1,720,959 research outputs found
Unintended pregnancy and early medical abortion
No full textBackground: Very early medical abortion (VEMA) is performed before the confirmation of intrauterine pregnancy (IUP) by ultrasound. Over the past 25 years, more women have sought abortions earlier in pregnancy. Concerns about VEMA’s effectiveness and the risk of ectopic pregnancy (EPs) have resulted in inconsistent practices, multiple clinic visits, and limited access to care. While many countries adopted telemedicine abortion during COVID-19 to minimize in-person visits, Swedish regulations still required all women seeking medical abortion to attend in person for an examination and to receive mifepristone under clinical supervision.
Aim: The overall aim of this thesis was to increase the safety and accessibility of early medical abortion by expanding available knowledge and obtaining data to develop evidence-based guidelines.
Methods: This thesis comprises four studies using quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Study I: a retrospective case note review; Study II: a multicenter, multinational randomized controlled trial; Study III: a cohort study from the randomized controlled VEMA trial; Study IV: a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews.
Results: Complete abortion was defined as no ongoing pregnancy or need for further surgical intervention. In Paper I, the success rate of VEMA was 97.6% (660/676), and the number of ongoing pregnancies was (0.59%). The success rate was lower (93.1%) in pregnancy of unknown location compared to those with a probable intrauterine pregnancy (98.4%). Six cases of EPs (0,88%) required post-abortion treatment; in Paper II, the success rate was 95.2% (676/710) in the VEMA group and 95.3% (656/688) in the standard (delayed) treatment group, with a risk difference of only 0.1 (CI -2.3, 2.3). Ongoing pregnancy rates were higher (3.0% vs. 0.1%; RR 20.3, CI 2.74, 151), but surgical interventions were lower (1.8% vs. 4.5%; RR 0.41, CI 0.21, 0.77) in the early group. Ten cases of EPs (1.3%) were identified in the early group, and 6 cases (0.8%) in the standard group; Paper III, a decline in hCG level of ≥80% was observed in ≥ 95% of cases with complete abortion (533) 7 (+/- 2) days post-abortion, regardless of baseline hCG levels. Rising or insufficient decline (<80%) indicated ectopic and ongoing pregnancy; in Paper IV the participants found it easy to contact the abortion clinic but faced undesired waiting time, gynecological exams were appreciated by most but distressing for some. Telemedicine abortion and home administration of mifepristone were seen as good options in addition to in-person care.
Conclusion: This thesis confirms the efficacy and safety of VEMA, validates hCG monitoring as a reliable follow-up method after VEMA, and emphasizes patient satisfaction with in-person abortion care while highlighting the potential benefits of more flexible abortion services
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
Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on abortions and births in Sweden: a mixed-methods study
No full textINTRODUCTION: Although considered an essential service by the WHO, there are indications that access to induced abortion care has been restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVES: To investigate if the number of induced abortions and ongoing pregnancies changed during the first pandemic wave of COVID-19 in 2020 compared with recent years prior to the pandemic and explore possible reasons for the findings. DESIGN: Convergent parallel mixed-methods design. Collection of quantitative data from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Pregnancy Register, and qualitative data from interviews. SETTING AND TIME PERIOD: National data on abortions (January 2018-June 2020) and births (January 2018-March 2021). Interviews performed at the main abortion clinic, Gothenburg, Sweden, in June 2020. PARTICIPANTS: All women aged 15-44 years living in Sweden 2018-2020, approximately 1.9million. 15women who sought abortion were interviewed. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Number of abortions and births/1000women aged 15-44 years. Themes and subthemes identified from interviews. RESULTS: The number of abortions and ongoing pregnancies did not change significantly during the study period compared with before the pandemic started. Interview themes identified were the following: meeting with abortion care during the COVID-19 pandemic (availability, and fear of being infected and infecting others); and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the abortion decision (to catch COVID-19 during pregnancy, feelings of loneliness and isolation, and social aspects). CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that the number of abortions and ongoing pregnancies remained unchanged during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Sweden compared with before the start of the pandemic. Abortion-seeking women did not hesitate to proceed with the abortion. The women expressed a number of fears concerning both availability of care and their health, which could have been properly addressed by the authorities. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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