1,721,024 research outputs found
Forced air warming to maintain normoTHERMIa during SEDation in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory: Protocol for the THERMISED pilot randomised controlled trial
No full text<b>Aim</b>\ud
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- To determine whether applying forced air warming attenuates the impact of sedation-induced impairment of thermoregulation on body temperature of patients who are sedated during interventional procedures in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory.\ud
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<b>Background</b>\ud
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- A moderate proportion of sedated patients who undergo procedures in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory with only passive warming become hypothermic. Hypothermia in the surgical population is associated with increased risk of adverse cardiac events, infections, thrombotic and haemorrhagic complications and prolonged hospital stay. For this reason, investigation of the clinical benefits of preventing hypothermia in sedated patients using active warming is required.\ud
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<b>Design</b>\ud
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- Randomised controlled trial.\ud
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<b>Methods</b>\ud
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- 140 participants undergoing elective interventional procedures with sedation in a cardiac catheterisation laboratory will be recruited from two hospitals in Australia. Participants will be randomised to receive forced air warming (active warming) or usual care (passive warming with heated cotton blankets) throughout procedures. The primary outcome is hypothermia (defined as temperature less than 36°C) at the conclusion of the procedure. Secondary outcomes are post procedure temperature, post-procedural shivering, thermal discomfort, major complications, disability-free survival to 30 days post-procedure, cost-effectiveness and feasibility of conducting a larger clinical trial.\ud
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<b>Discussion</b>\ud
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- The results from this study will provide high-level evidence for practice in an area where there is currently no guidance. Findings will be easily translatable into clinical practice because most hospitals already have forced air warming equipment available for use during general anaesthesia
Costs of inadvertent perioperative hypothermia in Australia: a cost-of-illness study
No full textBackground: A definitive cost analysis of preventing inadvertent perioperative hypothermia (IPH) in surgical patients in Australia is lacking. Preventing IPH is a common nurse-led initiative in surgery and cost savings represent the value of nursing care. Aim: The study aims are twofold. First, we aim to estimate the cost of the current prevalence of IPH in Australian hospitals. Second, is to estimate the potential cost reductions that could be realised by reducing IPH prevalence by using a thermal care bundle. Methods: Cost-of-illness analysis measures the economic burden of illness to society. It does so by identifying and measuring all costs of a disease or illness such as IPH. It was undertaken using a prevalence approach and a one-year time horizon. Findings: The annual costs of IPH to the Australian health system can be estimated to be 602 million. Using a thermal care bundle to reduce IPH by actively warming 80% of the patients that are not warmed yet could save 18.4 million. Discussion: Preventing IPH using active warming is estimated to lead to significant cost savings across the Australian health system. It is recommended that a national policy for preventing IPH is needed and guidelines must reflect up-to-date strategies for preventing IPH including active prewarming. Conclusion: The Thermal Care Bundle should be adopted to lower IPH incidence and associated costs in Australia
Implementing a thermal care bundle for inadvertent perioperative hypothermia: a cost-effectiveness analysis
No full textBackground
Active warming reduces risk of surgical complications. Implementation of a perioperative thermal care bundle increased use of active warming for surgical patients.
Objective
This study aimed to determine if implementing a thermal care bundle to prevent inadvertent perioperative hypothermia is cost-effective.
Design
A model-based cost-effectiveness analysis was undertaken using Monte Carlo simulations from input distributions to estimate costs and effects.
Setting
Hospitals undertaking between 5,000 and 40,000 surgeries per year, which either implemented or did not implement the thermal care bundle, were modelled.
Participants
The decision tree guiding the structure of the model was populated with clinical outcomes (surgical site infection, blood transfusion requirement and morbid cardiac events) of a hypothetical cohort of surgical patients.
Interventions
Implementation or non-implementation of the thermal care bundle.
Main outcome measures
Net monetary benefit was calculated by multiplying the health benefits (quality-adjusted life years) by the willingness-to-pay threshold minus the cost. We tested a range of values for willingness to pay per quality-adjusted life year thresholds and plotted results for expected incremental benefits and probability of cost-effectiveness. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was also calculated.
Results
Thermal care bundle implementation simultaneously reduced costs and increased quality-adjusted life years in the majority of simulations (88.1%). The average cost reduction was 2,718,364 decrease in costs to 12747 saved per quality-adjusted life year gained.
Conclusions
It is likely that increasing use of active warming by implementing the thermal care bundle would generate cost-savings and improve the quality of life for surgical patients. It would be good value for hospitals with similar characteristics to those included in our model to allocate the extra resources required for implementation
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
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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