1,721,028 research outputs found
Why don’t we just open the windows?
No full textGreen Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Indoor Environmen
Is it worth screening elective orthopaedic patients for carriage of Staphylococcus aureus? : a part-retrospective case-control study in a Scottish hospital
Get PDFBACKGROUND: With recent focus on methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) screening, methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) has been overlooked. MSSA infections are costly and debilitating in orthopaedic surgery. METHODS: We broadened MRSA screening to include MSSA for elective orthopaedic patients. Preoperative decolonisation was offered if appropriate. Elective and trauma patients were audited for staphylococcal infection during 2 6-month periods (A: January to June 2013 MRSA screening; B: January to June 2014 MRSA and MSSA screening). Trauma patients are not screened presurgery and provided a control. MSSA screening costs of a modelled cohort of 500 elective patients were offset by changes in number and costs of MSSA infections to demonstrate the change in total health service costs. FINDINGS: Trauma patients showed similar infection rates during both periods (p=1). In period A, 4 (1.72%) and 15 (6.47%) of 232 elective patients suffered superficial and deep MSSA infections, respectively, with 6 superficial (2%) and 1 deep (0.3%) infection among 307 elective patients during period B. For any MSSA infection, risk ratios were 0.95 (95% CI 0.41 to 2.23) for trauma and 0.28 (95% CI 0.12 to 0.65) for elective patients (period B vs period A). For deep MSSA infections, risk ratios were 0.58 (95% CI 0.20 to 1.67) for trauma and 0.05 (95% CI 0.01 to 0.36) for elective patients (p=0.011). There were 29.12 fewer deep infections in the modelled cohort of 500 patients, with a cost reduction of £831 678 for 500 patients screened. CONCLUSIONS: MSSA screening for elective orthopaedic patients may reduce the risk of deep postoperative MSSA infection with associated cost-benefits
Can probiotics trigger a paradigm shift for cleaning healthcare environments? A narrative review
Get PDFBackground: The environment of healthcare institutions plays a major role in the transmission of multidrug resistant organisms (MDRO) and likely in subsequent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Probiotic cleaning products are a novel option for environmental cleaning. They represent a sustainable and biodegradable alternative to conventional chemical disinfectants for controlling microbial bioburden, and preventing pathogen transmission in hospital environments. High-quality studies including randomized clinical trials (RCT) triggered a summary with expert recommendations until further studies allow a critical review and meta-analysis of the data. Methods: Infection control experts from five European countries summarized available data as of June 2023. Authors presented their published RCTs, reviewed the existing literature on probiotic cleaning, summarized the results and identified knowledge gaps and subsequent research needs. Results: Probiotic cleaning was similarly effective for reducing HAI-related pathogens, enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and MDRO in environmental samples compared to conventional chemical disinfectants. More importantly, probiotic cleaning was non-inferior to disinfectants in terms of preventing HAI in a large RCT. In addition, probiotic cleaning has also been shown to reduce antimicrobial resistance genes (ARG), costs and antimicrobial consumption in other hospital trials. They are biodegradable, do not require any protection for chemical hazards, and are compliant with occupational health. A paradigm shift, however, requires a very strong evidence to justify for such a change. In the past, this evidence was limited by the heterogeneity of study design, products, protocols, and few studies on clinical outcomes used in the trials. Furthermore, the regulatory, safety, and quality aspects of probiotic cleaning products are not, yet, completely defined and require clearing by authorities. Conclusion: To date, probiotic cleaning is a breakthrough technology and a biological alternative for chemical disinfectant when treating hospital environment. It may also have a positive effect on MDRO transmission. However, the different compositions of probiotic products will require standardization, and more robust data should be generated to support these promising results on different compositions. This may trigger a paradigm shift in cleaning of healthcare institutions from chemical to biological control of the hospital environment
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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