1,721,044 research outputs found
Mild impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the entire population of liver transplant recipients: the experience of an Italian Centre based in a high-risk area
No full textAdvances in Hepatobiliary Surgery: The Ancona’s Experience with ALPPS Procedure for Extended Liver Resections
No full textAim. To report a single-centre experience with the novel Associating Liver Partition and Portal vein ligation for Staged hepatectomy (ALPPS) technique. Methods. Patients with extended primary or secondary liver tumors whose future liver remnant (FLR) was considered too small to allow a standard hepatic resection were prospectively assessed for the ALPPS procedure. Results. From January 2013 until December 2018, 25 patients were considered for the ALPPS procedure at our institution. Five patients were judged intraoperatively not to be suitable for the surgical therapy and two patients underwent the first step of the ALPPS procedure but did not complete the second step. The ALPPS procedure was completed in 18 patients whose median age was 61.9 ± 6.5 years. Indications for surgical resection were metastases from colorectal cancer in 4 cases, perihilar cholangiocarcinoma in 4 cases, intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma in 4 cases, hepatocellular carcinoma in 4 cases and gallbladder carcinoma in 2 cases. The calculated FLR volume was 302.5 ± 88.9 mL (22.6 ± 5.2% of the total liver volume) before ALPPS-1 and 514.4 ± 130.0 mL (31.9 ± 6.0%) before ALLPS-2 (p < 0.001). After a mean interval of 10.6 ± 2.6 days between the two procedures, the increase in FLR was 76.4 ± 39.6% (p < 0.001). Sixteen (88.9%) out of 18 patients required one or more additional interventions during the first surgical step; these consisted in 7 Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy, 3 wedge resections of a residual tumor in the FLR and 10 cholecystectomies. The median hospital stay was 23 (IQR: 22-27.7) days. In-hospital mortality occurred in 3 (16.7%) patients for postoperative liver failure (2 cases) and multiple organ failure; 10 (55.5%) out of 18 patients experienced a grade III or above surgical complication according to Clavien-Dindo classification. After a median follow-up of 26.6 (IQR: 4.5-40.0) months, the 1- and 3-years overall survival rates were 69.4% and 47.6%, respectively. The 1- and 3-years recurrence-free survival rates were 70.7% and 53.0%, respectively. Conclusion. The ALPPS technique effectively increased the resectability of otherwise inoperable liver tumors, improving survival in these patients. The postoperative morbidity in our series was high in accordance with the data from the international ALPPS registry
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
Re-thinking of T-tube use in whole liver transplantation: an analysis on the risk of delayed graft function
No full textThe liver–gut axis has been identified as crucial mediator of liver regeneration. Thus, the use of a T-tube in liver transplantation (LT), which interrupts the enterohepatic bile circulation, may potentially have a detrimental effect on the early allograft functional recovery. We retrospectively analyzed a cohort of 261 patients transplanted with a whole liver graft, with a duct-to-duct biliary anastomosis, who did not develop any surgical complication within postoperative day 14. Early allograft dysfunction (EAD) was defined according to the criteria of Olthoff et al. (EAD-O), and graded according to the Model for Early Allograft Function (MEAF) score. EAD-O developed in 24.7% of recipients and the median MEAF score was 4.0 [interquartile range 2.9–5.5]. Both MEAF and EAD predicted 90-day post-LT mortality. A T-tube was used in 49.4% of cases (n = 129). After a propensity score matching for donor age, cold and warm ischemia time, donor risk index, balance of risk score, Child–Pugh class C, and MELD score, the T-tube group showed a significantly higher prevalence of EAD-O and value of MEAF than the no-T-tube group (EAD-O: 29 [34.1%] vs 16 [19.0%], p = 0.027; MEAF 4.5 [3.5–5.7] vs 3.7 [2.9–5.0], p = 0.014). In conclusion, T-tube use in LT may be a risk factor for EAD and higher MEAF, irrespective of graft quality and severity of pre-LT liver disease
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