Veteran suicide is one of the most complex and pressing health issues in the United States. According to the 2020 National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, since 2018 an average of 17.2 Veterans died by suicide each day. Veteran suicide risk screening is currently limited to suicide hotlines, patient reporting, patient visits, and family or friend reporting. As a result of these limitations, innovative approaches in suicide screening are increasingly garnering attention. An essential feature of these innovative methods includes better incorporation of risk factors that might indicate higher risk for tracking suicidal ideation based on personal behavior. Digital technologies create a means through which measuring these risk factors more reliably, with higher fidelity, and more frequently throughout daily life is possible, with the capacity to identify potentially telling behavior patterns. In this review, digital predictive biomarkers are discussed as they pertain to suicide risk, such as sleep vital signs, sleep disturbance, sleep quality, and speech pattern recognition. Various digital predictive biomarkers are reviewed and evaluated as well as their potential utility in predicting and diagnosing Veteran suicidal ideation in real time. In the future, these digital biomarkers could be combined to generate further suicide screening for diagnosis and severity assessments, allowing healthcare providers and healthcare teams to intervene more optimally.

Context Neck pain is a common complaint in healthcare clinics. Although the pathogenesis of neck pain is often multifactorial, trapezius muscle dysfunction has been commonly linked to neck pain. Osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT) has been demonstrated to be an effective treatment modality in treating trapezius muscle dysfunction and neck pain. However, there is a current lack of objective, quantitative measures to assess the effectiveness of OMT. Through previous research, ultrasound technology has been shown to be promising in its ability to quantify tissue changes both pre- and post-OMT. Objectives The objectives of this study are to evaluate the feasibility of shear wave elastography (SWE) in assessing upper trapezius muscles with pain and hypertonicity, as well as the changes in these muscles post-OMT for cervical somatic dysfunctions. Methods After obtaining approval from the Rocky Vista University Institutional Review Board and written informed consent from participants, SWE and osteopathic assessments were performed on 22 adult participants with and without cervical spine somatic dysfunction. Participants with positive osteopathic assessments of tissue texture, asymmetry, restricted motion, and/or tenderness (TART) were treated utilizing OMT. Shear wave velocity (SWV, m/s) and shear wave velocity rate [SWVR = (SWV contraction – SWV relaxation)/ SWV relaxation] of the upper trapezius muscles with and without pain and hypertonicity, and before and after OMT, were examined utilizing a two-tailed t-test. Results SWV in muscle contraction and SWVR were significantly lower in muscles with pain compared to muscles without pain (p≤0.01). SWV in muscle contraction was also significantly lower in hypertonic muscles compared to normotonic muscles (p<0.01). Following OMT, SWV in muscle contraction and SWVR in muscles with pain and hypertonic increased significantly (p≤0.01). Overall TART score of all muscles with somatic dysfunction (SD) after OMT significantly decreased (p<0.01). SWV in muscle contraction and SWVR in hypertonic muscles were also significantly increased (p≤0.03), with an improvement index of 0.11 and 0.20. Conclusions This study’s results demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing SWE to evaluate somatic dysfunctions of the upper trapezius musculature and the efficacy of OMT for neck somatic dysfunctions.

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