Daniel Habib

Daniel Habib

Medical Student
danielrshabibgmail.com

Updated:

Publications

Highlighted Works

Cost evaluation in head and neck cancer clinical trials: Implications for high-value care

‘American Journal of Otolaryngology',

Head and neck cancer (HNC) patients face some of the highest financial burdens of all cancer types due to complex, long-term treatments. However, this study of over 2,000 HNC clinical trials found that only 3.3% included cost as an outcome, and nearly all have yet to report results. This is lower than in many other cancers, despite rising healthcare costs and the importance of cost-effective care. These findings highlight a need for more consistent inclusion of cost data in trials to better guide treatment decisions and support patients facing financial hardship.

Recommended citation: Collins RS, Lee IA, Habib DRS, Garner DC, Johnson DB, Patel PN, Topf MC. Cost evaluation in head and neck cancer clinical trials: Implications for high-value care. Am J Otolaryngol. 2025;46(5):104655. doi:10.1016/j.amjoto.2025.104655

Gaps in informed consent for intimate exams under anesthesia

Annals of Surgery,

This study highlights a concerning gap in consent forms regarding exams under anesthesia performed by medical trainees. Out of 110 hospitals surveyed, only 4% mentioned exams under anesthesia in their consent forms, raising questions about patient awareness and consent in sensitive examinations. The findings stress the need for explicit consent to protect patient autonomy and trust, as many patients feel traumatized when they learn about unconsented exams. We call for standardized, comprehensible language in consent forms to uphold transparency and respect for patient rights.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Habib DRS*, Lin G*, Langerman A. Gaps in informed consent for intimate exams under anesthesia. Ann Surg. 2025;281(5):723-724. doi:10.1097/SLA.0000000000006568

Development of a machine learning-based tension measurement method in robotic surgery

Surgical Endoscopy,

Anastomotic leaks complicate up to 10% of the 300,000 colorectal surgeries performed annually in the U.S., with tension being a key but subjectively assessed risk factor. This study evaluates the feasibility of an objective method to measure mechanical tension in ex vivo porcine colons using a machine learning algorithm integrated with the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK). The algorithm estimated forces applied by robotic arms with high accuracy (up to 88%) and strong correlation (Spearman’s Correlation > 0.80) with ground-truth sensor data. This novel approach represents the first robotic measurement of tissue tension and has the potential to improve surgical outcomes by reducing anastomotic leaks.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Khan A*, Yang H*, Habib DRS, Ali D, Wu JY. Development of a machine learning-based tension measurement method in robotic surgery. Surg Endosc. 2025. doi:10.1007/s00464-025-11658-9

Effect of deep brain stimulation on non-motor symptoms in essential tremor

Journal of Neurosurgery,

This study examined the effects of ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) deep brain stimulation (DBS) on nonmotor symptoms in patients with essential tremor (ET). Following DBS, we found a small but statistically significant improvement in depression scores, while anxiety remained unchanged. Cognitive testing showed slight declines in language and memory, but attention, executive function, and visuospatial function were unaffected. In sum, preoperative mood and cognitive scores were linked to post-DBS changes, highlighting the importance of individualized patient counseling when considering DBS for ET.

Recommended citation: Bishay AE, Lyons AT, Habib DRS, Hughes NC, Long I, Zargari M, Qian H, Paulo D, Summers JE, Li R, Bishay S, Terry DP, Dawant BM, Ball TJ, Konrad PE, Englot DJ, Dhima K, Bick SK. Effect of deep brain stimulation on non-motor symptoms in essential tremor. J Neurosurg. 2025. doi:10.3171/2024.11.JNS241990

Perioperative outcomes of branchial cleft sinus tract excision in pediatric patients without the use of intraoperative dye

Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology,

Branchial cleft anomalies are rare congenital neck masses that sometimes form sinus tracts, requiring surgery for removal. This study reviewed 118 pediatric surgeries without using methylene blue dye, a technique often employed to trace sinus tracts during the procedure. The findings showed no recurrences of the sinus tracts and minimal complications, suggesting that dye may not be necessary for successful outcomes. These results could reduce unnecessary costs and simplify procedures for patients and surgeons.

