1,720,957 research outputs found
Healthcare-associated infection differences within Hospital Referral Regions in Georgia
Full text linkBACKGROUND: Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are preventable health outcomes that occur during or because of a health-related intervention such as hospital stay, surgery, or device-associated interventions. HAI is the fifth leading cause of death in acute-care hospitals in the US. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides publicly available data including HAI for healthcare consumers to compare hospitals. Previous researchers have criticized the use of HAI data for hospital comparisons for consumers and reporting mandate placed on hospitals. Given the scarcity of data reported by hospitals, the objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of HAI data as a proxy for quality in acute-care hospitals in Georgia.
METHODS: Secondary analysis was done using data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN). Data from 1/1/2019 – 12/31/2019 was provided as Standard Infection Ratio (SIR) through Hospital Compare at CMS. SIRs for 6 HAIs were accessed across and within Hospital Referral Regions (HRR) in Georgia.
RESULTS: Out of 129 acute-care hospitals in Georgia, 51.94% reported SIRs for catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), 45.74% for central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), 72.87% for Clostridium difficile (CDI), 42.64% for methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), 25.58% for surgical site infection (SSI) Abdomen, and 42.64% for SSI Colon. Clostridium difficile infection had the highest proportion (90.9%) of HRRs with at least 50% of its facilities reporting CDI data. CAUTI had the second highest proportion (45.5%).
CONCLUSION: There is not sufficient differentiation in HAI SIRs among acute-care hospitals for useful comparison of facilities by health care consumers except for CDI. Underreporting or lack of incidence may be the source of insufficiency
Case report: ocular syphilis with rapid loss of visual acuity
Full text linkIntroduction: Syphilis is caused by the spirochete, Treponema pallidum. In 2023, over 200,000 cases of syphilis including congenital syphilis were reported in the US, which was a 61 percent increase since 2019. Ocular syphilis is rare but is a growing concern given the rising incidence of syphilis. Delay in diagnosis and treatment can lead to vision loss. The aim of this report is to present a unique case of ocular syphilis and its associated findings.
Case Presentation: This is a case of a 58-year-old male in a large metropolitan city presented to an ophthalmologist complaining of floaters and blurry vision in both eyes. Vision with correction at initial visit was 20/20 in both eyes. There was evidence of mild cells and flares in the anterior chambers for which the patient was treated with topical steroids. In the next few days, vision deteriorated to 20/100 in both eyes, and optical coherence tomography (OCT) showed nodular changes in the photoreceptor layers. After testing positive for tertiary syphilis, visual symptoms resolved after intravenous course of penicillin G.
Discussion: Studies have documented rises in ocular syphilis with a hefty proportion of cases associated with men who have sex with men. Diagnosis of ocular syphilis is a challenge given its similarities in presenting symptoms to other ocular diseases such as uveitis, vasculitis, and optic neuritis. A lack of pathognomonic presentation makes it difficult to initiate timely testing and often leads to misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis. Here we present a constellation of symptoms with physical findings as well as changes on OCT that should raise suspicion for ocular syphilis, especially in high-risk populations
Rural and Urban Differences in Eye Care Among Persons with Diabetes Enrolled in Original Medicare - Georgia, 2019
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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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