1,720,963 research outputs found
Unilateral painful, swollen and erythematosus knee. Case report
No full textMusculoskeletal ultrasound (US) is gaining an increasing role in the assessment of a variegate set of joint and periarticular soft tissues abnormalities in rheumatology. In addition, US represents a useful technique in guiding local procedures such as aspiration of fluid collections and injections within the joints and periarticular musculoskeletal structures. We recently performed US in a patient with unilateral painful, swollen and erythematosus knee. Pre-patellar bursitis was demonstrated, without any signs of intra-articular abnormalities. US-guided aspiration of local effusion was performed; synovial fluid analysis demonstrated septic bursitis. Appropriate treatment determined the complete remission
Power Doppler ultrasound of the hand and wrist joints in systemic sclerosis
No full textObjectives. This paper aims to investigate the prevalence and severity of hand and wrist joints power Doppler (PD) ultrasound (US) detected abnormalities in systemic sclerosis (SSc). Methods. Hand and wrist joints of 46 consecutive SSc patients and 15 healthy controls were studied by using PD US. Each joint was evaluated for the presence of effusion, synovial hypertrophy, hyperaemia, bone erosions and cortical irregularities; in addition, local tendons for tenosynovitis and hyperaemia, and median nerve for entrapment neuropathy were examined. Results. Synovial hypertrophy was detected in 3% hand joints and. in 46% wrists of SSc patients, with significant differences respect to controls (p=0.000004 and 0.000001, respectively). The prevalence of PD positivity was significantly higher in patients' hand joints (1.7%, p=0.001527) and wrists (43%, p=0.000001) than in healthy individuals. Seven percent of hand and 54% of wrist joints resulted to be positive for joint effusion with significant differences from controls (p=0.000001 and. p=0.000013, respectively). The prevalence of cortical irregularities was significantly higher (p=0.006) than healthy subjects only at hand joints level. No significant difference was found for bone erosions. Tenosynovitis was found in 6% out of the 1.196 synovial tendon sites examined of SSc patients with significant differences compared to healthy subjects (p=0.000001); PD resulted to be positive in 29% of them, with significantly differences compared to controls (p=0.0038). Conclusion. This study, focused on hand and wrist joints PD US assessment of inflammatory and structural abnormalities in SSc, demonstrated a varied and complex involvement both at joint and periarticular tissues level, showing that wrists were more frequently the site of inflammatory findings
Ultrasound in rheumatoid arthritis.
Get PDFRheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by synovial inflammation that can lead to structural damage of cartilage, bone and tendons. Assessing the inflammatory activity and the severity is essential in RA to help rheumatologists in adopting proper therapeutic strategies and in evaluating disease outcome and response to treatment. In the last years musculoskeletal (MS) ultrasonography (US) underwent tremendous technological development of equipment with increased sensitivity in detecting a wide set of joint and soft tissues abnormalities. In RA MSUS with the use of Doppler modalities is a useful imaging tool to depict inflammatory abnormalities (i.e. synovitis, tenosynovitis and bursitis) and structural changes (i.e. bone erosions, cartilage damage and tendon lesions). In addition, MSUS has been demonstrated to be able to monitor the response to different therapies in RA to guide local diagnostic and therapeutic procedures such as biopsy, fluid aspirations and injections. Future applications based on the development of new tools may improve the role of MSUS in RA
Ultrasound in the assessment of musculoskeletal involvement in systemic sclerosis
No full textSystemic sclerosis (SSc) is a chronic connective disease in which the musculoskeletal involvement affects especially the hands and feet. Ultrasound (US) represents an important tool in the assessment of the joint and soft tissue involvement in this rheumatic disorder. Few authors have investigated the role of US in the evaluation of joints and peri-articular tissues in SSc patients. The current available literature regarding US applications in the assessment of musculoskeletal involvement in SSc has shown that US seems to be a useful tool in detecting the presence of inflammatory and structural abnormalities involving both joints and soft tissues. The aim of the present paper is to review the role of US in the assessment of musculoskeletal involvement in SSc
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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