Case Report: melioidosis - poor compliance resulting in a relapse

No abstract availabl

Development and preliminary validation of a questionnaire to measure satisfaction with home care in Greece: an exploratory factor analysis of polychoric correlations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The primary aim of this study was to develop and psychometrically test a Greek-language instrument for measuring satisfaction with home care. The first empirical evidence about the level of satisfaction with these services in Greece is also provided.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The questionnaire resulted from literature search, on-site observation and cognitive interviews. It was applied in 2006 to a sample of 201 enrollees of five home care programs in the city of Thessaloniki and contains 31 items that measure satisfaction with individual service attributes and are expressed on a 5-point Likert scale. The latter has been usually considered in practice as an interval scale, although it is in principle ordinal. We thus treated the variable as an ordinal one, but also employed the traditional approach in order to compare the findings. Our analysis was therefore based on ordinal measures such as the polychoric correlation, Kendall's Tau b coefficient and ordinal Cronbach's alpha. Exploratory factor analysis was followed by an assessment of internal consistency reliability, test-retest reliability, construct validity and sensitivity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Analyses with ordinal and interval scale measures produced in essence very similar results and identified four multi-item scales. Three of these were found to be reliable and valid: socioeconomic change, staff skills and attitudes and service appropriateness. A fourth dimension -service planning- had lower internal consistency reliability and yet very satisfactory test-retest reliability, construct validity and floor and ceiling effects. The global satisfaction scale created was also quite reliable. Overall, participants were satisfied -yet not very satisfied- with home care services. More room for improvement seems to exist for the socio-economic and planning aspects of care and less for staff skills and attitudes and appropriateness of provided services.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The methods developed seem to be a promising tool for the measurement of home care satisfaction in Greece.</p

Perinatal dengue infection due to vertical transmission

Dengue is a mosquito born flavivirus infection, endemic in Southeast Asia 1. Vertical transmission of dengue infection is rare 2 and there are only a fe

Assessment of diseases on short-duration pigeonpea in Sri Lanka

Results of a survey are presented. The diseases present were yellow mosaic, pigeon pea sterility mosaic virus, Cercospora and Phyllosticta leaf spots, bacterial leaf spot, powdery mildew, Phytophthora blight and web blight., Results of a survey are presented. The diseases present were yellow mosaic, pigeon pea sterility mosaic virus, Cercospora and Phyllosticta leaf spots, bacterial leaf spot, powdery mildew, Phytophthora blight and web blight

Metals and Metallothionein Expression in Relation to Progression of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu) in Sri Lanka

Chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology was investigated for metal relations in an endemic area by a cross-sectional study with CKD stages G1, G2, G3a, G3b, G4, G5 (ESRD), and endemic and nonendemic controls (EC and NEC) as groups. Subjects with the medical diagnosis were classified into groups by eGFR (SCr, CKD-EPI) and UACR of the study. It determined 24 metals/metalloids in plasma (ICPMS) and metallothionein (MT) mRNA in blood (RT-PCR). MT1A at G3b and MT2A throughout G2&ndash;G5 showed increased transcription compared to NEC (ANOVA, p &lt; 0.01). Both MT1A and MT2A remained metal-responsive as associations emerged between MT2A and human MT inducer Cr (in EC: r = 0.54, p &lt; 0.05, n = 14), and between MT1A and MT2A (in EC pooled with G1&ndash;G5: r = 0.58, p &lt; 0.001, n = 110). Human MT (hMT)-inducers, namely Zn, Cu, As, Pb, and Ni; &Sigma; hMT-inducers; 14 more non-inducer metals; and &Sigma; MT-binding metals remained higher (p &lt; 0.05) in EC as compared to NEC. Declining eGFR or CKD progression increased the burden of Be, Mg, Al, V, Co, Ni, Rb, Cs, Ba, Mn, Zn, Sr, &Sigma; hMT-inducers, and &Sigma; MT-binding metals in plasma, suggesting an MT role in the disease. MT1A/2A mRNA followed UACR (PCA, Dendrogram: similarity, 57.7%). The study provides evidence that proteinuric chronic renal failure may increase plasma metal levels where blood MT2A could be a marker

Case Report: melioidosis - poor compliance resulting in a relapse

No abstract availabl