Covering various Needs in Temporal Annotation: a Proposal of Extension of ISO TimeML that Preserves Upward Compatibility

International audienceThis paper reports a critical analysis of the ISO TimeML standard, in the light of several experiences of temporal annotation that were conducted on spoken French. It shows that the norm suffers from weaknesses that should be corrected to fit a larger variety of needs in NLP and in corpus linguistics. We present our proposition of some improvements of the norm before it will be revised by the ISO Committee in 2017. These modifications concern mainly (1) Enrichments of well identified features of the norm: temporal function of TIMEX time expressions, additional types for TLINK temporal relations; (2) Deeper modifications concerning the units or features annotated: clarification between time and tense for EVENT units, coherence of representation between temporal signals (the SIGNAL unit) and TIMEX modifiers (the MOD feature); (3) A recommendation to perform temporal annotation on top of a syntactic (rather than lexical) layer (temporal annotation on a treebank)

[Incidence, mortality and prevalence of cancers in metropolitan France].

International audienceIncidence, mortality and prevalence of cancers in metropolitan France. About 400,000 new people are diagnosed with cancer every year in metropolitan France, including 53.5% men and 46.5% women. Cancer is also the cause of almost 150,000 annual deaths of which 56% occur in men and 44% in women. Nearly 3.8 million people (1.8 million men and 2.0 million women) aged 15 and over have had cancer during their lifetime and are alive in 2017, or 7.0 % of the population aged 15 and over

Data from: Asthma-like symptoms in homeless children in the Greater Paris area in 2013: prevalence, associated factors and utilization of healthcare services in the ENFAMS survey

Asthma remains poorly studied in homeless children. We sought to estimate the prevalence of asthma-like symptoms (ALS) and to identify the factors associated with ALS and healthcare service utilisation. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey of a random sample of sheltered homeless families was conducted by interviewing 801 parents of children (0–12 years) in 17 languages. ALS were defined as wheezing or night cough without fever during the previous year. Poisson regression models with robust error variance were used to compute prevalence ratios (PR) for factors associated with ALS and healthcare service utilisation for ALS. Results: The prevalence of ALS among the children was 19.9%. Poor housing sanitation was significantly associated with ALS, as being born in the European Union. Most of the children with ALS had used healthcare services (85.4%). The main barriers to accessing such services were having lived in France for less than 49 months, having difficulties in French and living in poor housing conditions. Conclusion: ALS prevalence seemed lower than in the general child population, possibly because of the children's origins. Environmental factors associated with ALS point to the need to improve the indoor environment of family shelters. The relatively high rate of healthcare service utilisation should not overshadow existing barriers

Fertility preservation and cancer: How many persons are concerned?

International audienceOBJECTIVE:A significant proportion of cancer survivors experience chronic health sequelae, one of them being fertility impairment. However, even if many reports, guidelines and positions papers focus on fertility preservation and its needs, access to fertility preservation is not currently offered to all the patients concerned, and the targeted population is not well counted.STUDY DESIGN:A cross sectional study was conducted using the French cancer cohort, a cohort covering the whole French population and including around 7 million of cancer patients. Women under the age of 40 and men under the age of 60 included in the cancer cohort in 2013 who had, in the first year, cancer surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy were considered. Patients treated by surgery alone for cancers in locations distant from the reproductive organs, or being treated for a cancer the past 3 years were excluded. The number of patients concerned by fertility preservation was estimated at a national and regional level, and by cancer types.RESULTS:40,000 patients - 30,000 men under the age of 60 years and 10,000 women under the age of 40 years - were identified. A second estimation concerning women under the age of 35 and men under 50 reduced the number of patients to 17,200-10,400 men and 6800 women. The most frequent locations were malignant neoplasm of lymphoid and hematopoietic tissue, lung cancer, cervix uteri, prostate and colorectal cancer. In 2014, around 5 400 persons had a preservation.CONCLUSION:Around 17,200 cancer patients of reproductive age should be informed about the fertility preservation options available. Medical professionals have to better integrate in their daily practice fertility preservation

Quality comparison of electronic versus paper death certificates in France, 2010

BACKGROUND: Electronic death certification was established in France in 2007. A methodology based on intrinsic characteristics of death certificates was designed to compare the quality of electronic versus paper death certificates. METHODS: All death certificates from the 2010 French mortality database were included. Three specific quality indicators were considered: (i) amount of information, measured by the number of causes of death coded on the death certificate; (ii) intrinsic consistency, explored by application of the International Classification of Disease (ICD) General Principle, using an international automatic coding system (Iris); (iii) imprecision, measured by proportion of death certificates where the selected underlying cause of death was imprecise. Multivariate models were considered: a truncated Poisson model for indicator (i) and binomial models for indicators (ii) and (iii). Adjustment variables were age, gender, and cause, place, and region of death. RESULTS: 533,977death certificates were analyzed. After adjustment, electronic death certificates contained 19% [17%-20%] more codes than paper death certificates for people deceased under 65 years, and 12% [11%-13%] more codes for people deceased over 65 years. Regarding deceased under and over 65 respectively, the ICD General Principle could be applied 2% [0%-4%] and 6% [5%-7%] more to electronic than to paper death certificates. The proportion of imprecise death certificates was 51% [46%-56%] lower for electronic than for paper death certificates. CONCLUSION: The method proposed to evaluate the quality of death certificates is easily reproducible in countries using an automatic coding system. According to our criteria, electronic death certificates are better completed than paper death certificates. The transition to electronic death certificates is positive in many aspects and should be promoted

ALS_ENFAMS

This data file contains all variables used for the analyses reported in our article published in PLOS One. It is a CSV file that contains 41 variables for 801 subjects. Data originate from the ENFAMS survey, a cross-sectional survey on sheltered homeless families in the Greater Paris Area in 2013. Further description of the data is available in the ReadMe file

Breast cancer screening: Impact on care pathways

International audienceBackground: Controversy persists concerning screening programs (SPs), related to a potential risk of overdiagnosis or the impact on survival. One of the main questions to be addressed concerns the aggressiveness of the related treatments.Methods: Using the "Cancer Cohort," a national-based cohort (medico-administrative database), all women between the ages of 50 and 74 years and treated in 2014 for incident breast cancer were compared, according to whether their diagnosis was made following a mammogram performed within the framework of the SP (SP group) or outside it (NSP group).Results: A total of 23 788 women were identified: 13 530 (57%) in the SP group and 10 258 (43%) in the NSP group. The women in the SP group had a higher rate of in situ or localized invasive breast cancer. They had a higher rate of breast-conserving surgery (82% vs 70%), and a lower rate of chemotherapy (34% vs 53%). These findings were observed irrespective of the stage. They had a higher rate of pathways involving breast-conserving surgery followed by radiotherapy. Among women with metastatic cancer, those in the SP group had a lower proportion of liver, lung, brain, and bone metastases, and a higher proportion of lymph node metastases (other than axillary), irrespective of the time to onset of the metastases.Conclusion: The women in whom cancer was diagnosed following a mammogram performed in the context of the SP had less advanced cancer and less aggressive treatments. This observational study helps illustrate the benefit of the SP in France using a different approach

Factors associated with asthma-like symptoms—univariate and multivariate analyses.

<p>Factors associated with asthma-like symptoms—univariate and multivariate analyses.</p

Prevalence of wheezing and night cough without fever—comparison between different studies.

<p>Prevalence of wheezing and night cough without fever—comparison between different studies.</p