1,720,969 research outputs found
Vaccinazione anti-rotavirus: Intervento lodevole ma... fa risparmiare il sistema sanitario nazionale? L'esperienza del Brasile
No full textThe present "budget impact" study assessed the family and health system costs due to diarrhoea in children < 2 years old, before/after the introduction of a rotavirus vaccine in Brazil in 2006. This kind of evaluations plays a crucial role in the assessment of a health intervention and may help reimbursement decision. This is important especially in Countries with low children's diarrhoea mortality and high morbidity. In these settings the vaccine is mainly introduced to contain the health and economic burden more than to reduce deaths. The study was made possible by an international collaboration involving the University of Pisa (Italy), the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (UK) and the Federal University of Sergipe (Brazil). Information on diarrhoea health care costs and morbidity was obtained from the primary health care system, the National Public Health database (2004-2008) and care-givers. Diarrhoea ambulatory consultations and hospitalisations had a declining trend during the entire period, with additional steeper reductions after vaccine introduction. Therefore, the vaccine was associated with reduced diarrhoea consultations and hospitalization costs and families' out-of-pocket expenses. Despite these gains, the overall health system costs have increased
Acute Febrile Cholestatic Jaundice in Children: Keep in Mind Kawasaki Disease.
No full textKawasaki disease (KD) is characterized by persistent fever in addition to four of five signs of mucocutaneous inflammation. Although gastrointestinal involvement does not belong to the classic diagnostic criteria, it has been often associated with KD onset. We reviewed all those patients who were admitted for febrile cholestatic jaundice between 2003 and 2010 in two tertiary pediatric care centres. We found that KD was the second most frequent cause (21%) after viral infections. We also briefly described the clinical presentation of those patients affected by KD and presented with acute febrile jaundice. Considering the relative high frequency of this condition a high index of suspicion of KD should be maintained in patients presenting with febrile cholestatic jaundice
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
Retrospective Evaluation of the Incidence of Acute Gastroenteritis and Rotavirus Gastroenteritis in Italy
No full textIntroduction Acute gastroenteritis (AGE) is one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in childhood. Among all the causative agents of AGE, rotavirus (RV) is the most common pathogen. The aim of this study is to estimate the incidence by age group of rotavirus gastroenteritis (RVGE) in children <5 years of age seen at primary care level. This estimation relies on a specifically developed statistical model applied on AGE data reported in the Pedianet database. Materials and Methods This was an observational, retrospective, cohort study using the Pedianet database that included all children aged 12 years with a diagnosis of AGE or acute diarrhea, and registered on the network during the period from January 2002 to December 2008. Since development of the model was specifically based on data collected during the Rotavirus gastroenteritis Epidemiology and Viral types in Europe Accounting for Losses in Public Health and Society Study (REVEAL study), RVGE estimation was restricted to children aged <60 months who experienced an AGE. Results A total of 128,154 children <12 years of age were registered on the Pedianet database during the study period by 83 family pediatricians (FPs). Information on 36,679 episodes of AGE between 2002 and 2008 was collected. Of overall 36,679 AGE cases, 24,275 (66.2%) occurred in children <5 years of age. For children <5 years of age, more than half the episodes of AGE occurred in children between 12 and 35 months. Number of RVGE predicted by the model ranged from 2,864 to 4,700 cases, allowing for the estimated underreporting as calculated from the patients participating both in the REVEAL study and included in Pedianet. As expected, the highest rate occurred from November to May, whereas a lower incidence was reported during the summer season from June to September. Conclusions The Pedianet database was found to be a useful instrument for collecting information about the number and main features of AGE episodes at the primary care level in Italy. The statistical model presented in this study has proved reliable to predict RV-positive cases. Epidemiological results showed a consistent RVGE incidence from year to year in children less than 5 years old at the primary care level and underlined the persistent contribution of RV infections to the winter workload of Italian FPs
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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