Easy read health information for people with intellectual disabilities: A linguistic discourse analysis. What happens to language when it is simplified?

Introduction: Easy Read health documents prepared for people with intellectual disabilities are often generated from Standard Texts. Language in Easy Read versions is typically assumed to be simpler. However, simplification of language may have unintended consequences.

An open randomized controlled trial of the effects of linguistic simplification and mediation on the comprehension of "easy read" text by people with intellectual disabilities.

Background: This trial aimed to measure the effects of extrinsic and intrinsic factors on users' comprehension of health information provided in adapted written "easy read" material.

Method: Sixty adults with intellectual disabilities undertook The Easy Read Task, randomly allocated with stratification by reading ability to one of four conditions (with and without simplified language/with and without mediation).

Results: Neither linguistic complexity of the text nor mediation independently or combined made a significant difference to the understanding of information.

Developing a new empathy-specific admissions test for applicants to medical schools: A discourse-pragmatic approach.

The ability to empathise with patients is an important professional skill for doctors. Medical students practise this skill as part of their medical education, and are tested on their use of empathy within their final examination. Evidence shows that appropriate training makes a difference but that natural aptitude also plays a role.

Patient-centred communication in British, Italian and Spanish ‘Ask-the-Expert’ healthcare websites.

Existing studies on the online asynchronous consultation mode afforded by ‘Ask-the-Expert’ health websites (e.g. Thomson et al.

DNA ploidy, S-phase, and steroid receptors in more than 127,000 breast cancer patients.

Several potential prognostic factors are available today for patients with breast cancer, and many more are being identified and studied. To evaluate the clinical utility of these factors, it will be necessary to measure them on a large number of patients, and then follow these patients so that multivariate survival analyses can be performed. The Oncology Research Network was established in 1986 by the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and Nichols Institute Reference Laboratories in order to evaluate the clinical utility of new prognostic factors for patients with primary breast cancer.

How to integrate steroid hormone receptor, flow cytometric, and other prognostic information in regard to primary breast cancer.

A large group of patients with node-positive breast cancer was divided into a training set (n = 851) and a validation set (n = 432) to demonstrate techniques for integrating steroid hormone receptor status, DNA flow cytometric findings, and other prognostic factors to predict patient survival. Multivariate analyses showed that estrogen receptor status, the number of involved axillary lymph nodes, patient age, S-phase fraction, progesterone receptor status, and tumor size were significant predictors of survival in patients with node-positive breast cancer. Techniques for optimizing and validating a cut point for a new prognostic factor and for examining alternative representations of prognostic factors were demonstrated.

Making the most of your prognostic factors: presenting a more accurate survival model for breast cancer patients.

Determining an appropriate level of adjuvant therapy is one of the most difficult facets of treating breast cancer patients. Although the myriad of prognostic factors aid in this decision, often they give conflicting reports of a patient's prognosis. What we need is a survival model which can properly utilize the information contained in these factors and give an accurate, reliable account of the patient's probability of recurrence.

Prediction of relapse or survival in patients with node-negative breast cancer by DNA flow cytometry.

More accurate prediction of the prognosis in women with node-negative breast cancer may improve physicians' ability to identify the patients most likely to benefit from systematic adjuvant therapy. With this in mind, we performed DNA flow-cytometric measurements of ploidy and the fraction of cells in the synthesis phase of the cell cycle (S-phase fraction) on 395 specimens of node-negative breast cancer from our bank of frozen tumors, using the aliquots of pulverized frozen tissue from steroid-receptor assays. The median duration of follow-up in patients still alive at the time of analysis was 59 months.

Male fertility study on N,N-dimethylacetamide administered by the inhalation route to Sprague-Dawley rats.

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAC) and mated to untreated virgin females. Mean analytical exposure concentrations were 40, 116, and 386 ppm, respectively. A control group was exposed to air containing no DMAC.

High-pressure liquid chromatographic studies of TCC and metabolites in experimental animals and man.

A reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) procedure for the analyses of 3,4,4'-trichlorocarbanilide (TCC) and its free and/or conjugated metabolic products in plasma/serum in described. A rapid, effective clean-up procedure, prior to chromatographic evaluation, involves a single-step combined protein removal and THF extraction. Detection of the TCC moiety after HPLC separation is by UV absorption at 265 nm; quantitation by peak height measurement.