Recommended citation: Habib DRS, Jamal NH, Patel K, Wootten CT, Belcher RH. Perioperative outcomes of branchial cleft sinus tract excision in pediatric patients without the use of intraoperative dye. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol. 2024;134(4):245-248. doi:10.1177/00034894241303021

Association of neoadjuvant immunotherapy with postoperative major morbidity after oncologic surgery

Annals of Surgical Oncology,

This study assessed the impact of neoadjuvant immunotherapy on surgical complication risk across six cancer types: oral cavity, rectal, colon, anal, esophageal, and non-small cell lung cancers. Among 953,612 patients who underwent non-palliative oncologic surgery, only 0.5% received neoadjuvant immunotherapy. We found no significant association between neoadjuvant immunotherapy and the composite outcome of major postoperative morbidity (i.e., extended hospital length of stay, unplanned 30-day readmission, or 30-day mortality). Our findings suggest that immunotherapy is safe before surgery across six types of cancer. As neoadjuvant immunotherapy becomes more prevalent and as more surgeons are considering operating on patients who have recently completed or are currently undergoing immunotherapy, understanding its impact on surgical outcomes is crucial for optimizing patient care.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Habib DRS*, Shou M*, Phillips RH, Pickens A, Hawkins A, Idrees K, Khan A. Association of neoadjuvant immunotherapy with postoperative major morbidity after oncologic surgery. Ann Surg Onc. 2024;31(13):8508-8513. doi:10.1245/s10434-024-16284-8

Applying social network theory to vaping in high school: Implications for person-centered intervention

Substance Use and Misuse,

This study investigates adolescent vaping through a social influence model, focusing on gender differences within a high school network. An online survey collected data on demographics, vaping status, and friendships, and custom scripts were used to analyze the social connections. Results showed that students who vape had closer-knit friend groups, with females exhibiting greater homophily in vaping ties than males. Future large-scale studies should determine if trends can be generalized across student bodies, while more granular studies should tease apart motivations underlying these differences to individualize cessation strategies.

Recommended citation: Habib DRS, Kady A. Applying social network theory to vaping in high school: Implications for person-centered intervention. Subst Use Misuse. 2024:1-5. doi:10.1080/10826084.2024.2359714

Lived experience matters: Automatic detection of stigma on social media toward people who use substances

Proceedings of the Eighteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media,

This paper examines stigma toward people who use substances (PWUS). The introduction highlights the prevalence of substance use disorders (SUDs), barriers to treatment-seeking, and the limited attention to stigma toward PWUS compared to other forms of hate speech. We recruited Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers to label a dataset of about 5,000 public Reddit posts for stigma, and we automatically detected stigmatizing content to investigate the relationship between personal experience and stigma perception. This crowd-sourced annotation task shows that annotators who use substances or know someone in SUD treatment are more likely to identify stigmatizing content. Integrating person-level demographics with comment-level language in a supervised machine learning framework called Jury Learning achieves a classification accuracy of 0.69, a 17% improvement over using language alone. We release our stigma-annotated dataset, demonstrate the influence of lived experience on identifying stigmatizing content, discover linguistic markers of stigma based on perspectives of individuals with substance use experience, and highlight the importance of understanding the social context of machine learning tasks.

Recommended citation: Giorgi S, Bellew D, Habib DRS, Sedoc J, Smitterberg C, Devoto A, Himelein-Wachowiak MK, Curtis B. Lived experience matters: Automatic detection of stigma on social media toward people who use substances. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 2024;18(1):474-487. doi:10.1609/icwsm.v18i1.31328

Impact of neoadjuvant immunotherapy on postoperative complications after surgery for rectal cancer

Journal of Surgical Oncology,

Despite the increasing use of immunotherapy in treating various cancer types, there is still limited understanding of its impact on surgical complications. This study investigates the impact of neoadjuvant immunotherapy on surgical outcomes in rectal cancer patients. Using the National Cancer Database, researchers performed a retrospective cohort study with a 1:1 propensity match to compare patients receiving standard chemoradiation alone versus those also receiving immunotherapy. The matched analysis of 125 patients found no significant differences in hospital length of stay, unplanned 30-day readmission, or 30-day mortality, although those receiving immunotherapy had a longer time from diagnosis to surgery. The findings suggest that neoadjuvant immunotherapy does not increase surgical complications, aiding clinicians in treatment planning.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Shou M*, Habib DRS*, Idrees K, Hawkins A, Ford M, Lee H, Khan B, Khan A. Impact of neoadjuvant immunotherapy on postoperative complications after surgery for rectal cancer. J Surg Onc. doi:10.1002/jso.27694

Overlapping surgery verbiage in informed consent documents

Annals of Surgery,

Overlapping surgery remains controversial. Recent guidelines from the Senate Finance Committee and the American College of Surgeons call for transparency in informed consent, but it is unclear how many institutions have adopted these recommendations. This study assessed informed consent documents from 104 institutions, finding that only 29% included language about overlapping surgery or surgeon absence. Few forms explicitly detailed who would perform the procedure if the surgeon was absent, and only 7% met all recommended criteria. These findings highlight a significant gap in transparency, indicating a need for improved informed consent practices regarding overlapping surgery.

