1,720,958 research outputs found
Steroids as Adjuvant Therapy for Acute Pharyngitis in Ambulatory Patients: A Systematic Review
No full textPURPOSE This review summarizes the evidence regarding the efficacy of adjuvant steroids for pain reduction in acute pharyngitis. METHODS We searched for randomized controlled trials, using MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, published between 1966 and December 2008. Two reviewers assessed the quality of each retrieved article and summarized the data. RESULTS Our review found 8 relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with a total of 806 patients. There were 5 RCTs with adult patients and 3 with children. All RCTs found a statistically significant faster reduction of pain or complete pain relief from steroid use compared with placebo. The trials used different steroids (dexamethasone, betamethasone, prednisone), and most participants had received antibiotics at least initially. Analgesic medication, such as acetaminophen, was allowed in all studies, but this factor was not always controlled. No serious adverse side effects were reported. CONCLUSIONS Steroids are effective in relieving pain in acute pharyngitis. Although no serious adverse effects were observed, the benefits have to be balanced with possible adverse drug effects. There are safe and effective over-the-counter medications to relieve throat pain. Most patients received concomitant antibiotics; however, reducing the prescription of antibiotics for generally benign upper respiratory tract infection is a public health goal. We therefore recommend further studies to establish both the safety of steroids without antibiotic coverage and the additional benefits of steroids when used with regular administration of over-the-counter analgesic medications
Implementation of recommendations for the diagnosis of heart failure (vol 135, pg 120, 2010)
No full textImplementation of recommendations for the diagnisis of heart failure
No full textBackground: National and international guidelines for the management of congestive heart failure (HF) suggest a variety of procedures for establishing its diagnosis and monitoring its course. The aim of this crosssectional study was to investigate which of these recommendations were actually implemented and documented in the setting of general medical practice. Methods: Patients receiving at least one cardiovascular drug (World health [WHO] anatomical chemical classification [ATC] class C) were identified from electronic medical records from 5 general practices from 1.4.2001 to 1.10.2004. Those patients with the documented diagnosis of HF were selected. All patients' records were reviewed and those diagnostic procedures and clinical findings were recorded on a standarized data extraction form that had been used to establish the diagnosis of HF. Results: An electrocardiogram had been documented or retrieved in the chart in 41.2% of a total of 829 patients, an chest X-ray in 28.2%, an echocardiogram in 17.2%, and a cardiac catheterization performed in 1.8%. Serum natriuretic peptides were never recorded. Additionally the following symptoms and clinical signs were extracted from the paper chart: ankle edema (39.3%), exertional dyspnea (22.7%), rales (21.5%), cardiomegaly (19.0%), paroxysmal dyspnea (16.6%), pleural effusions (9.2%), tachycardia (6.7%) and acute pulmonary edema, hepatomegaly, nocturnal cough or jugular venous distension in fewer than 5%. Conclusion: Only a few of those clinical signs and diagnostic procedures recommended by guidelines for diagnosing HF were recorded in general practice. The reasons for this finding remain unclear. Even under the assumption that not all observed clinical signs and diagnostic procedures were documented, these findings reflect the actual diagnostic strategy in daily practice. The observed discrepancy between guideline recommendation and reality in everyday practice deserve attention. On the one hand, there is a need for improving the diagnostic approach to HF; on the other, guidelines need to set priorities of the recommendations for diagnosing HF
Surrogate phenotype definition for alcohol use disorders: a genome-wide search for linkage and association
Full text linkFor the identification of susceptibility loci in complex diseases the choice of the target phenotype is very important. We compared results of genome-wide searches for linkage or for association related to three phenotypes for alcohol use disorder. These are a behavioral score BQ, based on a 12-item questionnaire about drinking behavior and the subject's report of drinking-related health problems, and ERP pattern and ERP magnitude, both derived from the eyes closed resting ERP measures to quantify brain activity. Overall, we were able to identify 11 candidate regions for linkage. Only two regions were found to be related to both BQ and one of the ERP phenotypes. The genome-wide search for association using single-nucleotide polymorphisms did not yield interesting leads
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
- …
