1133. Evaluation of Antibiotic Allergy Documentation in Pediatric Patients

Background Antibiotics are the most prescribed drug class in children and use often results in reports of adverse reactions. Of these adverse reactions, allergic reactions are documented with an incidence of 10% of all antibiotic prescriptions. Documentation of the details of the reaction is incomplete in as many as 66–84% of encounters leading to increased use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and associated adverse outcomes. The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of complete antibiotic allergy documentation and how antibiotic selection was affected in pediatric patients. Methods A retrospective chart review of electronic medical records was conducted for pediatric patients admitted to a pediatric unit with a documented antibiotic allergy between September 1, 2015 and May 31, 2017. Results The study sample included 536 encounters, 424 individual patients and 689 total allergies. Of all admissions during the study period, 10.3% of encounters had at least one antibiotic allergy documented. Approximately 40% of the encounters were in patients aged 12–17 years. A specific antibiotic was identified in 510 instances (74.0%) whereas an antibiotic class was documented in the remaining 179 instances (26.0%). Amoxicillin was the most commonly reported agent (25.4%). Rash (33.5%) and hives (14.8%) were the most commonly reported reactions. No reaction documentation was found in 78 entries (11.3%). Sixty-six entries (9.6%) did not include a date of occurrence and 452 (65.6%) did not include any specific comments regarding the allergy. Following evaluation of allergy documentation, 87 entries (12.6%) were classified as complete. Empiric broad-spectrum antibiotics were prescribed in 184 encounters (82.5%) compared with narrow-spectrum antibiotic therapy in 39 encounters (17.5%) when an allergy was documented. Conclusion Incomplete documentation of antibiotic allergies was identified in almost 90% of encounters within the pediatric population admitted to Lehigh Valley Reilly Children’s Hospital. Due to the preferential use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in patients with documented antibiotic allergies, an initiative is underway to standardize evaluation and documentation of allergies in patients receiving care within the health network. Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.

Performance of Newly Developed Weed-Competitive Rice Cultivars under Lowland and Upland Weedy Conditions

Four early-generation backcross populations (BC1F2) derived from one common recipient parental background, Weed Tolerant Rice 1 (‘WTR1’), and four different donor parents (‘Y134’, ‘Zhong 143’, ‘Khazar’, and ‘Cheng Hui-448’) were tested to identify suitable donor and recipient parents for weed competitiveness and to standardize evaluation of the weed-competitive ability in rice. ‘GSR IR2-6’ (G-6) derived from a backcross of WTR1/Y134//WTR1 was selected as the best population and was advanced for phenotypic experiments in the 2014 dry season. The introgression lines (ILs) derived from the G-6 population were evaluated for seed germination and seedling vigor in greenhouse conditions and for weed-competitive ability under field conditions (upland weed-free, upland weedy, and lowland weedy). Parents and checks were included for comparison. Selection pressure for weed competitiveness was relatively stronger in upland conditions than in lowland conditions. After three rounds of selection and based on their relative grain yield performances across conditions, a total of 21 most-promising introgression fixed lines showing superior traits and weed-competitive ability were identified. G-6-L2-WL-3, G-6-RF6-WL-3, G-6-L15-WU-1,G-6-Y16-WL-2, and G-6-L6-WU-3 were the top ILs in lowland weedy conditions, whereas G-6-Y7-WL-3, G-6-Y6-WU-3, G-6-Y3-WL-3, and G-6-Y8-WU-1 were the highest yielding in upland weedy conditions. The use of weed-competitive rice cultivars in African and Asian countries will be a highly effective strategy to reduce production costs and provide alternative solutions to the unavailability of herbicides. Competitive rice varieties will also significantly improve grain yields in aerobic rice systems and can become an important strategy for successful upland rice production.

Use of Virtual Reality Tools for Vestibular Disorders Rehabilitation: A Comprehensive Analysis

Classical peripheral vestibular disorders rehabilitation is a long and costly process. While virtual reality settings have been repeatedly suggested to represent possible tools to help the rehabilitation process, no systematic study had been conducted so far. We systematically reviewed the current literature to analyze the published protocols documenting the use of virtual reality settings for peripheral vestibular disorders rehabilitation. There is an important diversity of settings and protocols involving virtual reality settings for the treatment of this pathology. Evaluation of the symptoms is often not standardized. However, our results unveil a clear effect of virtual reality settings-based rehabilitation of the patients’ symptoms, assessed by objectives tools such as the DHI (mean decrease of 27 points), changing symptoms handicap perception from moderate to mild impact on life. Furthermore, we detected a relationship between the duration of the exposure to virtual reality environments and the magnitude of the therapeutic effects, suggesting that virtual reality treatments should last at least 150 minutes of cumulated exposure to ensure positive outcomes. Virtual reality offers a pleasant and safe environment for the patient. Future studies should standardize evaluation tools, document putative side effects further, compare virtual reality to conventional physical therapy, and evaluate economical costs/benefits of such strategies.

Standardizing Postharvest Quality and Biochemical Phenotyping for Precise Population Comparison

Selection of plant material with desired traits from different populations can be difficult, if not impossible, when evaluation methods are not standardized. Discerning comparable fruit postharvest traits among populations is particularly problematic because techniques and reporting protocols are often unique or non-existent for those crucial to quality and storability. Moreover, difficulties evaluating postharvest traits may be exacerbated by the dynamic nature of fruit ripening, introducing error even into intrapopulation comparisons. With the advent of biochemical phenotyping of fruit quality, opportunities to standardize evaluation of these and other important fruit postharvest traits are materializing. Standardized trait evaluation among breeding programs and, most importantly, germplasm collections is expected to allow more precise comparison between populations, expediting integration of economically important fruit quality traits into new populations as well as facilitating marker discovery.

Fudging the Numbers: Distributing Chocolate Influences Student Evaluations of an Undergraduate Course

Student evaluations provide important information about teaching effectiveness. Research has shown that student evaluations can be mediated by unintended aspects of a course. In this study, we examined whether an event unrelated to a course would increase student evaluations. Six discussion sections completed course evaluations administered by an independent experimenter. The experimenter offered chocolate to 3 sections before they completed the evaluations. Overall, students offered chocolate gave more positive evaluations than students not offered chocolate. This result highlights the need to standardize evaluation procedures to control for the influence of external factors on student evaluations.