1,720,978 research outputs found
Risk factors for mortality in 600 patients in vegetative and minimally conscious states.
No full textA significant proportion of patients who survive traumatic or nontraumatic severe acquired brain injuries experiences disorders of consciousness. The vegetative state and the minimally conscious state may have different prognoses, and while some patients regain awareness, others have negative outcomes and die. The aim of this work is to identify age-related, medical and behavioural risk factors for mortality in those patients. Participants were enrolled from June 2009 to March 2012 in 107 Italian health care institutions. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were adopted to screen and test candidate risk factors. The study enrolled 600 subjects in vegetative and minimally conscious states for an overall mortality rate of 180.1 per 1,000 person-years. The following traits were associated with a significantly lower chance of survival: age at the acute event higher than 51 years, disease duration less than 1 year, post-anoxic aetiology, absence of visual fixation, and the presence of endocrine, nutritional, and metabolic diseases, and immunity disorders. Clinical history, behavioural assessment, and age-related factors provide important prognostic information on negative outcomes that helps clinicians and researchers to predict patients who are at higher risk of mortality. This knowledge has important clinical, managerial, and ethical implications
Stati vegetativo e di minima coscienza: risultati del progetto nazionale di ricerca.
No full textL’articolo riporta i risultati della ricerca che ha condotto alla raccolta di dati relativi a 602 persone (566 adulti e 36 bambini), con diagnosi di stato vegetativo o stato di minima coscienza. Vengono riportati i valori rispetto alle caratteristiche del campione indagato (dati sociodemografici, tempo trascorso dall’evento acuto, condizione clinica, alimentazione e idratazione, respirazione , terapie eccetera) sulla base di una definizione di funzionamento e disabilità nell’ottica del modello biopsicosociale della classificazione ICF
Personal and interpersonal changes in caregivers of patients in Vegetative State or Minimally Conscious State: a qualitative study
No full textThere are few studies on caregivers of patients in Vegetative State (VS) or Minimally Conscious State (MCS) which findings show high level of burden and worse general health of caregivers of these patients. To bring a better understanding about how caregivers themselves view and perceive their role and changes in family relationships after acute event a qualitative study was conducted.
Fifteen caregivers of adult patients in VS or MCS were interviewed and main contents related to caregivers burden emerged.
Caregivers reported some psychological difficulties and problems in integrating past and present inner representation of the patient: confusing past with present tense describing the patient and switching from ‘’adult-adult’’ to ‘’adult-child’’ attitude to the patient. They also reported actively avoiding thoughts about the future.
Needs expressed by caregivers were mainly related to the patient: care-giving was the main role of their life. However, they reported to find new personal resources to deal with this situation.
This study brings a better understanding about changes in family relationships and caregivers role in life. Targeted interventions aiming to empower their capabilities and personal new abilities, and to support a better integration between past and present, may be useful to promote their health
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
Caregiver ́s burden in disorders of consciousness: a longitudinal study
No full textObjectives – To study the changes in the burden of informal caregivers of patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) over time. Materials and methods – Short Form-12, Family Strain Questionnaire, Beck Depression Inventory and Coping Orientations to Problem Experiences were administered. Results – Data collected on 216 informal caregivers of patients with DOC (59.6% females, mean age 53.4 ` 12.7 years old) were analysed at two time-points (mean distance is 2.7 years). Results of the national study revealed that caregivers’ mental health improved (T0: M = 41.1, SD = 11.8; T1:
M = 45.8, SD = 11.7), whereas the emotional burden (T0: M = 7.4, SD = 3.6; T1: M = 6.6, SD = 3.9) and the presence of depressive symptoms (T0: M = 14.3, SD = 9.3; T1: M = 11.7, SD = 10.2) as well as the need for information about the disease (T0: M = 2.7, SD = 1.2; T1: M = 2.2, SD = 1.4), thoughts of death (T0: M = 3.6, SD = 1.5; T1: M = 3.1, SD = 1.6) and the use of avoiding coping strategy (T0: M = 7.8, SD = 1.0; T1: M = 6.0, SD = 1.3) decreased at T1. Furthermore, depressive symptoms positively correlated with the emotional burden (0.580) and negatively with the mental health component of caregivers’ self-perceived health condition ( 0.473). Physical ( 0.308) and mental health ( 0.444) negatively correlated with emotional burden. Finally, the acute event and patients’ health condition still have a deep impact on the economic situation of the family. Conclusion – Although high level of burden was observed, it tends to decrease over time, except for financial burden. Hence, this study suggests the importance to plan strategies or targeted interventions in order to reduce the psychosocial and financial burden associated with caregiving
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
Enhancing collaboration between families and healthcare providers: a qualitative study on healthcare pathways of 0-5 years children with severe disability
No full textDispelling 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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