Objectives: Two-thirds of patients with advanced cancer experience pain. Some of these patients have severe pain refractory to oral and parenteral medication, for whom intrathecal pain treatment could be an option. While intrathecal therapy is presently used with good results in clinical practice, the current evidence is limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study had two aims: (1) to determine the prevalence of musculoskeletal complaints among staff in primary care and (2) to determine to what extent lean maturity of the primary care unit can predict musculoskeletal complaints 1 year later.
Design: Descriptive, correlational and longitudinal design.
Setting: Primary care units in mid-Sweden.
Background: Chondrocyte-based cell therapy to repair cartilage has been used for >25 years despite current limitations. This work presents a new treatment option for cartilage lesions.
Hypothesis: High-quality hyaline cartilage microtissues called Cartibeads are capable of treating focal chondral lesions once implanted in the defect, by complete fusion of Cartibeads among themselves and their integration with the surrounding native cartilage and subchondral bone.
The repair of damaged articular cartilage is an unmet medical need. Chondrocyte-based cell therapy has been used to repair cartilage for over 20 years despite current limitations. Chondrocyte dedifferentiation upon expansion in monolayer is well known and is the main obstacle to their use as cell source for cartilage repair.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The knowledge about the impact of oral motor impairment in neuromuscular diseases (NMDs) is limited but increasing.
Objective: The aim of this review was to collect and compile knowledge on how muscle weakness in congenital or early developing NMDs directly or indirectly affects feeding, swallowing, speech and saliva control.
Methods: A literature search was performed in PubMed from January 1, 1998, to August 31, 2021.
Objective: The oral screen is a device commonly used for treatment of orofacial disorders. The objective of this exploratory study was to examine the effect of oral screen exercise on the muscle activity in the lips, submental complex, masseter muscle, and kinematic activity of the tongue base, soft palate, pharynx, and larynx in healthy adults. This was compared with the kinematic activity during a dry swallow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpen Science calls for transparent science and involvement of various stakeholders. Here are examples of and advice for meaningful stakeholder engagement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCycling of water quality constituents in lakes is affected by thermal stratification and homo-thermal conditions and other factors such as oligotrophication, eutrophication, and microbial activities. In addition, hydrological variability can cause greater differences in water residence time and cycling of constituents in man-made lakes (reservoirs) than in natural lakes. Thus, investigations are needed on vertical mixing of constituents in new impounded reservoirs, especially those constructed to supply domestic water.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Web-based respondent-driven sampling is a novel sampling method for the recruitment of participants for generating population estimates, studying social network characteristics, and delivering health interventions. However, the application, barriers and facilitators, and recruitment performance of web-based respondent-driven sampling have not yet been systematically investigated.
Objective: Our objectives were to provide an overview of published research using web-based respondent-driven sampling and to investigate factors related to the recruitment performance of web-based respondent-driven sampling.
One of the most important properties influencing the chemical behavior of an element is the electron affinity (EA). Among the remaining elements with unknown EA is astatine, where one of its isotopes, At, is remarkably well suited for targeted radionuclide therapy of cancer. With the At anion being involved in many aspects of current astatine labeling protocols, the knowledge of the electron affinity of this element is of prime importance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Household surveys are the main source of demographic, health and socio-economic data in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). To conduct such a survey, census population information mapped into enumeration areas (EAs) typically serves a sampling frame from which to generate a random sample. However, the use of census information to generate this sample frame can be problematic as in many LMIC contexts, such data are often outdated or incomplete, potentially introducing coverage issues into the sample frame.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Lean is commonly adopted in healthcare to increase quality of care and efficiency. Few studies of Lean involve staff-related outcomes, and few have a longitudinal design. Thus, the aim was to examine the extent to which changes over time in Lean maturity are associated with changes over time in care-giving, thriving and exhaustion, as perceived by staff, with a particular emphasis on the extent to which job demands and job resources, as perceived by staff, have a moderated mediation effect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis Article was mistakenly not made Open Access when originally published; this has now been amended, and information about the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License has been added into the 'Additional information' section.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to describe Lean maturity in primary care using a questionnaire based on Liker's description of Lean, complemented with observations; and second, to determine the extent to which Lean maturity is associated with quality of care measured as staff-rated satisfaction with care and adherence to national guidelines (NG). High Lean maturity indicates adoption of all Lean principles throughout the organization and by all staff.
Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected using a survey based on Liker's four principles, divided into 16 items ( n=298 staff in 45 units).
In the version of this Article originally published, the affiliation for author Catherine Linard was incorrectly stated as 'Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK'. The correct affiliation is 'Spatial Epidemiology Lab (SpELL), Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium'. The affiliation for author Hongjie Yu was also incorrectly stated as 'Department of Statistics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe global population at risk from mosquito-borne diseases-including dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika-is expanding in concert with changes in the distribution of two key vectors: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. The distribution of these species is largely driven by both human movement and the presence of suitable climate. Using statistical mapping techniques, we show that human movement patterns explain the spread of both species in Europe and the United States following their introduction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe breadcrumbs we leave behind when using our mobile phones—who somebody calls, for how long, and from where—contain unprecedented insights about us and our societies. Researchers have compared the recent availability of large-scale behavioral datasets, such as the ones generated by mobile phones, to the invention of the microscope, giving rise to the new field of computational social science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Travel restrictions were implemented on an unprecedented scale in 2015 in Sierra Leone to contain and eliminate Ebola virus disease. However, the impact of epidemic travel restrictions on mobility itself remains difficult to measure with traditional methods. New 'big data' approaches using mobile phone data can provide, in near real-time, the type of information needed to guide and evaluate control measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Ivacaftor is the first cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) modulator demonstrating clinical benefit in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). As ivacaftor is intended for chronic, lifelong use, understanding long-term effects is important for patients and healthcare providers.
Objective: This ongoing, observational, postapproval safety study evaluates clinical outcomes and disease progression in ivacaftor-treated patients using data from the US and the UK CF registries following commercial availability.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
April 2018
Population numbers at local levels are fundamental data for many applications, including the delivery and planning of services, election preparation, and response to disasters. In resource-poor settings, recent and reliable demographic data at subnational scales can often be lacking. National population and housing census data can be outdated, inaccurate, or missing key groups or areas, while registry data are generally lacking or incomplete.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mathematical models of human mobility have demonstrated a great potential for infectious disease epidemiology in contexts of data scarcity. While the commonly used gravity model involves parameter tuning and is thus difficult to implement without reference data, the more recent radiation model based on population densities is parameter-free, but biased. In this study we introduce the new impedance model, by analogy with electricity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe detrimental effects on breathing pattern during multiple breath inert gas washout (MBW) have been described with different inhaled gases [100% oxygen (O) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF)] but detailed comparisons are lacking. N- and SF-based tests were performed during spontaneous quiet sleep in 10 healthy infants aged 0.7-1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ R Soc Interface
April 2017
Improved understanding of geographical variation and inequity in health status, wealth and access to resources within countries is increasingly being recognized as central to meeting development goals. Development and health indicators assessed at national or subnational scale can often conceal important inequities, with the rural poor often least well represented. The ability to target limited resources is fundamental, especially in an international context where funding for health and development comes under pressure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: During the past decade, the concept of Lean has spread rapidly within the healthcare sector, but there is a lack of instruments that can measure staff's perceptions of Lean adoption. Thus, the aim of the present study was to develop a questionnaire measuring Lean in healthcare, based on Liker's description of Lean, by adapting an existing instrument developed for the service sector.
Methods: A mixed-method design was used.