1,721,003 research outputs found
Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neuron disease
No full textBACKGROUND:Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as motor neuron disease, is a fatal neuromuscular disease characterized by progressive muscle weakness resulting in paralysis, which might be treated with ciliary neurotrophic factor.
OBJECTIVES: The objective of this review was to examine the efficacy of ciliary neutrophic factor in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
SEARCH STRATEGY: We searched the Cochrane Neuromuscular Disease Group trials register (searched June 2003) for randomized trials, MEDLINE (from January 1966 to October 2003) and EMBASE (from January 1980 to October 2003), checked the reference lists of papers identified and contacted the authors of studies identified to get additional unpublished results.
SELECTION CRITERIA: We considered the following selection criteria: Types of studies: randomized controlled clinical trials; Types of participants: adults with a diagnosis of either probable or definite amyotrophic lateral sclerosis according to the El Escorial criteria; Types of interventions: treatment with ciliary neurotrophic factor for at least six months, in a placebo-controlled randomized format; Types of outcome measures Primary: survival; Secondary: muscle strength, respiratory function, changes in bulbar functions, changes in quality of life, proportion of patients with adverse side effects (such as cough, asthenia, nausea, anorexia, weight loss and increased salivation).
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: We identified two randomized trials. The data were extracted and examined independently by the reviewers. Some missing data were obtained from investigators.
MAIN RESULTS: Two trials, with a total population of 1,300 amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients treated with subcutaneous injections of recombinant human ciliary neurotrophic factor, were examined in this review. The methodological quality of these trials was considered adequate. No significant difference was observed between ciliary neurotrophic factor and placebo groups for survival, the primary outcome measure. The relative risk was 1.07 (95% CI 0.81 to 1.41). No significant differences between the groups were observed for most of the secondary outcomes. However, a significant increase of the incidence of several adverse events was noted in groups treated with higher doses of CNTF.
REVIEWERS' CONCLUSIONS: Ciliary neurotrophic factor treatment has no effect on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis progression. At high concentration, several side effects were observed. A combination of ciliary neurotrophic factor with other neurotrophic factors (as suggested by results on animal models), and more efficient delivery methods should be tested
Association of skill and errors with outcomes in robotic rectal cancer surgery.
No full textOpen Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Background: Proficiency-based progression is key to analyzing and improving surgical performance. Objective assessment has demonstrated a direct link between operative performance and outcomes in laparoscopic surgery but not in robotics. There is current research to automate assessment processes with sensor data and machine learning. This requires granular, reliable annotations to train clinically implementable, trusted models, to improve patient safety.
Aim: To evaluate objective skill and error tools in robotic rectal cancer surgery, to provide a granular validated dataset from which to train and test deep learning models.
Methodology: A national, ethically approved, multicentre study, Video Analysis in Minimally Invasive Surgery (VAMIS) (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05279287), recorded robotic-assisted total mesorectal excision (RTME). Recruited participants were pseudonymised and clinical data were collected. Operations were recorded and uploaded to Touch Surgery™ using the DS1 computer (Digital Technologies, a Medtronic company) and annotated by independent, blinded raters. Objective assessment employed error, Objective Clinical Human Reliability Analysis (OCHRA), Modifiable-Global Evaluative Assessment in Robotic Skills (M-GEARS) and TME performance tools. Correlational and multivariable regression analyses were performed, investigating associations between intraoperative skill and errors with clinical outcomes.
Results: 30 RTME operations were recorded, annotating 538 errors (median 13/operation). Major consequential errors were significantly associated with complications (p = 0.031). Weighted error variables, accounting for error severity, were significantly associated with increased odds of prolonged operative time (p = 0.025). Inter-rater reliability demonstrated an excellent matched error agreement percentage of two raters (mean agreement 90% (range 68-100%), after calibration sessions). OCHRA was significantly correlated with M-GEARS (r = - 0.54 to - 0.77, p < 0.001-0.002) and the RTME performance tool (r = 0.74, p = 0.007).
Conclusion: This feasibility study validated the concept that granular error and skill annotations can be objectively measured and associated with clinical outcomes in robotic rectal cancer surgery. This is an important step for larger studies and in aiding the development of deep learning models to predict errors and skill
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
Developmentally regulated expression and localization of dystrophin and utrophin in the human fetal brain
No full textVariations 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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