1,721,040 research outputs found
New treatment concept for children with thoracic insufficiency syndrome due to congenital spine deformity
No full textBackground: Children with congenital thoracic scoliosis associated with fused ribs and unilateral unsegmented bars adjacent to convex hemivertebrae will inevitably develop thoracic insufficiency syndrome and Curve progression with hemithorax compression without treatment. It is assumed that the concave side of such curves and their unilateral unsegmented bars do not grow. In the past early spinal fusion was performed with consecutive short thoracic spines and loss of lung volume. Little attention has been paid to lung function, These patients often suffered from lung failure and early death due to a small thorax. Method: A new surgical technique is based on an indirect deformity correction and enlargement of the thorax due to a longitudinal implant, the vertical expandable prosthetic titanium rib (VEPTR). The spine is not fused. thus promoting growth of the spine, the thorax and the lungs. Elongation of the implant is done every six months. Since 2002 this method has been performed on fifteen children in Basel as the first European center. Results: Patients (mean age 6 years; 11 months to 12 years) were suffering from thoracic insufficiency syndrome due to unilateral unsegmented bars with fused ribs (n = 4), absent ribs (n = 2), bilaterally fused ribs (n = 2), hemivertebrae (n = 3) or neuromuscular scoliosis (n=6). Doing fifteen primarily implantations and thirteen elongations there were three complications (two hook dislocations, one skin breakage). All patients improved cosmetically, functionally and radiologically which was shown on X-rays as a reduction of the Cobb angle from an average of 76 (40-110) to 55 (30-67). Conclusions: Expansion thoracoplasty and VEPTR implantation is a new treatment concept for children with thoracic insufficiency syndrome due to spinal deformities, which is based on distraction and expansion of the thorax thus allowing growth of the spine, the thorax and probably lungs. Presently it seems to be superior to any other method for the treatment of small children with progressive scoliosis and thoracic insufficiency syndrome
Treatment of congenital scoliosis with the vertical expandable prosthetic titanium rib implant
No full textChildren with congenital thoracic scoliosis associated with fused ribs and unilateral unsegmented bars adjacent to convex hemivertebrae will invariably have curve progression without treatment. It is assumed that the unilateral unsegmented bars do not grow and therefore early spinal fusion has been performed in the past with consecutive short thoracic spines and loss of lung volume. A new surgical technique is based on an indirect deformity correction and enlargement of the thorax via a longitudinal implant, the vertical expandable prosthetic titanium rib (VEPTR). The length of the thoracic spine after VEPTR implantation was analyzed in 21 children with an average follow-up of 4.2 years. Eighteen children did not have any prior surgery while three had already undergone spinal fusion. Using a 3-D analysis of computed tomography, a significant growth of the concave (7.9 mm/7.1% increase per year) and convex (8.3 mm/6.4%) side of the thoracic spine was found with no significant difference between sides. Unilateral unsegmented bars showed significant growth as well. Contrary to common knowledge,we were able to demonstrate the growth of the concave side of the thoracic spine and of the unilateral unsegmented bars after expansion thoracoplasty and VEPTR implantation
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
Functional results at the end of skeletal growth in 30 patients affected by congenital pseudoarthrosis of the tibia
No full textFrom a multicentric study on Congenital Pseudoarthrosis of the tibia (CPT) conducted on 340 patients, we evaluated the functional results on a group of thirty patients who were at the end of skeletal growth (age less than or equal to 16 years). The prognosis of CPT is very much related to the radiologic classification. Crawford type 2 and Crawford type 4 pseudoarthrosis have a worse prognosis, with a lower percentage of fusion at the site of pseudoarthrosis. Crawford 4 patients have the worst functional results. Most of them showed a severe leg length discrepancy, needed a permenent brace, with an ankle joint function fair or poor. The presence of fibula pseudoarthrosis seems to be responsible for most of the worst functional results. The level of deformity caused by either the natural course of the disease or its treatment, is decisive in the evalution of the functional results
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