1,720,959 research outputs found
Comparison of placebo and bromocriptine in the treatment of patients with normoprolactinaemic amenorrhoea
No full textFourteen women with normoprolactinaemic amenorrhoea were treated with bromocriptine (2 . 5 mg twice daily) for a period ranging from 4 to 17 weeks, while a matched group of 19 amenorrhoeic women were treated with a placebo 8one tablet twice daily) for 4 to 12 weeks. About half of the patients in both groups had at least one episode of vaginal bleeding during treatment. There was no clear difference in the menstrual and ovulatory pattern between placebo and bromocriptine groups
Role of Tc-99m sestamibi scintigraphy in the diagnosis and surgical decision-making process in primary hyperparathyroid disease
No full textUltrasound (US) and scintigraphy are used most frequently of all the available imaging techniques for the preoperative evaluation of patients with possible primary hyperparathyroid disease. The aim of this study was to assess the value of dual-phase Tc-99m MIBI scintigraphy compared with US in the detection of adenomatous or hyperplastic glands and in the surgical decision-making process for patients with a biochemical diagnosis of primary hyperparathyroid disease
Recombinant human TSH testing is a valuable tool for differential diagnosis of congenital hypothyroidism during L-thyroxine replacement
No full textOBJECTIVE The differential diagnosis of congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is aimed to distinguish transitory from permanent forms, to optimize L-thyroxine (L-T4) therapy to replacement or TSH-suppressive regimens, and to reach accurate definition of the clinical and biochemical phenotype for subsequent genetic investigations and counselling. Therefore, L-T4 therapy is presently withdrawn in most instances and investigations are performed in a disturbing hypothyroid state. DESIGN The availability of recombinant human TSH (rhTSH) prompted us to assess its efficacy in the differential diagnosis of CH during L-T4 therapy.
PATIENTS AND MEASUREMENTS Eight adult patients with permanent CH remained on L-thyroxine and underwent a new protocol for rhTSH (Thyrogen) testing with injections [4 mug/kg/day intramuscularly (i.m.)] at days 1, 2 and 3. At day 3, I-123 was administered and uptake obtained after 2 and 24 h. Serum TSH and thyroglobulin (Tg) levels were measured at days 1-4. Neck ultrasound was carried out in all cases.
RESULTS Serum TSH reached levels > 20 mU/I at day 2 and remained above 30 mU/I on days 3 and 4. Stimulation of Tg levels was seen in five patients with peak at day 4. Lingual thyroid was documented at scintigraphy (TS) in three Tg-responsive patients who were previously diagnosed as having thyroid agenesia. In one patient with dyshormonogenesis and high Tg, TS confirmed the presence of goitre with positive perchlorate test. TS was negative in the remaining four cases. All tests indicated complete agenesia in one, whereas a minimal Tg response was marker of nearly complete agenesia in another. The last two TS-negative patients had hypoplastic glands at ultrasound, and refractoriness to TSH stimulation was confirmed by absent Tg response.
CONCLUSIONS We report the first application of rhTSH for differential diagnosis of patients with permanent CH, avoiding the undesirable transient hypothyroidism consequent to L-T4 withdrawal. The data obtained led to the change of the diagnosis at presentation in 4/8 patients and to a more accurate description of the clinical picture in all patients. The proposed protocol has been proved to cause Tg increases even in the presence of small amounts of responsive thyroid cells. The rhTSH testing led to the desired disease characterization, thus allowing specific management and targeted genetic analyses
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
Tc-99m sulphur colloid scintigraphy in the assessment of residual splenic tissue after splenectomy
No full textVariations 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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