Cost-effectiveness of primary surgical versus primary medical management in the treatment of patients presenting with advanced glaucoma.

Synopsis: Advanced glaucoma is associated with sight loss. This within-trial economic evaluation compares medical and surgical management strategies. At 2 years, medication appears more cost-effective though longitudinal outcomes are an important subject in future research.

Primary trabeculectomy versus primary glaucoma eye drops for newly diagnosed advanced glaucoma: TAGS RCT.

Background: Patients diagnosed with advanced primary open-angle glaucoma are at a high risk of lifetime blindness. Uncertainty exists about whether primary medical management (glaucoma eye drops) or primary surgical treatment (augmented trabeculectomy) provide the best and safest patient outcomes.

Objectives: To compare primary medical management with primary surgical treatment (augmented trabeculectomy) in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma presenting with advanced disease in terms of health-related quality of life, clinical effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness.

Primary trabeculectomy for advanced glaucoma: pragmatic multicentre randomised controlled trial (TAGS).

Objective: To determine whether primary trabeculectomy or primary medical treatment produces better outcomes in term of quality of life, clinical effectiveness, and safety in patients presenting with advanced glaucoma.

Design: Pragmatic multicentre randomised controlled trial.

Setting: 27 secondary care glaucoma departments in the UK.

Baseline Characteristics of Participants in the Treatment of Advanced Glaucoma Study: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial.

Purpose: To report the baseline characteristics of participants enrolled in TAGS (Treatment of Advanced Glaucoma Study).

Design: Pragmatic randomized control trial (RCT).

Methods: Participants with newly diagnosed advanced glaucoma in at least 1 eye were recruited.

Ketamine as the anaesthetic for electroconvulsive therapy: the KANECT randomised controlled trial - CORRIGENDUM.

This notice describes a correction to the above mentioned paper.

Obesity in individuals with schizophrenia: a case controlled study in Scotland.

Background: Despite extensive clinical concern about rates of obesity in patients with schizophrenia, there is little evidence of the extent of this problem at a population level.

Aims: To estimate levels of obesity in a national population sample by comparing patients with schizophrenia with matched controls.

Method: We calculated levels of obesity for each patient with schizophrenia from the national Primary Care Clinical Informatics Unit database (n=4658) matched with age, gender and neighbourhood controls.

Treatment of Advanced Glaucoma Study: a multicentre randomised controlled trial comparing primary medical treatment with primary trabeculectomy for people with newly diagnosed advanced glaucoma-study protocol.

Background: Presentation with advanced glaucoma is the major risk factor for lifetime blindness. Effective intervention at diagnosis is expected to minimise risk of further visual loss in this group of patients.

Aim: To compare clinical and cost-effectiveness of primary medical management compared with primary surgery for people presenting with advanced open-angle glaucoma (OAG).

Ketamine as the anaesthetic for electroconvulsive therapy: the KANECT randomised controlled trial.

Ketamine has recently become an agent of interest as an acute treatment for severe depression and as the anaesthetic for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Subanaesthetic doses result in an acute reduction in depression severity while evidence is equivocal for this antidepressant effect with anaesthetic or adjuvant doses. Recent systematic reviews call for high-quality evidence from further randomised controlled trials (RCTs).

Differences in Cognitive Outcomes After ECT Depending on BDNF and COMT Polymorphisms.

Objective: The study aimed to explore cognitive outcomes after electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) depending on which version of common single nucleotide polymorphisms the patient expressed for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT).

Methods: A total of 87 patients from the clinical ECT service in Aberdeen, Scotland, were included in the study. Cognitive function testing (using Spatial Recognition Memory task from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery and Mini-Mental State Examination) and mood ratings (Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale) were performed before ECT, after 4 treatments, at the end of ECT and 1 and 3 months after the end of treatment.

Assessing the Association Between Electrical Stimulation Dose, Subsequent Cognitive Function and Depression Severity in Patients Receiving Bilateral Electroconvulsive Therapy for Major Depressive Disorder.

Objective: To assess the relationship between electrical stimulation administered to patients undergoing bilateral electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and subsequent measures of cognitive function and depression severity.

Methods: Stimulus dose titrated patients receiving bilateral ECT were assessed with the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) Spatial Recognition Memory test and Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) at baseline, after 4 ECT treatments and on course completion. Changes in CANTAB and MADRS scores were assessed in relation to electrical dosage, initial stimulus dose, and demographic variables using linear mixed models.

MADRS symptom subtypes in ECT-treated depressed patients: relationship to response and subsequent ECT.

Objective: This study aimed to explore the relationship of Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) symptom subtypes with response to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and subsequent ECT treatment within 12 months.

Methods: A consecutive sample of 414 patients with depression receiving ECT in the North East of Scotland was assessed by retrospective chart review. Response rate was defined as greater than or equal to 50% decrease in pretreatment total MADRS score or a posttreatment total MADRS less than or equal to 10.

Learning on the IGT follows emergence of knowledge but not differential somatic activity.

