Dermatologists value medical photography. While patterns of image acquisition, storage and consent are noted, a variety of methods and preferences exist. Clearer photography guidelines and increased educational resources are likely to improve image quality, exchangeability and confidentiality.
Background
The use of fine art in medical education has a long history. Numerous studies have investigated the potential benefits of incorporating art in medical education; however, there are gaps in knowledge regarding the efficacy, methodology, and clinical significance of these studies.
Objective
This scoping review of the literature aims to describe the available literature on the incorporation of art education in medical school and residency.
Methods
PubMed, Google Scholar, and MedEDPortal were queried from their inception dates through December 2019. English-language studies providing a detailed methodology and detailed analysis were included. A total of 37 studies were identified. Upon further screening of the studies' methodologies and results, 16 studies describing art education implemented with medical students and 12 studies describing art education implemented with residents were included for final review.
Results
Various methods of art education exist, including Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), rigorous curricula, and unstructured roundtable discussions with art curators or artistically minded clinicians. Studies range in duration, art media, and type of analysis.
Conclusions
There has been an increasing effort to incorporate fine art education into medical training, primarily to enhance visual perception skills and empathy. Although there is limited research on its efficacy and wide variations in study methodologies exist, results consistently indicate that participants find the incorporation of art into curricula beneficial. Further research analyzing which methodologies are most likely to yield statistically and clinically significant improvements in visual perception and empathy may lead to increased utilization of this teaching method.
In adult obesity low-grade systemic inflammation is considered an important step in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance (IR). The association between obesity and inflammation is less well established in adolescents. Here, we ascertain the importance of inflammation in IR among obese adolescents by utilizing either Random Forest (RF) classification or mediation analysis approaches. The inflammation balance score, composed of 8 pro- and anti-inflammatory makers, as well as most of the individual inflammatory markers differed significantly between lean and overweight/obese. In contrast, adiponectin was the only individual marker selected as a predictor of IR by RF, and the balance score only revealed a medium to low importance score. Neither adiponectin nor the inflammation balance score were found to mediate the relationship between obesity and IR. These findings do not support the premise that low grade systemic inflammation is a key for the expression of IR in the human. Prospective longitudinal studies should confirm these findings.
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