1,720,969 research outputs found
Validating a Measure to Delineate the Clinical Trials Nursing Role in Italy
No full textIn Italy, the role of a nurse in cancer research is beginning to develop, but instruments developed to delineate the dimensions of the Italian clinical trials nursing role are lacking. This study aimed to translate into Italian the Clinical Trials Nursing Questionnaire (CTNQ) and assess its content validity, internal consistency, and stability reliability. Forward-backward translation and review by experts were performed to assess linguistic and content validation. Internal consistency reliability was computed using Cronbach alpha and by administering the translated CTNQ to a sample of 30 research nurses coming from different Italian districts. To determine the test-retest reliability, a copy of the questionnaire was given again to a subgroup of 10 research nurses. The pretest and posttest scores were compared using kappa coefficient. The comparison of the target language version with the original version allowed us to consider the translation of CTNQ as acceptable. The analyses revealed a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .98 for the frequency scale and .96 for the importance scale. The overall kappa coefficient was 0.98 for the frequency scale and 0.99 for the importance scale. The CTNQ is a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of the research nurse's role in Italy
Pleural lavage cytology predicts recurrence and survival, even in early non-small cell lung cancer
No full textPURPOSE: The TNM staging remains the best prognostic descriptor of lung cancer; however, new independent prognostic factors are needed, particularly for early stage disease.
METHODS: An evaluation of the pleural lavage cytology (PLC) was performed in 436 consecutive NSCLC patients who underwent surgical resection; clinical, pathological and follow-up data were available for 414 patients.
RESULTS: The PLC was positive in 15 patients (3.6 %). The overall five-year survival was 35.9 % in PLC-positive and 57.8 % in PLC-negative patients (p = 0.004). To compare groups with the same prognostic characteristics, the analysis was restricted to p-stage I patients, but the survival remained worse in the PLC-positive patients (42.9 vs 69.4 %; p = 0.001). Recurrence was also observed more frequently in PLC-positive cases: 69.2 vs 34.5 %, OR 4.28 (95 % CI 1.29-14.18; p = 0.01). Among the PLC-positive patients, no difference between the local (44.4 %) and distant (55.6 %) relapse patterns was found (p = 0.82). The multivariate analysis identified four independent prognostic factors: age (p < 0.001), disease stage (p < 0.001), gender (p = 0.025) and PLC status (p = 0.012).
CONCLUSIONS: PLC is an independent prognostic factor for NSCLC. PLC-positive NSCLC patients have a worse overall survival and a higher recurrence rate, even in stage I disease. PLC-positive patients should be considered a high risk category, who should potentially be eligible for adjuvant therapy regardless of their p-stage
Survival of patients with metastatic melanoma and brain metastases in the era of MAP-kinase inhibitors and immunologic checkpoint blockade antibodies: A systematic review
No full textBackground: The incidence of brain metastases (BM) in melanoma patients is common and associated with poor prognosis. MAP-kinase inhibitors and immunologic checkpoint blockade antibodies led to improved survival of metastatic melanoma patients; however, patients with BM are under-represented or excluded from the majority of clinical trials and the impact of new drugs on their survival is less clear. With the present systematic review, we aimed to analyze outcomes of patients with melanoma BM treated with the new drugs, both in the setting of I-II-III phase clinical trials and in the "real world".Methods: An electronic search was performed to identify studies reporting survival outcomes of patients with melanoma BM treated with MAP-kinase inhibitors and/or immunologic checkpoint blockade antibodies, regardless of study design.Results: Twenty-two studies were included for a total of 2153 patients. Median OS was 7.9 months in phase I-II-III trials and 7.7 months in "real world" studies. In clinical trials, median OS was 7.0 months for patients treated with immunotherapy and 7.9 months for patients treated with BRAF inhibitors. In "real world" studies, median OS was 4.3 months and 7.7 months for patients treated with immunotherapy and BRAF inhibitors, respectively. Evidence of clinical activity exists for both immunotherapy and MAP-kinase inhibitors.Conclusions: MAP-kinase inhibitors and immunologic checkpoint blockade antibodies have clinical activity and may achieve improved OS in patients with metastatic melanoma and BM. These results support the inclusion of patients with BM in investigations of new agents and new treatment regimens for metastatic melanoma. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
The role of the clinical trial nurse in Italy
No full textTo assess the role of the Clinical Trials Nurse (CTN) and to evaluate the quality of the job performed by Clinical Trials Nurses (CTNs) in Italy
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Full text link“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
Full text linkWe 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
Full text linkWe 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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