American Thoracic Society Journal news tips for March 2005 (second issue)
...han 25 percent score and 403 patients (58 percent) scoring higher than 25 percent. However, among the patients who died, 71 percent had test scores under 25 percent. The investigators recommend that the new test be used in future assessments of patients with COPD. The study is published in the second issu...Even mild depression increases long-term mortality in heart failure
... score of eight or greater. In our study, patients scoring seven or higher had a 51 percent higher risk of dying. "This adverse association of depression and increased long-term mortality was independent of other factors, including age, marriage, cardiac function and the root cause of the heart failure," Jia...Balancing care decisions for gravely ill patients
...resources to patients' needs by using a prognostic scoring scale to identify patients who have a meaningful chance of survival in the hospital and who have a functional recovery. By understanding the information, it might be possible to favorably shift resources toward patients with a good chance of survival...Feb. 1, 2005, Annals of Internal Medicine tip sheet
...omplications were identified using a commonly used scoring system, the Pneumonia Severity Index. An editorial writer says that the decision to treat a patient with community-acquired pneumonia at home or in the hospital is very important (Editorial, p. 215). Inpatient care is expensive, and outpatient care h...Health report-card fears make doctors forgo potential life-saving heart treatment
...porting of physician-specific mortality rates. The scoring system attempts to not penalize physicians as much when a more severely ill patient dies following a procedure; yet 85 percent of those surveyed believed that the risk adjustment model used in New York is not sufficient to avoid punishing physicians ...Magnetic bracelets reduce the pain of osteoarthritis
...nges in pain were recorded using a recognised pain scoring scale. They found a significant reduction in pain scores between the standard and dummy magnet groups. The results for the weak magnet group were similar to those of the dummy magnets, and this suggests that the magnetic strength of the bracelet is i...Advances emerging in hepatitis management
... The Knodell inflammatory score is a numerical scoring system (0-18) that grades the degree of inflammati... biopsies, and the Ishak fibrosis score (0-6) is a scoring system that stages the degree of fibrosis in liver biopsies. A Phase I/II Dose Escalation Trial As...Donor livers not consistently allocated according to medical need
... for Organ Sharing. The MELD score is an objective scoring system of medical characteristics predictive of prognosis, with minimal emphasis on waiting time as a priority for transplantation. However, recommendations to increase and standardize the size of the area of organ allocation has not been implemented...Seal of approval scheme needed for complementary and alternative websites
...bsites stood out for their excellent quality, both scoring 14 Quackwatch and Bandolier." said Ms Schmidt. "Two listed the HON code of approval [2] the US National Cancer Institute Cancer Facts, and Quackwatch." The survey also scored the sites for whether their information could harm patients. Three of t...Online tool estimates long-term chance of surviving prostate cancer
...emographic and clinical variables, propensity risk scoring was used to develop survival probability estimates for both patients and controls. Because the calculator, and the companion look-up tables published in the April issue of the Journal of Urology, provide a comparison with men with similar characteris...2004 Geriatric Oral Research Award to Slade
...and technically advanced in terms of structure and scoring methods. He has used this measure in a wide variety of settings to expand our understanding of the health and quality-of-life outcomes of dental and oral diseases, and played a major role in a complex international collaborative study which examined ...Los Angeles kids benefit from new asthma identification process
... utilizes a specially designed parental survey and scoring method, along with a school-based distribution pro...t. Researchers used a complete and an abbreviated scoring method to analyze 4,110 surveys collected from 210 classrooms that had a survey return rate of at le...New standard proposed for coronary artery calcium screening
...iety of North America (RSNA). "The original way of scoring calcium was good, but it had weaknesses," said Cyn.... "The problem has been in the variability of the scoring in CAC screening," Dr. McCollough said. "Every day, there are a variety of CT scanners using differ...Heart disease risk in British men is overestimated
Current scoring methods over-predict the risk of death from coronary heart disease in British men, according to a study in this week's BMJ. Researchers assessed the accuracy of the Framingham risk equation for coronary heart disease in 6,643 British men aged 40-59 ...Multi-hospital angioplasty improvement effort reduces deaths and complications
... 2001, the researchers developed a simple 10-point scoring mechanism that clinicians can use. The more points...e get half a point back. Using this simple bedside scoring mechanism, the team hopes clinicians and patients can make better decisions about angioplasty and dr...A picture perfect test of well-being: Graphic assessment tool tunes into life satisfaction
... the scale that best describes how they feel. For scoring purposes each box on each of the 10 sets of scales is assigned a number from 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 being the highest. The numbers are not used on the tool as presented to participants to avoid biasing their responses. Possible scores ...Study finds even healthcare professionals are sun worshipers
...s of protection and knowledge with oncology nurses scoring highest on sun protective behaviour and oncologists on knowledge. But, there were no significant differences in behaviour and no correlation between knowledge and behaviour scores. "These findings are consistent with studies in some other populations...Brief telephonic questionnaire detects early signs of dementia
...linical interviewer. In addition, an integer-based scoring system allows for easy scoring and interpretation of results within moments of completion. Although the initial reliability and val...American Thoracic Society Journal news tips for September 2003 (first issue)
...tages of using the CT/pulmonary function composite scoring in future clinical trials. However, they note that their conclusions were obtained in a small sample (21 subjects over 1 year) who had CF with minimal decreased pulmonary function and lung disease as determined by high resolution computerized scorin......and 26 being considered mildly depressed. Patients scoring above 27 were considered moderate to severely depressed. The researchers then examined the relationship of the depression scores with the subsequent mortality data. During the 12-year follow-up period, 10 percent of the patients who were never depres...