1,720,980 research outputs found
Factors predicting in-hospital mortality of patients with diffuse peritonitis from perforated colonic diverticulitis
No full textAim: Diverticulitis free perforation still remains a major life-threatening condition. Herein we evaluate factors influencing prognosis of patients with perforated colonic diverticulitis and the current validity of Mannheim Peritonitis Index (MPI) in predicting mortality. Material of Study: From January 2000 to October 2010, 39 patients were operated on for generalized peritonitis from perforated diverticulitis. Five postoperative deaths (12.8%) related to septic shock occurred. A cross-sectional study between deceased and non-deceased patients was carried out. Results: Deceased patients were significantly older than non-deceased (76.4 vs. 59.1 years, p=0.019); duration of symptoms was longer in deceased patients (102 vs. 26.9 hours, p=0.000); MPI was higher in deceased patients (31.4 vs. 21.2, p=0.000). Age, duration of symptoms and MPI were independent risk factors predicting poor prognosis. The highest sensitivity and specificity of MPI in predicting mortality was shown for a score >27. Conclusions: MPI is still effective in predicting postoperative mortality. People who nurse older persons must pay higher attention to complaints in order to reduce the delay in hospitalization
Stress among medical students: Factor structure of the University Stress Scale among Italian students
Full text linkObjectives The main purpose of the current study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the University Stress Scale (USS) among Italian medical students. Design, setting and participants A cross-sectional observational study based on data from an online cross-sectional survey from 11 to 23 December 2018. A total of 1858 Italian medical students participated in the study. Outcome measures We measured perceived stress among medical students using the USS, the Effort-Reward Imbalance Student Questionnaire (ERI-SQ) and the Kessler-10 (K10). Results Results showed that a bifactor-Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling solution provided excellent levels of fit to the data. Our results suggest that the modified version of 19 items of the Italian version of the USS does not have a simple unidimensional structure. Overall, an inspection of ancillary indices (omega indices, ECV and percentage of uncontaminated correlations) revealed that these were too low to suggest the use of the USS as a composite measure of university stress. We tested an alternative unidimensional short form (eight items; USS-S) that assessed all the five sources of stress. This version provided a good fit to the data. Evidence of convergent validity of the USS-S was observed by analysing the correlations between the USS and ERI-SQ (ranging from-0.34 to 0.37, all p<0.01). Finally, based on the clinical cut-off recommended on the K10, results from receiver operating characteristic showed that considering the clinical cut-off of the USS is 7.5 and that 59.70% of medical students reported stress levels in the clinical range. Conclusion Finally, our results showed a lack of support for using the USS to measure a general university stress factor, as the general USS factor accounted for little variance in our sample. In this sense, stress scores among Italian students can be better assessed by the use of the USS-S
Dosaggio intranodulare della calcitonina: ruolo nella strategia operatoria del carcinoma midollare della tiroide.
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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
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