1,721,037 research outputs found
Communicating cancer diagnosis and prognosis: When the target is the elderly patient-a GIOGer study
Full text linkBackground: Effective communication to cancer patients allows better emotional response to diagnosis, coping with health professionals and compliance to treatment. We lack specific studies on patterns of clinical communication in elderly patients, their involvement in decision making and the role of their families. Patients and methods: Structured interviews to collect information on diagnosis and prognosis disclosure, satisfaction with information, compliance to disease experience and willingness toward receiving more information and coping, were administered to patients age 65 years and older and receiving chemotherapy. Results: Six hundred and twenty two patients completed the interviews and were evaluated. Four hundred and twelve (66.2%) were informed, 210 (33.8%) were not informed. Information was associated with age, degree of education, geographical area, ECOG-PS, tumour site and family composition and the patient's perception of being supported in the disease experience. The majority of the patients consider their families as the main source of support in the disease experience (86.5%), wish to have a family member participating in oncology consultation (79.1%) and consider the information received complete and understandable or clear and reassuring (80%). Receiving adequate information facilitates a better patient-health professional relationship for 84.8% of the patients. 63% of the patients dealt positively with cancer and 62.2% showed positive expectations for the future. Informed patients refer better expectation than those not informed. Conclusion: Our study underlines the importance of clinical information for older cancer patients and the need to involve family members in the processes of diagnosis and prognosis disclosure and decision making. Health professionals must consider specific age-related issues including social, cultural and emotional aspects and understand the role that the family members play in the disease experience of elderly patients. Competent caring for elderly cancer patients must provide adequate information and emotional support not only to the patients but also to their family to assure appropriateness of care. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Molecular epidemiology of a Pseudomonas aeruginosa hospital outbreak driven by a contaminated disinfectant-soap dispenser.
No full textBackground and objectivePseudomonas aeruginosa infection represents a main cause of morbidity and mortality among immunocompromised patients. This study describes a fatal epidemic of P. aeruginosa that occurred in a hematology unit in Italy.MethodsRetrospective cohort study, prospective surveillance, auditing, extensive testing on healthcare workers and environmental investigation were performed to define the dynamics and potential causes of transmission. RAPD, macrorestriction analyses and sequence typing were used to define relationships between P. aeruginosa isolates.ResultsEighteen cases of infection were identified in the different phases of the investigation. Of these, five constitute a significant molecular cluster of infection. A P. aeruginosa strain with the same genetic fingerprint and sequence type (ST175) as clinical isolates strain was also isolated from a heavily contaminated triclosan soap dispenser.Discussion and conclusionsOur results are consistent with the hypothesis that patients became indirectly infected, e.g., during central venous catheter handling through contaminated items, and that the triclosan soap dispenser acted as a common continuous source of P. aeruginosa infection. Since P. aeruginosa is intrinsically unsusceptible to triclosan, the use of triclosan-based disinfectant formulations should be avoided in those healthcare settings hosting patients at high risk of P. aeruginosa infection
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
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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