1,720,980 research outputs found
Promotion of breastfeeding in Italian Maternity Hospitals: a pre-intervention study
Get PDFBackground: In Italy, exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) rates at hospital discharge range unsatisfactorily between 20-97%. Methods: In 2023, the Project for Hospital Policy on Breastfeeding (HPB) has been launched to promote breastfeeding in Italian Maternity Hospitals (MHs) as a joint initiative of the Italian Scientific Societies involved in perinatal care together with the National Midwife (FNOPO) and Nurse (FNOPI) Boards and with Vivere Onlus, a family association. The HBP Project has been designed as an uncontrolled before-after study to increase EBF rate at hospital discharge in the population of healthy, term infant with a normal weight at birth following an intervention bundle comprising: 1) Establishment of a local hospital Working Group; 2) Adoption of a hospital policy; 3) Implementation of breastfeeding monitoring; 4) Training for perinatal care professionals; 5) Enhanced implementation of the practices of skin-to-skin contact (SSC) and mother-baby rooming-in; 6) Development/Improvement of perinatal care protocols. Results: We report the pre-intervention assessment of 89 out of the 111 enrolled MHs (80.2%) at the beginning of the Project (Time 1 or T1). Almost all MHs (96.6%) have a multi-professional Breastfeeding Working Group, while a hospital policy on breastfeeding is available only in 48.2%. Moreover, only 56.2% of the 9,777 perinatal health workers have been trained in breastfeeding. Over a 1-month period, SSC has been practiced in the delivery room by 76.9% of 6,304 term healthy newborn infants and rooming-in by 83.4% of 6,735 healthy term newborns of normal weight at birth. Over a 4-month period, 69.1% of 33,367 healthy term newborns of normal birth weight were exclusively breastfed at hospital discharge. Noticeably, EBF rate of MHs ranges from 4% up to 100%, the second quartile being 73%. Conclusion: At T1 of the HPB Project, breastfeeding rates at hospital discharge for healthy, term infants with a normal weight at birth appear to be suboptimal among Italians MHs. Particularly, the range of EBF rates among participating centers is wide, with 50% of the MHs having EBF rate lower than 73%. Therefore, the ongoing HPB Project might represent not only an opportunity to increase the initiation of breastfeeding and to improve quality of health care in the whole study group of MHs, but possibly also to level differences between centers
Maternal Risk Factors for Respiratory Syncytial Virus Lower Respiratory Tract Infection in Otherwise Healthy Preterm and Term Infants: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
No full textBACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: To date, there is no published, formal assessment of all maternal risk factors for respiratory syncytial virus lower respiratory tract infection (RSV-LRTI) in infants. A systematic literature review and meta-analysis were undertaken to ascertain: What maternal risk factors are associated with an increased risk of RSV-LRTI in infants? METHODS: The systematic literature review used explicit methods to identify, select and analyze relevant data. PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library were searched (November 2022) using terms regarding: (1) RSV/LRTI; (2) risk factors; (3) pregnant/postpartum population. Bayesian meta-analysis compared RSV hospitalization (RSVH) risk in infants born to mothers with or without certain risk factors. RESULTS: A total of 2353 citations were assessed and 20 were included in the final review (10 individual studies; 10 pooled analyses). In 10 studies examining infants (<1 year) without comorbidities (primary outcome), 10 maternal risk factors were associated with RSV-LRTI/RSVH in multivariate analyses. Meta-analysis revealed smoking while pregnant increased infant RSVH risk by 2.01 (95% credible interval: 1.52-2.64) times, while breast-feeding was protective (0.73, 95% credible interval: 0.58-0.90). Risk scoring tools have reported that maternal risk factors contribute between 9% and 21% of an infant's total risk score for RSVH. CONCLUSIONS: A greater understanding of maternal risk factors and their relative contribution to infant RSV-LRTI will enable more accurate assessments of the impact of preventive strategies
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
Prevention of respiratory syncytial virus disease across the lifespan in Italy
No full textAbstract Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes substantial morbidity and mortality across the lifespan, with the highest burden seen in infants and older adults. Recently approved immunizing agents, including long-acting neutralizing monoclonal antibodies and a maternal vaccine for passive immunization of newborns, and three vaccines for adults aged 60 years and older who are vulnerable to RSV disease, have the potential to prevent severe RSV-associated disease if implemented successfully. The use of these agents will be implemented in some Italian regions over the next few months, although no consistent timelines or decisions for adoption at the national level are expected. A multidisciplinary group of experts in neonatology, obstetrics and gynecology, respiratory medicine, geriatric medicine, hygiene, and public health reviewed the evidence on RSV prevention and present here their considerations on implementing an RSV prevention strategy in Italy. Given the associated disease burden, it is essential to move quickly to deploy these agents in vulnerable populations, enhance surveillance to accurately detect/predict seasonal trends in RSV activity and measure the impact of prevention strategies. Continuing research combined with widespread use of more sensitive testing is needed to identify vulnerable populations and risk factors. Policies are needed to support these preventive measures in the Italian healthcare system, and access must be accompanied by educational initiatives and advocacy to promote acceptance by HCPs and the target population
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
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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