Anne Dimmock

Penn State Hershey Medical Center and Penn State College of Medicine · Department of Medicine

Background: Computable phenotypes are computerized search queries that allow efficient identification of specific groups of individuals (e.g., that may meet eligibility criteria for a clinical trial). Heterogeneous clinical syndromes challenge this approach because disease definitions and sub-phenotypes evolve, and diverse phenotypes may be needed...

Importance Alteration in lung microbes is associated with disease progression in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Objective To assess the effect of antimicrobial therapy on clinical outcomes. Design, Setting, and Participants Pragmatic, randomized, unblinded clinical trial conducted across 35 US sites. A total of 513 patients older than 40 years we...

A workshop "Electronic Health Records and Pulmonary Function Data: Developing an Interoperability Roadmap" was held at the American Thoracic Society 2019 International Conference. "Interoperability" is defined as is the ability of different information-technology systems and software applications to directly communicate, exchange data, and use the...

The use of mixed methods research in intervention trials mostly centers around using quantitative data to assess primary outcomes and qualitative data primarily for exploratory purposes, to supplement, and/or explain quantitative findings. We describe a novel mixed methods procedure that generates an integrated outcome variable used to reexamine un...

Effective treatments for human herpes virus 8 (HHV-8) associated multicentric Castleman disease (MCD) have led to prolonged survival for this complex systemic lymphoproliferative inflammatory disease. Nonetheless, significant challenges remain for the recognition of disease exacerbations, particularly when overlapping with common comorbid condition...

A workshop "Electronic Health Records and Pulmonary Function Data: Developing an Interoperability Roadmap" was held at the American Thoracic Society 2019 International Conference. "Interoperability" is defined as is the ability of different information-technology systems and software applications to directly communicate, exchange data, and use the...

Background: Although patients often prefer less rather than more treatment at the end of life, in the absence of contrary instructions, the medical profession's de facto position is to treat aggressively. It is unknown whether a computer-based decision aid can affect treatment choices. Methods: Secondary analysis of a single-center, single-blind...

Purpose: Rare diseases present challenges for accessing patient populations to conduct surveys. Clinical Data Research Networks (CDRNs) offer an opportunity to overcome those challenges by providing infrastructure for accessing patients and sharing data. This study aims to demonstrate the feasibility of collecting patient preference information for...

Background: Optimizing recruitment efficiency is an important strategy to address the resource limitations that typically constrain clinical research. Surprisingly, little empiric data exist to guide research teams attempting to recruit a difficult population into similar studies. Our objective was to investigate factors associated with enrollment...

Microorganisms can be transmitted from infected to healthy people as an aerosol. Military bioaerosol detectors currently used by soldiers or first responders may potentially be utilized in health care settings as part of a strategy to prevent the spread of airborne infectious diseases. The goal of this study was to conduct initial laboratory and fi...

Objective: To evaluate 2 strategies for preparing family members for surrogate decision-making. Design: A 2 × 2 factorial, randomized controlled trial testing whether: (1) comprehensive online advance care planning (ACP) is superior to basic ACP, and (2) having patients engage in ACP together with family members is superior to ACP done by patien...

We present a case that highlights the difficulties with diagnosis and the dangers of occupational allergic sinusitis and asthma left unrecognized. We describe the case history of a man who experienced work-related symptoms 1 year after beginning work as a cheesemaker at a creamery, and whose respiratory symptoms progressively worsened over 16 years...

Introduction: By statutory mandate, the United States Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s (PCORI) aims to “improve clinical decision-making by supporting research…. with patients and their caregivers at the center of this process.” We analyzed the PCORI-funded PaTH Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (PaTH IPF) cohort’s …

Objective: Many patients with chronic illnesses report a desire for increased involvement in medical decision-making. This pilot study aimed to explore how patients with exacerbation-prone disease trajectories such as advanced heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease experience advance care planning using an online decision aid and t...

The PaTH (University of Pittsburgh/UPMC, Penn State College of Medicine, Temple University Hospital, and Johns Hopkins University) clinical data research network initiative is a collaborative effort among four academic health centers in the Mid-Atlantic region. PaTH will provide robust infrastructure to conduct research, explore clinical outcomes,...

Rationale: Asthma is a disease of increasing prevalence characterized by airway inflammation, hyperresponsiveness and reversible airflow limitation. It has been observed that rural populations, such as the Amish of Central Pennsylvania, have a disproportionately lower prevalence of asthma than the general population (also known as the “English”) fo...

A growing body of research expands our knowledge of asthma and chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) and how these common albeit heterogeneous conditions are impacted by active and passive tobacco smoke exposure. The syndromes of asthma and rhinitis have diverse endo-phenotypes, some including atopy. Chronic rhinosinusitis is defined through consensus endos...

RATIONALE: Disease-specific patient stratification serves important functions in patient information and counseling, management decisions, and clinical research design. This is particularly true for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a disease of unknown cause and unpredictable course with high overall disease-specific mortality. There is an urge...

RATIONALE: Predictive models for prognosis in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) offer value for clinical management (including transplantation planning), research studies and patient communication. Recently, Ley et al (Ann Intern Med 2012; 156:684-691) proposed the GAP Index, which has the advantage of using simple measures readily available in e...