1,720,958 research outputs found
Metaphylaxis of urolithiasis.
No full textThe urolithiasis is a growing disease because of the changes in dietary habits and in he general life style. Urolithiasis is characterized by the recurrent clinical manifestation and possible effect of structural damage of the kidneys and of the urinary tract ast well as the potential increase in systemic blood pressure. Moreover, frequent need for medical cure and invasive urological treatment exposes the patient to the complications of such procedures. The lithogenic process involves a wide number of systemic pathologies that are often undiagnosed. However, once identified they can be treated more precisely having an impact on the stone's forming process. For these reasons, prevention of new urolithiasis in patients, and in particular in those with high risk, appears to be clinically important. Metaphylaxis can be differentiated in two ways: "general metaphylaxis" in patients with lithiasis of the urinary tract, and "specific metaphylaxis" meant for patients with risk factors for recurrent calculosis. The aim of this narrative review is to present an algorithm for clinical practice for patients that have undergone one or more attacks of renal/ureteral colic from lithiasis in order to prevent further attacks. As such, this review deals with a method of secondary prevention (prophylaxis) that aims at identifying and correcting metabolic disorders (from which the term metaphylaxis comes) that favor and support the lithogenic process in the urinary tract
Management of minor head injury in patients receiving oral anticoagulant therapy: a prospective study of a 24-hour observation protocol.
No full text
Testicular cancer. Open questions: prevention, early diagnosis and infertility.
No full textTesticular cancer is the most common malignancy in men aged 15-35 years. Histologically, testicular germ-cell tumors have two main subtypes: pure seminoma and nonseminoma. Knowing the histopathological tumor type and detecting the relevant prognostic factors helps to guide the subsequent therapeutic course. At present there are no recommendations for testicular cancer screening in healthy young men, even among men showing high risk; however, a testicular cancer should be diagnosed as soon as a young man presents with suggestive signs and symptoms. Furthermore, thanks to highly effective treatments including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, it is very important to effectively manage secondary prevention and improve these patients' quality of life. Secondary prevention of relapses or secondary malignancy onsets should be carried out through a regular follow-up of the patient; in selected cases of positive family history, it is possible to perform genome-wide analyses aiming at searching the genes possibly causing testicular germ-cell tumor in affected first-degree male relatives. Long-term therapies can yield infertility and sexual dysfunction, issues gaining more and more importance from a clinical point of view. Sperm cryopreservation should be systematically offered to all requiring patients; moreover, screening for gonadal dysfunction should be considered in the follow-up of testicular cancer survivors, with the aim of hormone supplementation in symptomatic patients
Rituximab for eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis: a systematic review of observational studies
Full text linkObjective
To analyse the available evidence about the use of rituximab (RTX) and other biologic agents in eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) patients and to provide useful findings to inform the design of future, reliable clinical trials.
Methods
A systematic review was performed. A systematic search was conducted in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science and the Cochrane library databases on RTX, and an extensive literature search was conducted on other biologic agents.
Results
Forty-five papers pertinent to our questions were found: 16 retrospective cohort studies, 8 case series, 3 prospective cohort studies and 18 single case reports, for a total of 368 EGPA patients. More than 80% of evaluable patients achieved complete or partial remission with a tendency towards a higher rate of complete response in the pANCA-positive subgroup.
Conclusion
Although the majority of the evaluable EGPA patients treated with RTX appears to achieve complete remission, we strongly believe that a number of sources of heterogeneity impair a clear interpretation of results and limit their transferability in clinical practice. Differences in design, enrolment criteria, outcome definition and measurement make a comparison among data obtained from studies on RTX and other biologic agents unreliable
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
- …