The importance of unconscious autonomic activity vs. knowledge in influencing behavior on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) has been the subject of debate. The task's developers, Bechara and colleagues, have claimed that behavior on the IGT is influenced by somatic activity and that this activity precedes the emergence of knowledge about the task contingencies sufficient to guide behavior.

Multiple behavioural impulsivity tasks predict prospective alcohol involvement in adolescents.

Aims: We investigated reciprocal prospective relationships between multiple behavioural impulsivity tasks (assessing delay discounting, risk-taking and disinhibition) and alcohol involvement (consumption, drunkenness and problems) among adolescents. We hypothesized that performance on the tasks would predict subsequent alcohol involvement, and that alcohol involvement would lead to increases in behavioural impulsivity over time.

Design: Cross-lagged prospective design in which impulsivity and alcohol involvement were assessed five times over 2 years (once every 6 months, on average).

Usefulness of treatment reports for electroconvulsive therapy.

Objectives: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is often given by a specialist ECT team on behalf of a patient's treating psychiatrist. A key aspect of this interface is the communication between these care teams. This study describes the introduction of an ECT treatment report at the Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen.

Effects of 0.4 g/kg alcohol on attentional bias and alcohol-seeking behaviour in heavy and moderate social drinkers.

Alcohol intoxication is known to influence attentional biases for alcohol-related cues and alcohol-seeking behaviour. It is unknown if heavier drinkers are more or less sensitive to these effects of alcohol, or whether the effects of alcohol on attentional bias are associated with subsequent alcohol-seeking behaviour. In the present study, 55 social drinkers were administered either 0.

Alcohol approach tendencies in heavy drinkers: comparison of effects in a Relevant Stimulus-Response Compatibility task and an approach/avoidance Simon task.

Several recent studies suggest that alcohol-related cues elicit automatic approach tendencies in heavy drinkers. A variety of tasks have been used to demonstrate these effects, including Relevant Stimulus-Response Compatibility (R-SRC) tasks and variants of Simon tasks. Previous work with normative stimuli suggests that the R-SRC task may be more sensitive than Simon tasks because the activation of approach tendencies may depend on encoding of the stimuli as alcohol-related, which occurs in the R-SRC task but not in Simon tasks.

Episodic and prototype models of category learning.

The question of what processes are involved in the acquisition and representation of categories remains unresolved despite several decades of research. Studies using the well-known prototype distortion task (Posner and Keele in J Exp Psychol 77:353-363, 1968) delineate three candidate models. According to exemplar-based models, we memorize each instance of a category and when asked to decide whether novel items are category members or not, the decision is explicitly based on a similarity comparison with each stored instance.

Alcohol expectancy moderates attentional bias for alcohol cues in light drinkers.

Aims: Theoretical models suggest that attentional bias for alcohol-related cues develops because cues signal the availability of alcohol, and the expectancy elicited by alcohol cues is responsible for the maintenance of attentional bias among regular drinkers. We investigated the moderating role of alcohol expectancy on attentional bias for alcohol-related cues.

Design: Within-subjects experimental design.

The effects of priming restrained versus disinhibited behaviour on alcohol-seeking in social drinkers.

Background: Deficient response inhibition (disinhibition) may play a causal role in alcohol abuse, with impaired inhibition occurring prior to, and acting as a risk factor for, subsequent alcohol problems. We experimentally primed either disinhibited or restrained behaviour while participants completed a Stop-Signal task, before examining the effects on alcohol-seeking behaviour.

Methods: Fifty three social drinkers completed a Stop-Signal task following instructions that either emphasised rapid responding at the expense of successful inhibition (Disinhibition group) or vice versa (Restrained group).

Neuropsychological consequence of soccer play in adolescent U.K. School team soccer players.

To assess mild head injury effects in adolescent soccer players, neuropsychological performance across school team soccer players, rugby players and noncontact sport players was assessed in a quasi-experimental cross-sectional design. One hundred eighty-five males were tested (ages 13-16; response rate 55%) and 86 contributed data to the analyses after exclusion for recent concussion and overlapping sports participation. Soccer players showed lower premorbid intellectual functioning, but neither soccer players nor rugby players showed neuropsychological decrement compared with noncontact sport players.

Risk-taking but not response inhibition or delay discounting predict alcohol consumption in social drinkers.

Impulsivity and risk-taking are multi-dimensional constructs that have been implicated in heavy drinking and alcohol problems. Our aim was to identify the specific component of impulsivity or risk-taking that explained the greatest variance in heavy and problem drinking among a sample of young adults recruited from a university population. Participants (N=75) completed a test battery comprising two commonly used response inhibition tasks (a Go/No-Go task and a Stop signal task), a delay discounting procedure, and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) as a measure of risk-taking.

An ERP analysis of recognition and categorization decisions in a prototype-distortion task.

Background: Theories of categorization make different predictions about the underlying processes used to represent categories. Episodic theories suggest that categories are represented in memory by storing previously encountered exemplars in memory. Prototype theories suggest that categories are represented in the form of a prototype independently of memory.