class C was cost‐effective compared with CM, whereas LDLT versus CM for class B patients was not cost‐effective in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Anti-asparaginyl tRNA synthetase (anti-KS) antibody is present in patients with interstitial lung disease (ILD) accompanied by polymyositis/dermatomyositis. We examined clinical/immunological features of these patients. Methods: Polymyositis/dermatomyositis or ILD patients were screened for autoantibodies, and clinical/immunological data were collected retrospectively. ILD was diagnosed by computed tomography, and clinical/immunological features of anti-KS-positive patients were compared with those of anti-Jo-1-positive patients. Results: Sixteen anti-KS-positive patients [female = 11; male = 5; average age 63.6 years (range, 40–81) years] were diagnosed: seven had ILD, four had clinically amyopathic DM (CADM) and ILD, three had Sjögren's syndrome (SS) and ILD one each had rheumatoid arthritis and ILD, or CADM/SS overlap and ILD. All patients had ILD with chronic onset and clinical course; 11/16 (69%) had nonspecific interstitial pneumonia, and five (31%) had usual interstitial pneumonia pattern. Regarding skin manifestations, 4 (27%) had typical DM rash and 11 (69%) had mechanic's hands. All anti-KS-positive patients had no clinical muscle weakness or serum creatine kinase elevation; 8/16 patients (50%) had sicca symptoms at a significantly high frequency compared with anti-Jo-1-positive patients (50% vs 11%, P = 0.01). Conclusions: Anti-KS-positive patients might form a distinguishable subset closely associated with sicca symptoms, CADM and chronic-type ILD with a relatively favourable prognosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]