1,720,979 research outputs found
Examining the diagnostic pathway for lung cancer patients in Wales using discrete event simulation
Get PDFBackground: UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has one of the poorest lung cancer survival rates in Europe. To improve patient outcomes, a single cancer pathway was introduced in the NHS. In this study, a Discrete Event Simulation was developed to understand bottlenecks during lung cancer treatment.Methods: this study focused on the lung cancer diagnostic pathways at two Welsh hospitals. Discrete Event Simulation is a computer-based method that has been effectively used in demand and capacity planning. In this study, simulation models were developed for the current and proposed single cancer pathways. The validated models were used to provide Key Performance Indicators. Several “what-if” scenarios were considered for the current and proposed pathways.Results: under the current diagnostic pathway, the mean time to treatment for a surgery patient was 68 days at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital and 79 days at Prince Charles Hospital. For chemotherapy patients, the mean time to treatment was 52 days at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital and 57 days at Prince Charles Hospital. For radiotherapy patients, the mean time to treatment was 44 days at Royal Glamorgan Hospital and 54 days at Prince Charles Hospital. Ensuring that the patient attends their first outpatient appointment within 7 days and streamlining the diagnostic tests would have the potential to remove approximately 20 days from the current lung cancer pathway resulting in a 20-25% increase of patients receiving treatment within 62 days. Ensuring that patients begin their treatment within 21 days of diagnosis sees almost all patients comply with the 62-day target.Conclusions: discrete Event Simulation coupled with a detailed statistical analysis provides a useful decision support tool which can be used to examine the current and proposed lung cancer pathways in terms of time spent on the pathway
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
Understanding the variation of modern endoscopic ultrasound use in patients with oesophageal cancer (VALUE): protocol for a multi-methods study
Get PDFObjectives
Over 9,000 patients are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer annually in the United Kingdom (UK). Decision-making about treatment options is influenced by radiological staging, which may include computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), and endoscopic ultrasound (EUS). The use of EUS varies considerably around the UK and, since the introduction of PET-CT, the added value of EUS has been questioned. The VALUE study aims to understand this variation and determine how often and why EUS changes treatment decisions. VALUE will also evaluate patient and clinician experiences and opinions of EUS.
Methods
This is a prospective, observational study investigating EUS in oesophageal cancer staging. Patients will be recruited at up to eleven sites in the UK, where they will be consented (if eligible) and registered onto iMedidata RAVE. Clinical and demographic data, TNM staging, pre and post EUS treatment decisions, and complications will be collected. We will attempt to sample patients from ethnic minority backgrounds in the study population, as they are underrepresented in research. Up to 30 patients and 30 clinicians will be interviewed to evaluate the use of EUS and experiences of both patient and clinician. The primary endpoint is the proportion of cases that EUS changes treatment decisions. Secondary endpoints include identification of factors that clinicians and patients consider when deciding if EUS should be used, the time from diagnosis to treatment decision before and after EUS, and the reasons why EUS changed management. The study has been registered on Clinicaltrials.gov: blinded. The trial is open to recruitment.
Results
In total, 180 patients with potentially curable oesophageal cancer who are suitable for EUS will participate. Recruitment is currently planned until September 2025 and study results will be reported after June 2026.
Conclusion
The VALUE study will enable a better understanding of how and why EUS is used in oesophageal cancer. This research will identify important factors that clinicians and patients consider when deciding EUS use and determine the frequency that EUS changes treatment decisions in the modern staging pathway
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
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
- …
