1,720,990 research outputs found
Macula service evaluation and assessing priorities for anti-VEGF treatment in the light of COVID-19
No full textPurpose: to assess the treatment position of all patients who have had an anti-VEGF injection in 2020, prior to the UK lockdown on 23 March. To assess methods of service quality evaluation in setting benchmarks for comparison after the situation stabilized. To consider what proportion could be delayed based on national guidelines and varying vision parameters. Finally, to measure how many patients actually attended. Method: a retrospective analysis of data collected from our electronic medical record was performed. Age, sex, reason for injection, visual acuity (VA) for both treated and untreated eyes and number of injections were recorded. The proportion of patients and eyes with ≥ 70 letters were calculated as an assessment of quality of service provision. The proportion of patients that could be delayed was estimated based on published guidelines and varying the parameters of difference between treated and untreated eyes. Finally, the number of patients who actually attended was recorded. Results: about 3364 eyes (2229 neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), 427 diabetic macular oedema (DMO), 599 retinal vein occlusion (RVO) and 109 other) from 2924 patients were analysed. At the last appointment with injection, 64.4% of patients achieved ≥ 70 letters in their better-seeing eye. Mean VA of the treated eye was 61.5 letters, and 36.9% achieved ≥ 70. The mean number of injections was 16, 90% with aflibercept. Of the patients receiving treatment to one eye, 57.6% was receiving treatment to their worse seeing eye. In 18.2% this eye was > 20 letters worse and in 5.07% > 40 letters worse than the untreated eye. Using Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOphth) guidelines, (treat nAMD 8 weekly, delay majority of RVO and DMO) 24.8% would be delayed. From 2738 appointments during the first 4 weeks of lockdown (booked prior to lockdown), doctors rescheduled 1025 and patients did not attend 820, leaving 893 who were seen (33%). Conclusions: assessing the treatment position of patients prior to COVID-19 lockdown enables objective stratification for prioritization for continued treatment. If RCOphth guidelines were followed 24.8% could be delayed and if treating the worse seeing eye up to 57.6%. Many scheduled patients elected not to attend, with 67% not seen in the first 4 weeks. The impact of non-attendance and delays may be evaluated later.</p
6-year outcomes of the United Kingdom Medisoft® audit study following treatment with the ILUVIEN® (fluocinolone acetonide) implant in patients with diabetic macular edema.
No full textPurpose: The Medisoft study was designed as a retrospective audit of eyes treated with the fluocinolone acetonide (FAc) implant and aimed to assess the long-term effectiveness and safety of FAc implant in patients with diabetic macular edema (DME) that persists or recurs despite treatment. Outcomes from this study have previously been reported in patients monitored for ≥3 years. We now report outcomes obtained in the last 3-years since the initial outcomes were reported. Methods. The Medisoft audit tool was used to extract pseudo-anonymised electronic medical records (EMR), identifying only patients with DME that had been treated with the FAc implant across 14 UK clinical sites between 2014 and 2022. Clinical effectiveness and safety were measured.Results. Data were available from 302 eyes (256 patients) with ≥3 years of follow-up. The mean follow-up period was 64.2±18.4 months [mean±SD]). Best-recorded visual acuity (BRVA) was 56.8±15.6 letters, 59.2±17.1 letters and 60.54±15.6 letters at baseline, 3 and 6 years respectively. At years 3 and 6, stable/improved BRVA was observed in 75.6% and 74.6% respectively. The proportion of eyes with 6/12 (20/40) or better BRVA rose from 22.5% at baseline to 35.2% and 39.7%, respectively. In terms of safety, mean IOP was 16.3±4.1 mmHg at baseline and remained below a mean value of 21 mmHg at years 3 and 6. Around one third (36.1%) of eyes required topical IOP-lowering drops to control elevations in pressure (versus 21.5% of eyes pre-FAc implant) and IOP was >30 mmHg at a single time point post-FAc implant in 25.5% of eyes (versus 10.6 pre-FAc implant).Conclusions. Over a 6-year follow-up period, UK EMR data obtained in real-world practice revealed that three-out-of-four patients with DME and treated with a FAc implant benefited from stable/improved BRVA and that one-in-three had visual acuity 6/12 or better. This data was obtained since the first eye was treated in the UK and is an ongoing study that will continue to monitor the outcomes and the management of DME patients in clinical practice.<br/
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
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
Aflibercept in the real world–are the visual outcomes worse in patients with diabetic macular edema who have had a cataract operation?
No full textAflibercept was licenced in UK for use as treatment for diabetic macular edema in 2015. Here we compare visual outcomes over 12 months between those who had previously had cataract surgery and those who had not.Methods: Anonymised data of patients undergoing antiVEGF injections for diabetic macular edema were exported from a dedicated ophthalmology electronic patient record system. Those who had aflibercept injections only were included. Patients were included if lens status in each injection record in 12 months “phakic” or if each lens status was “pseudophakic”. The first eye treated in each patient was used. Wilcoxon Rank Sum test was used to compare groups. Linear regression was used to relate change in visual acuity (VA) over 12 months from the first injection lens status, age, baseline ETDRS letter score and number of injections. The 12 month letter score was that at the visit after the
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
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