Recommended citation: Mitchell MB, Lin G, Prasad K, Habib DRS, Langerman A. Overlapping surgery verbiage in informed consent documents. Ann Surg. 2024. doi:10.1097/SLA.0000000000006324

Comparative outcomes for microvascular free flap monitoring outside the intensive care unit

Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery,

This study looked at patients who underwent microvascular free flap (FF) reconstruction for head and neck surgery and compared outcomes before and after a change in protocol from immediate postoperative monitoring in the ICU versus the general ward. We found that shifting care to the general ward decreased ICU length of stay significantly without increasing complications or compromising FF success rates. While there was a rise in rapid response team calls post-protocol, the overall findings suggest that managing these patients on the general ward is safe and could help conserve ICU resources.

Recommended citation: Stevens MN, Prasad K, Sharma RK, Gallant JN, Habib DRS, Langerman A, Mannion K, Rosenthal E, Topf MC, Rohde SL. Comparative outcomes for microvascular free flap monitoring outside the intensive care unit. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2024;171(2):381-386. doi:10.1002/ohn.780

The association between motor and non-motor symptoms in essential tremor patients being evaluated for deep brain stimulation surgery

Journal of Clinical Neuroscience,

In this study of 140 patients with essential tremor undergoing evaluation for deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery, we showed that tremor scores were associated with language function. Two metrics for scoring tremor severity yielded unique results. High Fahn-Tolosa-Marin (FTM) scores also correlated with increased severity in depression and visuospatial functioning. However, Washington Heights Inwood Genetic Study of Essential Tremor (WHIGET) scores showed no association with non-motor symptoms. To improve the quality of life of ET patients, future work should investigate clinically relevant differences in the unique motor symptoms captured by each metric and elucidate mechanisms underlying the association between motor impairment, cognitive impairment, and mood symptoms.

Recommended citation: Bishay AE, Habib DRS, Lyons AT, Hughes NC, Summers JE, Dhima K, Bick SK. The association between motor and non-motor symptoms in essential tremor patients being evaluated for deep brain stimulation surgery. J Clin Neurosci. 2024;122:59-65. doi:10.1016/j.jocn.2024.03.006

Parents’ trust in COVID-19 messengers and implications for vaccination

American Journal of Health Promotion,

This paper identifies factors associated with parents’ trust in messengers of COVID-19 guidance and shows that trust in doctors is associated with caregiver and child vaccination. Between January and June 2022, we surveyed 567 caregivers of elementary and middle school students in Maryland about trust in 9 messengers, demographics, and COVID-19 vaccination status. The most trusted messengers were doctors, family members, and schools. Parent characteristics were associated with trust, and trust was linked to vaccination. Awareness of variability in trusted health messengers can optimize willingness to listen to public health guidance.

Recommended citation: Klein LM, Habib DRS, Edwards LV, Hager ER, Berry AA, Connor KA, Calderon G, Liu Y, Johnson SB. Parents’ trust in COVID-19 messengers and implications for vaccination. Am J Health Promot. 2024;38(3):364-374. doi:10.1177/08901171231204480

How often is cancer present in oral cavity re-resections after initial positive margins?

The Laryngoscope,

This retrospective chart review investigates the impact on oncologic outcomes of oral cavity cancer being present upon re-resection. Among 1873 patients who underwent curative-intent surgery for oral cavity cancer, 10% had initial positive margins and underwent re-resection during surgery. Notably, 29% of re-resections revealed additional carcinoma, carcinoma in situ, or severe dysplasia, and 31% of patients with initial positive margins retained final positive margins, with half showing positive margins at a different anatomical site than the initial positive margin. Worse overall survival was associated with re-resection involving cancer and final positive margin status. Age, T4 disease, and recurrent oral cavity cancer surgery emerged as independent predictors of overall survival. Since fewer than a third of oral cavity re-resections contain further malignancy, our results suggest that surgeons might have difficulty relocating the site of the initial positive margin.

Recommended citation: Prasad K, Sharma R, Habib D, Sinard R, Mannion K, Rohde S, Langerman A, Netterville J, Rosenthal E, Lewis J, Topf MC. How often is cancer present in oral cavity re-resections after initial positive margins? Laryngoscope. 2024;134(2)717-724. doi:10.1002/lary.30959

A linguistic analysis of dehumanization toward substance use across three decades of news articles

Frontiers in Public Health,

This paper quantifies the dehumanization of people who use substances (PWUS) across three decades using a large corpus of over 3 million news articles. The results show that levels of dehumanization remain high and while marijuana has become less dehumanized over time, attitudes toward other substances such as heroin and cocaine remain stable. This work highlights the importance of a holistic view of substance use that places all substances within the context of addiction as a disease, prioritizes the humanization of PWUS, and centers around harm reduction.

