1,720,956 research outputs found
Usefulness of the Framingham risk score in patients with chronic psoriasis
No full textPsoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. The Framingham risk score is a validated and composite measurement that predicts the absolute risk of developing major cardiovascular events at 5 and 10 years. The objective of this study was to estimate the Framingham cardiovascular risk score in patients with psoriasis. A cross-sectional study in 234 adult patients with psoriasis and 234 age- and gender-matched patients with skin diseases other than psoriasis was performed. The Framingham risk score includes age, gender, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, smoking status, and diabetes mellitus. Framingham risk score was significantly higher in patients with psoriasis than in controls at 5 years (mean ± SD 5.3 ± 4.4 vs 3.4 ± 3.3, p 50 years of age. Patients with psoriasis were more frequently smokers and diabetics and had more commonly atherogenic dyslipidemia than controls (p <0.05). Presence of psoriasis was independently associated with a higher Framingham score (coefficient 1.6, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.6 to 2.5, p = 0.001). There was no correlation between severity or duration of psoriasis and Framingham risk score (coefficient 0.009, 95% CI -0.02 to 0.04, p = 0.6; coefficient 0.02, 95% CI 0.007 to 0.04, p = 0.7, respectively). In conclusion, patients with psoriasis have an intermediate risk of developing major cardiovascular events and thus interventions aimed to correct modifiable cardiovascular risk factors are warranted
Clinical and diagnostic features of in situ melanoma and superficial spreading melanoma: a hospital based study.
No full textBACKGROUND: Despite the incidence of in situ melanoma is continuously rising; few studies have investigated its clinical and diagnostic features.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate clinical and diagnostic features of in situ melanoma compared to superficial spreading melanoma (SSM).
METHODS: This is a hospital based, case-control study. Ninety consecutive patients with an in situ melanoma and 90 age and gender matched patients with SSM were enrolled. Main outcome measures were differences in clinical signs that aroused suspicion of in situ melanoma, detection modalities (self-detection vs. incidental detection by a physician), factors conditioning time between first noticing the suspect lesions and the physician visit.
RESULTS: Median diameter of in situ melanoma was smaller than SSM (7.5 vs. 9.0 mm, P < 0.024), and 47.8% of in situ melanomas were smaller than 6 mm, in contrast to 25.6% of SSM (P < 0.002). In situ melanoma was mainly detected by a dermatologist (Odds Ratio 2.95 P = 0.018), and in patients with more than 10 melanocytic naevi (Odds Ratio 3.12, P = 0.008). Clinical factors independently associated to early request of dermatological consultation were age older than 45 years (Odds ratio 3.47, P = 0.002) and location of lesion in a difficult observation skin site (Odds ratio 4.20, P = 0.001), but not Breslow's thickness.
CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that in situ melanoma and SSM share similar clinical characteristics and early warning signs. However, in situ melanoma is smaller in size than SSM. This may have important implications for early diagnosis and prevention strategies
Attitude to treatment of patients with psoriasis attending SPA center
No full textLo studio indaga cosa pensano sulla psoriasi e le sulle terapie i pazienti che frequentano un centro termale rispetto ai pazienti che vanno a farsi curare in ospedal
Videodermoscopic follow-up: a retrospective clinical study
No full textBackground. Digital monitoring, commonly referred as ‘mole mapping’, provide computer storage of clinical and dermoscopic images of nevi facilitating detailed follow-up. Marking of atypical melanocytic lesions lacking melanoma-specific criteria during baseline visit has been shown helpful for future detection in shape, colour, or surface changes occurring in any lesion, and identification of new lesions’ onset by comparing them to sequential registries.Objective. To evaluate the effective utility of videodermoscopy in the early diagnose of melanoma and in minimizing the number of surgical removals.Materials and methods. A 7-year-retrospective study occurred between 30 November 2007 and 30 April 2014 was performed. Two hundred and eleven patients (124 males, 87 females) were enrolled.All patients were evaluated using the digital dermoscopic photography and were registered in the database for at least a 3-year-follow-up period.The suspected melanocytic nevi were surgically removed, analysed and diagnosed as nevus, dysplastic (mild, moderate, severe) nevus and melanoma.Results. A total of 6493 nevi were marked with the digital follow-up and solely 2.3% of these nevi were excised. The removed lesions resulted to be 42 (28%) dysplastic and only 5 (3%) melanomas.The ratio between total lesions removed and melanomas was =1:30. The dysplastic lesions resulted to be nevi with mild, moderate and severe dysplasia in 50, 31 and 19% of the cases respectively.The majority of the patients were Fitzpatrick’s skin phototype III (64%) but the most frequent diagnosis of dysplastic nevi occurred in patients with phototype IV (33%).Conclusions. Dysplastic nevi and melanomas can be diagnosed at any time during the digital followup period, and not only at the first examination. Videodermoscopy minimizes surgical removals of atypical nevi
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
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