UW Neurological Surgery Recent PubMed Publications

Asian American (AsAm) youth experience persistent disparities in mental health service use, but quantitative data are lacking in existing investigations of barriers in this population. Here, we sought to characterize key barriers to youth mental health services across multiple domains (i.e., structural, perceptual, cultural, trauma-specific) and explore associations between barriers, youth symptoms, and service use. AsAm caregivers (N = 149, M(age) = 39.23, 55% female) completed the study...

CONCLUSION: This quality improvement evaluation of social care integration using the CRS illustrates a potential pathway for activating social support and healthcare relationships in primary care, but more rigorous designs and longer-term follow up are needed to explore if this pathway leads to improvements in patient or population health and healthcare utilization.

No abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a risk factor for neurodegeneration and cognitive decline, yet the underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms are incompletely understood. This gap in knowledge is in part related to a lack of reliable and efficient methods for measuring cortical lesions in neuroimaging studies. The objective of this study was to develop a semi-automated lesion detection tool and apply it to an investigation of longitudinal changes in brain structure among individuals with chronic...

CONCLUSIONS: Apparent ethnoracial differences in societal participation among people with TBI are at least partially driven by sociodemographic and injury characteristics. More specifically, baseline characteristics of age, education, and marital status are more meaningful contributors to differences in global societal participation than race/ethnicity. Subordinate aspects of participation yielded different findings, however. Societal participation and its potential drivers require further...

CONCLUSION: In cases where vessels abut but do not compress the facial nerve, there can still be position-dependent HFS because of position-dependent compression of the facial nerve, which can be relieved by surgical decompression.

CONCLUSIONS: This transcriptomic landscape serves as a resource for biomarker discovery, diagnostic refinement, and prediction of tumor biology and outcome. By enabling projection of new patients' bulk RNA-seq data onto the reference map using nearest neighbor analysis, the framework supports accurate subtype classification. The landscape is publicly available via Oncoscape, an interactive platform for global exploration and application.

Despite the well-known risks of tobacco use, tobacco exposure remains a major contributor to morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although cigarette use has declined, the popularity of novel tobacco products (NTPs), such as electronic cigarettes (ECs) and heated tobacco products (HTPs), has increased. Given the evolving landscape of the tobacco industry, robust in vitro models are needed to evaluate the potential for harm of novel products on the airways. We applied a 3D in vitro human airway...

No abstract

CONCLUSION: AGs are dynamic structures exhibiting measurable changes in number and volume over time. AG volume appears responsive to acute ICP alterations, supporting their function in ICP regulation and suggesting a potential role as an imaging biomarker for ICP dynamics in acute hydrocephalus.

The most consistent risk factor for developing psychiatric problems post-traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a preexisting psychiatric disorder, but many studies have reported that psychiatric disorders can occur de novo following "mild" TBI. The objective of this secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study of patients (n = 1,947) with acute TBI and presenting Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score between 13 and 15 was to describe the association of pre-injury psychiatric history with prevalence and...

Many cancers evade immunosurveillance by downregulating surface major histocompatibility class (MHC)-I. Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) promotes MHC-I degradation and is elevated in glioma. Evolocumab is a clinically approved PCSK9 inhibitor which restores MHC-I expression in pre-clinical cancer models. However, monoclonal antibodies have limited blood brain/tumor barrier penetrance (BBB/BTB). We conducted a window-of-opportunity trial, evaluating evolocumab's BBB/BTB...

Syphilis, caused by Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum, is an urgent global public health threat. Syphilis vaccine development has been impeded by limited understanding of the molecular mechanisms that enable T. pallidum to establish and maintain infection. The vascular endothelium is critical for T. pallidum attachment, dissemination, and host immune response initiation; however, the molecular details of T. pallidum-endothelial interactions are incompletely understood. To enhance understanding,...

CONCLUSION: AI-written clinical scenarios were comparable to faculty-written scenarios in terms of complexity and appropriateness for senior surgical residents when used in a virtual mock oral board examination, highlighting the potential utility of AI-based tools in oral board preparation and surgical education.

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) are rare neoplasms that present with diverse clinical manifestations depending on their secretory activity. Paraneoplastic hypercalcemia due to parathyroid hormone-related peptide (PTHrP) secretion by pNETs is an uncommon but serious complication. We describe the case of a 67-year-old female with a past medical history of multiple sclerosis and uveitis presenting with acute metabolic encephalopathy due to profound hypercalcemia. Laboratory workup revealed...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) is a devastating neurological emergency with high morbidity and no proven therapies that reliably improve recovery. While early decompression and hemodynamic optimization are standard, clinicians lack imaging tools to stratify injury severity or monitor physiological responses in real time. Advances in high-resolution B-mode, contrast-enhanced ultrasound, and multiparametric approaches offer a unique opportunity to close this gap and improve...

At the 42nd Annual Meeting of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) in Bellevue, Washington, June 2025, two inaugural events-the Clinical Anatomy Fireside Chat (CAFC) and the Clinical Anatomy Symposium: Head and Neck 2025 (CAS)-fostered rich dialogue on the evolving role and operational definition of clinical anatomy. Experts from various clinical and anatomical disciplines explored the meaning of clinical anatomy, highlighting the absence of a universal definition despite its...

CONCLUSION: Patients with elevated BACs scored approximately 1 point lower on the GCS than patients with BACs under 0.08. BAC's effect on the GCS persisted even after controlling for other covariates by multivariable regression analysis. Providers should be aware of this when initially evaluating intoxicated patients with TBI as it can affect their clinical management.

Background Arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) in eloquent brain regions pose significant challenges due to the increased risk of neurologic deficits associated with treatment. Although stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and endovascular embolization are used as standalone approaches, their comparative outcomes in eloquent brain AVMs remain unclear. Purpose To directly compare the outcomes of standalone endovascular embolization versus SRS for patients with AVMs in the eloquent brain. Materials and...

Fentanyl is widely used perioperatively and illicitly as a drug of abuse. As a potent μ-opioid receptor agonist, fentanyl canonically inhibits excitability through Gα(i/o) intracellular signalling pathways resulting in analgesia and respiratory depression. However, fentanyl also paradoxically activates respiratory muscles causing a potentially lethal effect termed wooden chest syndrome. Here we show that fentanyl, but not morphine, causes a persistent tonic component of diaphragmatic muscle...