Recommended citation: Giorgi S, Habib DRS, Bellew D, Sherman G, Curtis B. A linguistic analysis of dehumanization toward substance use across three decades of news articles. Front Public Health. 2023;11:1275975. doi:10.3389/fpubh.2023.1275975

The role of primary care in advancing civic engagement and health equity: A conceptual framework

The Milbank Quarterly,

This paper provides a framework for improving health and civic engagement in tandem. Social determinants of health are also drivers of lower civic engagement. Additionally, poor health is often associated with less civic engagement and vice versa. Along with addressing social determinants, primary care should be bolstered to not only improve health but also increase civic engagement indirectly via improved health status and directly via primary care voter registration programs, for example.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Habib DRS*, Klein LM*, Perrin EM, Perrin AJ, Johnson SB. The role of primary care in advancing civic engagement and health equity: A conceptual framework. Milbank Q. 2023;101(3):731-767. doi:10.1111/1468-0009.12661

Linguistic methodologies to surveil the leading causes of mortality: Scoping review of Twitter for public health data

Journal of Medical Internet Research,

This scoping review provides a comprehensive overview of studies that analyzed Twitter users’ tweets to identify and understand physical and mental health conditions as well as remotely monitor the leading causes of mortality related to emerging disease epidemics, chronic diseases, and risk behaviors. From the 38 articles meeting inclusion criteria, we concluded that Twitter constitutes a timely data source to improve the early identification of potential health threats and help identify subtle signals in language for understanding physical and mental health conditions.

Recommended citation: Lane J, Habib D, Curtis B. Linguistic Methodologies to Surveil the Leading Causes of Mortality: Scoping Review of Twitter for Public Health Data. J Med Internet Res. 2023;25:e39484. doi:10.2196/39484

Role of the media in promoting the dehumanization of people who use drugs

American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse,

This paper traces the dehumanization of people who use drugs throughout the War on Drugs and its consequences in the present day. We call for humanizing strategies toward treating people with substance use disorders and a shift away from dehumanizing portrayals in the media.

Recommended citation: Habib DRS, Giorgi S, Curtis B. Role of the media in promoting the dehumanization of people who use drugs. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2023;49(4):371-380. doi:10.1080/00952990.2023.2180383

Nonsuicidal self-injury and substance use disorders: A shared language of addiction

Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology,

This paper explores similar language between people posting on Reddit about nonsuicidal self-injury and substance use disorders, namely recovery and support. We found that while people who self-injure conceptualize their condition as an addiction, they experience different comorbidites than people with substance use disorders.

Recommended citation: Giorgi S, Himelein-Wachowiak MK, Habib D, Ungar L, Curtis B. Nonsuicidal self-injury and substance use disorders: A shared language of addiction. Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology. 2022:177-183. doi:10.18653/v1/2022.clpsych-1.15

COVID-19 vaccine website accessibility dashboard

Disability and Health Journal,

This study analyzed the accessibility of COVID-19 information and registration websites from 56 U.S. states and territories for people with visual disabilities. Using the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, the study found significant accessibility issues, such as insufficient contrast and unlabeled buttons, with median error scores of 259 for information pages and 146 for registration pages. These findings emphasize the need to improve website accessibility to ensure equitable pandemic resources for the disability community.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Jo G*, Habib D*, Varadaraj V, Smith J, Epstein S, Zhu J, Yenokyan G, Ayers K, Swenor BK. COVID-19 vaccine website accessibility dashboard. Disabil Health J. 2022;15(3):101325. doi:10.1016/j.dhjo.2022.101325

Dyadic analysis of fragile Middle Eastern states and humanitarian implications of restrictive COVID-19 policies

Middle East Law and Governance,

This paper examines how state fragility affects COVID-19 policy implementation in the Middle East. Using data from the CoronaNet Government Response Database, policies from the four strongest and six most fragile Middle Eastern countries were categorized and analyzed. Findings from the Oxford Government Response Policy Tracker and COVID-19 World Symptom Survey show that fragile states implement more restrictive policies, have lower government stringency, and lower compliance. The study highlights sectors needing humanitarian aid and questions whether restrictions in fragile states are driven by covert political agendas or a lack of political and economic power.

Recommended citation: Habib D, Elmore N, Gulas S, Ruhde N, Mathew D, Parente N. Dyadic analysis of fragile Middle Eastern states and humanitarian implications of restrictive COVID-19 policies. Middle East Law Gov. 2022;14(1):26-61. doi:10.1163/18763375-14010008

AIM against survey fraud

JAMIA Open,

This paper explains how to implement a hash algorithm to create anonymous but deterministic identifiers, allowing for the provision of incentives without revealing identities of the participants. This easy-to-use method has implications for more efficient and ethical research as well as expedited IRB approval if identities would have otherwise not been anonymous to allow for incentive distribution.

*equally contributing first authors

Recommended citation: Habib D*, Jha N*. AIM against survey fraud. JAMIA Open. 2021;4(4):ooab099. doi:10.1093/jamiaopen/ooab099