1,720,958 research outputs found

    Deferred testing in stable outpatients with suspected coronary artery disease: a prespecified secondary Analysis of the PRECISE randomized clinical trial

    No full text
    Importance: guidelines recommend deferral of testing for symptomatic people with suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) and low pretest probability. To our knowledge, no randomized trial has prospectively evaluated such a strategy.Objective: to assess process of care and health outcomes in people identified as minimal risk for CAD when testing is deferred.Design, setting, and participants: this randomized, pragmatic effectiveness trial included prespecified subgroup analysis of the PRECISE trial at 65 North American and European sites. Participants identified as minimal risk by the validated PROMISE minimal risk score (PMRS) were included.Intervention: randomization to a precision strategy using the PMRS to assign those with minimal risk to deferred testing and others to coronary computed tomography angiography with selective computed tomography-derived fractional flow reserve, or to usual testing (stress testing or catheterization with PMRS masked). Randomization was stratified by PMRS risk.Main outcome: omposite of all-cause death, nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI), or catheterization without obstructive CAD through 12 months.Results: among 2103 participants, 422 were identified as minimal risk (20%) and randomized to deferred testing (n = 214) or usual testing (n = 208). Mean age (SD) was 46 (8.6) years; 304 were women (72%). During follow-up, 138 of those randomized to deferred testing never had testing (64%), whereas 76 had a downstream test (36%) (at median [IQR] 48 [15-78] days) for worsening (30%), uncontrolled (10%), or new symptoms (6%), or changing clinician preference (19%) or participant preference (10%). Results were normal for 96% of these tests. The primary end point occurred in 2 deferred testing (0.9%) and 13 usual testing participants (6.3%) (hazard ratio, 0.15; 95% CI, 0.03-0.66; P = .01). No death or MI was observed in the deferred testing participants, while 1 noncardiovascular death and 1 MI occurred in the usual testing group. Two participants (0.9%) had catheterizations without obstructive CAD in the deferred testing group and 12 (5.8%) with usual testing (P = .02). At baseline, 70% of participants had frequent angina and there was similar reduction of frequent angina to less than 20% at 12 months in both groups.Conclusion and relevance: n symptomatic participants with suspected CAD, identification of minimal risk by the PMRS guided a strategy of initially deferred testing. The strategy was safe with no observed adverse outcome events, fewer catheterizations without obstructive CAD, and similar symptom relief compared with usual testing.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0370224

    Comparison of an initial risk-based testing strategy vs usual testing in stable symptomatic patients with suspected coronary artery disease: the PRECISE randomized clinical trial

    No full text
    Importance: trials showing equivalent or better outcomes with initial evaluation using coronary computed tomography angiography (cCTA) compared with stress testing in patients with stable chest pain have informed guidelines but raise questions about overtesting and excess catheterization.Objective: to test a modified initial cCTA strategy designed to improve clinical efficiency vs usual testing (UT).Design, setting, and participants: this was a pragmatic randomized clinical trial enrolling participants from December 3, 2018, to May 18, 2021, with a median of 11.8 months of follow-up. Patients from 65 North American and European sites with stable symptoms of suspected coronary artery disease (CAD) and no prior testing were randomly assigned 1:1 to precision strategy (PS) or UT.Interventions:  PS incorporated the Prospective Multicenter Imaging Study for the Evaluation of Chest Pain (PROMISE) minimal risk score to quantitatively select minimal-risk participants for deferred testing, assigning all others to cCTA with selective CT-derived fractional flow reserve (FFR-CT). UT included site-selected stress testing or catheterization. Site clinicians determined subsequent care.Main outcomes and measures: outcomes were clinical efficiency (invasive catheterization without obstructive CAD) and safety (death or nonfatal myocardial infarction [MI]) combined into a composite primary end point. Secondary end points included safety components of the primary outcome and medication use.Results: a total of 2103 participants (mean [SD] age, 58.4 [11.5] years; 1056 male [50.2%]) were included in the study, and 422 [20.1%] were classified as minimal risk. The primary end point occurred in 44 of 1057 participants (4.2%) in the PS group and in 118 of 1046 participants (11.3%) in the UT group (hazard ratio [HR], 0.35; 95% CI, 0.25-0.50). Clinical efficiency was higher with PS, with lower rates of catheterization without obstructive disease (27 [2.6%]) vs UT participants (107 [10.2%]; HR, 0.24; 95% CI, 0.16-0.36). The safety composite of death/MI was similar (HR, 1.52; 95% CI, 0.73-3.15). Death occurred in 5 individuals (0.5%) in the PS group vs 7 (0.7%) in the UT group (HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.23-2.23), and nonfatal MI occurred in 13 individuals (1.2%) in the PS group vs 5 (0.5%) in the UT group (HR, 2.65; 95% CI, 0.96-7.36). Use of lipid-lowering (450 of 900 [50.0%] vs 365 of 873 [41.8%]) and antiplatelet (321 of 900 [35.7%] vs 237 of 873 [27.1%]) medications at 1 year was higher in the PS group compared with the UT group (both P < .001).Conclusions and relevance: an initial diagnostic approach to stable chest pain starting with quantitative risk stratification and deferred testing for minimal-risk patients and cCTA with selective FFR-CT in all others increased clinical efficiency relative to UT at 1 year. Additional randomized clinical trials are needed to verify these findings, including safety.Trial Registration:  ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0370224

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

    Full text link
    The 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 link
    We 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 link
    We 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

    Author Index

    No full text
    Nao informado

    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

    No full text
    We 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
    corecore