34 research outputs found
Hiccup in patients with advanced cancer successfully treated with gabapentin: report of three cases
No full textPruritus in a patient with advanced cancer successfully treated with continuous infusion of granisetron
No full textWe present a case of a patient with advanced cancer affected by severe pruritus not related with cholestasis and/or opioid treatment successfully treated with subcutaneous continuous infusion of granisetron (3 mg/24 h diluted in normal saline via a disposable elastomeric infusion device). Confirmatory studies with a control group are warranted to confirm these preliminary results
"Bravi a fare un deserto e poi a chiamarlo pace". L'inesauribile eco di una massima di Tacito
No full textIl contributo ripercorre alcuni momenti più recenti della fortuna letteraria e mass-mediatica della famosa sententia (Tac. Agr. 30, 5) attribuita dallo storico latino al personaggio di Calgaco, auferre, trucidare, rapere falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellan
Pain evaluation and management: a survey of Italian radiotherapists
No full textGOALS: The objective of this study was to assess the knowledge possessed and the attitudes held by Italian radiotherapists regarding evaluation and treatment of pain. METHODS: One hundred and twenty-six radiotherapists completed a 16-item questionnaire that was specifically designed to investigate three main topics: the attention paid to pain, the use of analgesics, and pain in children. Chi-square or Fisher's exact text was employed to evaluate differences based on position (staff/resident), age (35 years old), availability of consultants in pain therapy and/or palliative care, colleagues with main interest in palliative care among their own staff, and region of residence (north/center/south of Italy). RESULTS: Overall percentage of correct answers was 76.6% (range 34.9-94.4%). Correct answers by groups of items were: attention paid to pain 77.3%, use of analgesics 81.5%, and pain in children 63.7%. CONCLUSION: Results of the survey demonstrate that knowledge and attitudes of Italian radiotherapists towards the approach to and treatment of pain can be considered satisfactory
Effects of nerve growth factor in experimental model of focal microgyria
No full textThe effects on neural repair of intraparenchymal nerve growth factor (NGF) administration were evaluated in neonate Wistar rats with experimentally induced focal microgyria
Linked open data-based explanations for transparent recommender systems
No full textIn this article we propose a framework that generates natural language explanations supporting the suggestions generated by a recommendation algorithm. The cornerstone of our approach is the usage of Linked Open Data (LOD) for explanation aims. Indeed, the descriptive properties freely available in the LOD cloud (e.g., the author of a book or the director of a movie) can be used to build a graph that connects the recommendations the user received to the items she previously liked via the properties extracted from the LOD cloud. In a nutshell, our approach is based on the insight that properties describing the items the user previously liked as well as the suggestions she received can be effectively used to explain the recommendations. Such a framework is both algorithm-independent and domain-independent, thus it can generate a natural language explanation for every kind of recommendation algorithm, and it can be used to explain a single recommendation (Top-1 scenario) as well as a group of recommendations (Top-N scenario). It is worth noting that the algorithm-independent characteristic does not mean that the framework is able to explain to the user how the recommendations have been generated and how the recommendation algorithm works. The framework explains to users why they might like the recommended items, independently from the recommendation algorithm that generated the recommendations. In the experimental evaluation, we carried out a user study (N = 680) aiming to investigate the effectiveness of our framework in three different domains, as movies, books and music. Results showed that our technique leads to transparent explanations for all the domains, and such explanations resulted independent of the specific recommendation algorithm in most of the experimental settings. Moreover, we also showed the goodness of our strategy when an entire group of recommendations has to be explained. As a case study, we integrated the framework in a real-world application, a conversational recommender system implemented as a Telegram Bot. The idea is to use the explanation for supporting both the training phase (when the user expresses her preferences) and the recommendation step (when the user receives the recommendations). Interesting outcomes emerge from these preliminary experiments
Breakthrough pain in oncology: a longitudinal study.
No full textAbstract
CONTEXT: Existing studies on breakthrough pain (BP) have reported different prevalence rates because of different settings, populations, and assessment methods. These studies have used cross-sectional designs, and the relationship of BP with analgesic treatment has not been evaluated.
OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to longitudinally assess BP in cancer patients admitted to oncology units.
METHODS: A consecutive sample of patients admitted to oncology centers was selected. At admission (T0), three months after admission (T3), and six months after admission (T6), data on background pain and BP were recorded. BP was assessed in terms of its intensity, duration, number of episodes, onset with movement, spontaneous relief after stopping activity, limitation of physical activity, and effectiveness of analgesics.
RESULTS: Three hundred two patients completed the study. At T0, T3, and T6, 39%, 38%, and 33% patients, respectively, had continuous pain (P=0.294). Pain intensity significantly decreased (P=0.004 and 0.027 at T3 and T6, respectively). Most patients had BP at T0 (87.1%), T3 (80.9%), and T6 (73.2%), and there was a significant decrease in the prevalence of BP over time (P=0.016). Of 149 patients with BP, pain on movement was recorded in 43.6%, 43.4%, and 32.4% at T0, T3, and T6, respectively (P=0.228). Pain spontaneously decreased or ceased when stopping physical activity in 66%, 56%, and 62% at T0, T3, and T6, respectively (P=0.537). Pain on movement strongly limited physical activity in most patients.
CONCLUSION: These data expand current information about BP and underline the need for a longitudinal assessment of a phenomenon that is invariably dependent on stage of disease, patient, and therapeutic factors
Computer vision methods applied to person tracking and identification
No full text2013 - 2014Computer vision methods for tracking and identification of people in constrained
and unconstrained environments have been widely explored in the last decades. De-
spite of the active research on these topics, they are still open problems for which
standards and/or common guidelines have not been defined yet. Application fields
of computer vision-based tracking systems are almost infinite. Nowadays, the Aug-
mented Reality is a very active field of the research that can benefit from vision-based
user’s tracking to work. Being defined as the fusion of real with virtual worlds, the
success of an augmented reality application is completely dependant on the efficiency
of the exploited tracking method. This work of thesis covers the issues related to
tracking systems in augmented reality applications proposing a comprehensive and
adaptable framework for marker-based tracking and a deep formal analysis. The
provided analysis makes possible to objectively assess and quantify the advantages
of using augmented reality principles in heterogeneous operative contexts. Two case
studies have been considered, that are the support to maintenance in an industrial
environment and to electrocardiography in a typical telemedicine scenario. Advan-
tages and drawback are provided as well as future directions of the proposed study.
The second topic covered in this thesis relates to the vision-based tracking solution
for unconstrained outdoor environments. In video surveillance domain, a tracker
is asked to handle variations in illumination, cope with appearance changes of the
tracked objects and, possibly, predict motion to better anticipate future positions. ... [edited by Author]XIII n.s
