1,720,985 research outputs found
Aspiration Therapy for Obesity
No full textObesity is currently the most important global public health issue due to its high prevalence in the population, disease-related adverse effects on health, quality of life, and healthcare costs. Lifestyle modification and pharmacotherapy are only partially successful in reducing the body weight and are in general unable to maintain weight loss over the long term. Bariatric surgery provides effective and durable weight loss but is associated to an elevated risk of complications, both in the short- and long term. For these reasons, many efforts have been made in the recent years to develop endoscopic bariatric therapies for patients with class II and III obesity, who do not have significant and persistent benefits from conservative treatments and are not qualified for invasive surgical procedures. Aspiration therapy by AspireAssist (Aspire Bariatrics, King of Prussia, PA) has been approved in 2016 for use in patients 22 years and older, with a BMI of 35-65 kg/m2, who have failed to lose or maintain weight loss with nonsurgical weight loss therapies. The device consists of a modified percutaneous gastrostomy tube (A-TubeTM) and an external detachable device to facilitate drainage. The device allows patients to remove a portion of ingested meals through the gastrostomy tube; about 30% of the calories consumed in a meal could be aspirated with this system. Several studies have demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of aspiration therapy, with low rates of adverse events and no deaths related to the procedure, as well as no evidence of eating disorders developed during therapy
Transoral Incisionless Fundoplication (TIF) for Treatment of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease
No full textGastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a very common disorder that results primarily from the loss of an effective anti-reflux barrier. GERD can be currently treated by medical therapy and surgical or endoscopic transoral intervention. Medical therapy is the most common approach. However, concerns have been increasingly raised in recent years with regard to the potential side effects of continuous long-term medication, drug intolerance or unresponsiveness, and the need for high dosages for long periods to treat symptoms or prevent recurrences. Surgery may have in some cases consequences such as long-lasting dysphagia, flatulence, inability to belch or vomit, diarrhea, or functional dyspepsia related to delayed gastric emptying. Transoral incisionless fundoplication (TIF) has recently been proved to be an effective therapeutic option as an alternative to medical and surgical therapy. TIF reconfigures the tissue to obtain a full-thickness gastroesophageal valve from inside the stomach, through serosa-to-serosa plications including the muscle layers. This chapter describes the TIF technique with the two most common used devices: the EsophyX fastener delivery system (EsophyX®) and the Medigus ultrasonic surgical endostapler (MUSETM) system. Technique steps and complications and their management are described in detail. Moreover, the recent literature regarding their outcomes is reviewed. To date TIF has achieved long-lasting improvement of GERD symptoms (up to 10 years), with cessation or reduction of proton pump inhibitor medication in about 75% of patients, as well as improvement of functional findings
Gastric peroral endoscopic myotomy (G-POEM) for refractory gastroparesis: 3-month follow-up results
No full textINEFFECTIVE ESOPHAGEAL MOTILITY IS ASSOCIATED WITH A WORST CLINICAL OUTCOME AFTER TRANSORAL INCISIONLESS FUNDOPLICATION
No full textRemifentanil vs. meperidine for patient-controlled analgesia during colonoscopy: a randomized double-blind trial
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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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