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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Improving hospital drug safety - identification of medication errors and subsequent development, implementation and outcome evaluation of alert algorithms for their targeted prevention
Get PDFAny drug prescription requires careful weighting of risks vs. benefits. Failure to do so or to ignore known contraindications, recommended dose-adjustments and other precautions represents a medication error that may result in adverse drug events, i.e. harm to the patient. Clinical decision support systems can routinely detect potential medication errors and issue automated alerts for their prevention. However, current systems typically focus on high sensitivity at the price of low specificity regarding relevance of their alerts. In clinical practice this results in an excessive number of alerts to prescribers with subsequent alert fatigue and indiscriminate alert overriding, i.e. even important warnings are ignored. So medication errors continue to be a theoretically avoidable yet persistent burden for healthcare systems and patients. Therefore this thesis pursued the following objectives:
I) Systematic quantification of potential medication errors in a real-life hospital setting.
II) Validation of the clinical relevance of selected potential medication errors and associated adverse events.
III) Development, implementation and outcome assessment not only of highly sensitive but also of highly specific alert algorithms for the prevention of clinically relevant medication errors.
I) Two studies were performed in order to systematically quantify potential medication errors:
A local pharmacoepidemiological database including 6.6 million drug administrations during approximately 82000 hospitalizations was successfully developed based on raw data extracted from the electronic medical records system of a tertiary care hospital. After its validation, highly efficient algorithms were developed that identified potential medication errors. They allowed the retrospective assessment of a considerable number of contraindicated and/or critical prescriptions. Sensitivity and specificity regarding clinical relevance of these potential medication errors was enhanced by the use of additional patient-specific laboratory data and repeated clinical validation procedures.
With the help of a newly developed interface with ID PHARMA CHECK® - a commercially available clinical decision support system - several ten thousand potential drug interactions, contraindications and dosing errors were identified and assigned to formal severity categories. 48 distinct contraindicated drug interactions were considered as clinically relevant and suitable for display of highly specific alerts within a clinical information systems; 32 alert algorithms required retrieval and implementation of current patient-specific information such as laboratory results in order to reach high specificity. The resulting algorithms were subsequently programmed for routine use with the clinical decision support system.
II) Three sub-studies were conducted within the pharmacoepidemiological database and addressed specific safety concerns of pharmacotherapy in clinical practice:
The first of these studies identified 1136 hospitalizations with exposure to second-generation antipsychotics. Blood pressure, blood glucose, lipids and body mass index should be routinely monitored in those patients, however they were found to be documented in 97.7, 75.7, 24.6 and 77.4 % of hospitalizations, respectively. 63.4, 70.8 and 37.1% of the patients with hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia and hypertension, respectively, had no pharmacotherapy for these conditions. Among patients exposed to second-generation antipsychotics and concomitant use of drugs featuring a high risk for potentially severe adverse drug events, one case with associated neutropenia and four cases with abnormal QTc-interval were detected. Specific monitoring for such adverse drug events was not performed in 89.8% of patients with related high-risk drug combinations.
The second sub-study analyzed the use of benzodiazepines (including “Z-drugs”) that were found to be administered to 48.3% of 53081 patients hospitalized in 2011 and 2012. Validated algorithms identified 3372 patient-days (2.9%) with comedication that significantly inhibits the respective benzodiazepines’ metabolism. Validation revealed 205 cases with clinically relevant medication errors. Among those, 23 cases with associated adverse drug events such as severe CNS-depression, falls with subsequent injuries and severe dyspnea were detected.
The third sub-study analyzed 3444 hospitalizations with administrations of selected macrolide and quinolone antibiotics and identified concomitant use of additional QT-prolonging drugs in 1332 (38.7%). Among those we identified 7 events of related QTc-prolongation, but 50.4 % had no ECG-monitoring. Of all patients exposed to the studied antibiotics 547 (15.9%) featured episodes of hypokalemia, an important additional risk factor for potentially lethal Torsade de Pointes arrhythmia. Clinically relevant QT-prolongation was detected in 7 patients. Another 31 patients were exposed to contraindicated comedication with simvastatin, atorvastatin or tizanidine where the risk of pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions clearly outweighed benefits, 3 thereof with associated adverse events.
III) These two studies then aimed to develop new solutions for the prevention of such avoidable potential medication errors and associated adverse drug events:
According to our pharmacoepidemiological database overdosing of paracetamol occurred in 988 hospitalizations per year, but in only 11 (0.4 %) this was judged as clinically relevant (≥ 5 g on ≥ 3 consecutive days). A new alert algorithm was developed as part of this study, and in 2014 it was implemented into the hospital-wide electronic drug prescribing system. It automatically detects cases of paracetamol overdosing, and after manual assessment alerts were issued in 23 cases, with subsequent changes to prescriptions in 21 (91.3 %) thereof. While the occurrence of mild and therefore clinically irrelevant acetaminophen overdosing changed only marginally in 2014 (n = 914), no clinically relevant overdosing occurred anymore.
The second automated alert concerned metformin overdosing in renal impairment. It has been used in routine clinical practice for three years and generated 2145 automated alerts (about 2 per day). Validated expert recommendations regarding metformin therapy, i.e. dose reduction or stop, were issued for 381 patients (about 3 per week). Follow-up was available for 240 cases, and prescribers’ compliance with recommendations was 79 %. Furthermore, during 3 years we identified 8 local cases of lactic acidosis associated with metformin therapy in renal impairment that could not be prevented, e.g. because metformin overdosing had occurred before hospitalization.
Besides these principal studies, spontaneous reports from international pharmacovigilance databases on liver disease associated with the new oral anticoagulant rivaroxaban and allergy-like reactions to herbal medicines were analyzed in two additional studies.
In conclusion, local pharmacoepidemiological databases can be created using already available electronic medical information systems. They are an innovative and promising new approach for the identification and management of medication errors and resulting adverse drug events. Such databases are able to quantify clinically relevant medication errors and thereby provide data for a rational selection of targets for new and highly specific preventive safety measures. Any such measures must be integrated into a comprehensive hospital safety concept where local drug safety experts play an important role for the evaluation and communication of medication errors. Within such a system, automated alert algorithms that use also patient-specific information are a cornerstone for the proactive prevention of medication errors and resulting adverse drug events
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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
Development and pharmacokinetic characterization of pulmonal and intravenous delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in humans
No full textThe aim of the present study was to develop a physiologically compatible inhalation solution of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), and to compare the pharmacokinetic and analgesic properties of pulmonal THC versus pulmonal placebo and intravenous (iv) THC, respectively. Eight healthy volunteers were included in this randomized, double-blind, crossover study. The aqueous THC formulations were prepared by using a solubilization technique. iv THC (0.053 mg/kg body weight), pulmonal THC (0.053 mg/kg), or a placebo inhalation solution was administered as single dose. At defined time points, blood samples were collected, and somatic and psychotropic side effects as well as vital functions monitored. An ice water immersion test was performed to measure analgesia. Using a pressure-driven nebulizer, the pulmonal administration of the THC liquid aerosol resulted in high THC peak plasma levels within minutes. The bioavailability of the pulmonal THC was 28.7 +/- 8.2% (mean +/- SEM). The side effects observed after pulmonal THC were coughing and slight irritation of the upper respiratory tract, very mild psychotropic symptoms, and headache. The side effects after iv THC were much more prominent. Neither pulmonal nor iv THC significantly reduced experimentally induced pain
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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