1,721,013 research outputs found
Informed consent as an ethical requirement in clinical trials : an old, but still unresolved issue : an observational study to evaluate patient's informed consent comprehension
No full textWe explored the comprehension of the informed consent in 77 cancer patients previously enrolled in randomised phase II or phase III clinical trials, between March and July 2011, at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milano. We asked participants to complete an ad hoc questionnaire and analysed their answers. Sixty-two per cent of the patients understood the purpose and nature of the trial they were participating in; 44% understood the study procedures and 40% correctly listed at least one of the major risks or complications related to their participation in the trial. We identified three factors associated with comprehension of the informed consent: age, education and type of tumour/investigator team. We suggest several possible improvements of how to obtain informed consent that will increase patient awareness, as well as the validity and effectiveness of the clinical trials
Impact of minimally invasive surgery on adrenalectomy for incidental tumors: comparison with laparotomic technique
No full textTo compare laparoscopic and laparotomic techniques for the excision of incidental adrenal tumors
Habitual snoring, OSA and craniofacial modification. Orthodontic clinical and diagnostic aspects in a case control study.
No full textThis research aims to analized the clinical and diagnostic aspects of OSA in the orthodontic research field.Through a case control study, the presence of early craniofacial modifications in a study group constituted of 13 children with long history of habitual snoring and obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (mean age 54 months, range 36-103) and in a control group constituted of 13 children with no history of snoring (mean age 60 months, range 55-67), is analyzed. Clinical neurological and orthodontic examination, cefalometrics analysis and MESAM 4 has been performed to each single child.Neurological clinical examination and diurnal polysomnography or nocturnal ambulatory monitoring of snoring (MESAM 4) showed that this pathology started very early in the childhood: snoring onset was 22.7 months, the apnea onset was 34.7 months. Moreover 23\% of the children showed a failure to thrive. The cephalometric results revealed that OSA children showed different cranio-facial features: a maxillo-mandibular micrognathia and or retrognathia, an increment of divergency associated with an increase in the vertical development of the face and a reduced perviety of the upper airway space caused by a mechanical obstruction due to enlarged adenoids. The orthodontic clinical examination revealed that OSA patients showed posterior cross-bite, anterior open-bite and lip-incompetence.These results suggest that oral breathing, that is present in sleep apnea patients, is responsible of different cranio-facial anomalies. For this reason these features must be recognized, as soon as possible, in order to start an early treatment of this pathology
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
Otitis media with effusion and S-carboxymethylcysteine and/or its lysine salt: a critical overview
No full textAn overview of the placebo-comparative articles retrieved by a literature search on Medline - Embase - Biosis data banks from 1972 to 1993 was performed to evaluate the therapeutic relevance of the medical treatment with S-carboxymethylcysteine (SCMC) and its monohydrate lysine salt (SCMC-LYS) in patients with otitis media with effusion (OME). Ten original published studies were reviewed by an independent physician who assessed their quality by standard nine-items methodology. A meta-analytical approach was used to compare outcomes across all qualifying studies. Because of the heterogeneity of clinical endpoints, a new outcome measure was defined, i.e. overall clinical improvement, which consisted of the number of patients with complete resolution of clinical signs and symptoms and no need for surgical intervention. The objective evaluation criteria of normalisation of tympanogram was an additional end-point. Potential confounding variables such as eligibility criteria, treatment protocol and study design of the six methodologically complying studies were statistically homogeneous. No association was found between treatment effect-size and publication date or patients' age. Outpatients with disease duration of < 6 months, not previously treated, with bilateral ear involvement were included in the studies; half of them presented hyperplasia or hypertrophy of the pharyngeal or the adenoid tissue. Out of 483 patients, 430 (89%) terminated studies and were evaluable. Results from this meta-analysis indicate that patients with OME receiving oral SCMC/-lys benefit from the medical treatment to the extent of avoiding surgical intervention approximately 2.31 times more often than similar patients receiving placebo (ratio of active drug to placebo-effect on overall clinical improvement: 2.31; C.I. 1.28-4.20, P < 0.01) and attain reversion to normal of the tympanogram at an extent close to: statistical significance (odds ratio: 2.25, C.I. 0.97-5.22, P = 0.058). In conclusion, the use of this new methodology for the evaluation of the mucoactive drug effect in OME has shed light into methodological pitfalls of clinical trials to date and underlines the need for agreed outcome measures, which may modify medical policy, which addresses more and more often to symptomatic treatment
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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