1,720,964 research outputs found
Paracetamol in intensive care – intravenous, oral or not at all?
No full textKelly et al. have published a study in this edition of Anaesthesia that sought to quantify the hypotensive effect of oral/enteral vs. parenteral paracetamol 1. In addition, it described the pharmacokinetic (PK) data of parenteral and oral/enteral formulations of paracetamol in critical care patients, as well as its effect on pain and temperature. The results of this study pose some interesting questions over both the choice of prescribing route in critical care and the necessity of paracetamol prescription.Paracetamol is one of the most widely prescribed medications within critical care, with a large observational trial reporting that 64% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients received paracetamol during their stay 2. The Guy's and St Thomas’ Critical Care Units (54 level 3 beds) use approximately 8500 parenteral doses and 16,000 oral/enteral doses per annum. While it is not a high-cost medication (~£4000-4500 UK, $5500-6000 US, € 5000-5500 per annum), its prescription is ubiquitous. This study by Kelly et al., as well as recent data from the HEAT Trial 3, questions whether the risk–benefit analysis of prescribing paracetamol within critical care should be re-evaluated. In addition, when paracetamol is indicated, is it administered via the correct route
Intensive Care Society State of the Art 2016 Abstracts: Prevalence of ICU-Delirium in a 60-bedded adult critical care unit
No full textIntroduction/aims: Delirium occurs in 50–80% of critically ill patients and is associated with increased mortality and cognitive impairment. Sedation hold and spontaneous breathing trials are associated with fewer days spent in delirium.The CAM-ICU is a validated delirium screening-tool.The audit aimed to establish the prevalence of ICU delirium using the CAM-ICU assessment tool in combination with a medical chart review.Methods: To establish staff familiarity with CAM-ICU, a pilot study was carried out, followed by intense training of nurses and doctors. The prospective audit was carried out over four weeks. All patients with a least anticipated stay of 72 h were included.The diagnosis of delirium was based on either:1. CAM-ICU, performed in patients with RASS >−4 and/or2. medical chart review (electronic physiotherapy, nursing, medical notes).Results: The pilot study established that 50% of 52 patients/days had a CAM-ICU score during the initial week of the project. Consequent staff training enabled the audit which included 173 patients (95 male, mean age 60 years, mean APACHE II: 17) and 1319 patient-days.The prevalence of delirium was 17% across the 173 patients.Across the 30 delirious patients, the diagnosis was based on:1. clinical opinion alone in 13 patients (43%)2. positive CAM-ICU alone in eight patients (27%)3. combination of positive CAM-ICU and clinical opinion in nine patients (30%).The CAM-ICU was not performed due to a RASS<−4 during 61 patient-days (5%). In patients with RASS>−4, a CAM-ICU score was established during 890 (67%) patient-days.Conclusions: Delirium prevalence in our department is with 17% lower than previously reported. This may be related to:1. Lower severity scores (APAHE II) compared to previous studies,1 due to the inclusion of our high-dependency units.2. Daily sedation holds and early mobilization, carried out routinely in the department3. The addition of the electronic chart review in the diagnostic algorithm yielding higher specificityStudy limitation: CAM-ICU was not reported during 33% patient-days and may contribute to the low prevalence
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
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
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