Book Review: Towards a Practical Guide to the Therapy of the Borderline Patient

EFFECTIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH BORDERLINE PATIENTS:CASE STUDIES Robert J. Waldinger, M.D .John G. Gunderson, M.D. New York, Macmillan 1987, 232 page

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An exhibition of paintings of the American Old West caught my attention one afternoon, after I had wandered across the street from our affiliate V.A. outpatient clinic to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A popular theme among these romanticized views of the American frontier was the image of the trapper; alone, silent figure working at the nation\u27s interface with the unknown. Several paintings depicted a custom known as the rendez-vous, a semi-annual occurrence wherein the trappers gathered eastward to river outposts in order to socialize, trade information and hand-made maps, restock supplies, and display for sale the bounty gleaned from the previous season

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As the Jefferson Journal of Psychiatry continues in its early growth phase, having accomplished a successful synthesis to become a national publication, we note its own apparent power of accommodation equal to the strain of fusing and adjusting internal and external changes. Psychiatric residency in itself demands such accommodation. A group of finishing second year residents were taking stock of the fir st half of this process: They noted the difficulty in reconciling their initial conceptions and intentions with the subsequent realization of the limits to knowledge or intervention; they called this disillusionment. Others spoke of a converse strengthening as better insight into the range of their abilities made them observe more clearly, act with more leverage. This is also disillusionment in the more positive sense

BEHAVIOR OF GREEDY SPARSE REPRESENTATION ALGORITHMS ON NESTED SUPPORTS

© 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This article was accepted for publication by IEEE in: Proc IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2013), Vancouver, Canada, 26-31 May 2013. pp. 5710-5714

Improving the Accuracy of DaT Scan Interpretation: a retrospective study to identify variables that standardize the review of DaT scans for idiopathic Parkinson’s disease

Introduction: Until recently, the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been based solely on clinical observation. The DaT scan is a tool that allows clinicians to visualize areas of neurodegeneration in PD and can help guide diagnosis. However, there is a discordance between clinical judgement and interpretation of DaT scans. In this study, we aim to improve the utility of DaT scans in the diagnosis of PD by identifying factors that can lead to a misdiagnosis and determine which image findings predict a clinical syndrome of parkinsonism. Methods: We will conduct a retrospective chart review to analyze DaT scans of 100 patients clinically diagnosed with PD. We will calculate the initial SN/SP/PPV/NPV for diagnoses based clinically compared to scan. We will then blindly review and reclassify all scans as definitely abnormal, definitely normal, or indeterminate. We will then recalculate a revised SN/SP/PPV/NPV to see if these values changed following reanalysis. From the discordant scans, we will attempt to identify factors that can further assist in interpreting DaT scans. Results: Patients have been identified and we are in the process of extracting data. We anticipate that after systematic, careful re-review, the specificity of DaT scans will be higher, due to improvement in identifying positive scans. Discussion: Imaging can be costly and cumbersome for patients and clinicians alike. Currently, DaT scans do not offer an improved accuracy in diagnosis over clinical judgement. If the interpretation of DaT scans can be optimized, they will be of greater utility to both patients and physicians