Heart in art: cardiovascular diseases in novels, films, and paintings.

BACKGROUND: Understanding representations of disease in various art genres provides insights into how patients and health care providers view the diseases. It can also be used to enhance patient care and stimulate patient self-management. METHODS: This paper reviews how cardiovascular diseases are represented in novels, films, and paintings: myocardial infarction, aneurysm, hypertension, stroke, heart transplantation, Marfan's disease, congestive heart failure. Various search systems and definitions were used to help identify sources of representations of different cardiovascular diseases. The representations of the different diseases were considered separately. The Common Sense Model was used a theoretical model to outline illness perceptions and self-management in the various identified novels, films, and paintings. RESULTS: Myocardial infarction followed by stroke were the most frequently detailed diseases in all three art genres. This reflects their higher prevalence. Representations ranged from biomedical details through to social and psychological consequences of the diseases. CONCLUSIONS: Artistic representations of cardiovascular diseases reflect cognitions, emotions, and images of prevalent disease. These representations shape views and behaviour of ill and healthy persons regarding heart diseases. As these representations are amenable to change, they deserve further research, which may be instrumental in improving the quality of life of persons struck by cardiovascular diseases. Changing illness perceptions appears to be a method to improve self-management and thereby quality of life in patients with various cardiovascular diseases

The beneficial effect of hydroxyapatite lasts: A randomized radiostereometric trial comparing hydroxyapatite-coated, uncoated, and cemented tibial components for up to 16 years

Analysis and Stochastic

Radiostereometry and new prostheses

Optimising joint reconstruction management in arthritis and bone tumour patient

The Role of Individual Variables, Organizational Variables and Moral Intensity Dimensions in Libyan Management Accountants’ Ethical Decision Making

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world

Automatic radiographic quantification of hand osteoarthritis; accuracy and sensitivity to change in joint space width in a phantom and cadaver study

This is the final version of the article. Available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.OBJECTIVE: To validate a newly developed quantification method that automatically detects and quantifies the joint space width (JSW) in hand radiographs. Repeatability, accuracy and sensitivity to changes in JSW were determined. The influence of joint location and joint shape on the measurements was tested. METHODS: A mechanical micrometer set-up was developed to define and adjust the true JSW in an acrylic phantom joint and in human cadaver-derived phalangeal joints. Radiographic measurements of the JSW were compared to the true JSW. Repeatability, systematic error (accuracy) and sensitivity (defined as the smallest detectable difference (SDD)) were determined. The influence of joint position on the JSW measurement was assessed by varying the location of the acrylic phantom on the X-ray detector with respect to the X-ray beam and the influence of joint shape was determined by using morphologically different human cadaver joints. RESULTS: The mean systematic error was 0.052 mm in the phantom joint and 0.210 mm in the cadaver experiment. In the phantom experiments, the repeatability was high (SDD = 0.028 mm), but differed slightly between joint locations (p = 0.046), and a change in JSW of 0.037 mm could be detected. Dependent of the joint shape in the cadaver hand, a change in JSW between 0.018 and 0.047 mm could be detected. CONCLUSIONS: The automatic quantification method is sensitive to small changes in JSW. Considering the published data of JSW decline in the normal and osteoarthritic population, the first signs of OA progression with this method can be detected within 1 or 2 years.This work was funded by the Dutch Arthritis Association (Reumafonds). The study sponsor had no involvement in study design, data collection, data analysis, or interpretation of the results

Concerns About Exercise Are Related to Walk Test Results in Pulmonary Rehabilitation for Patients with COPD

# The Author(s). This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com 2010 Background Although international guidelines on pulmonary rehabilitation acknowledge that psychological factors contribute to exercise intolerance in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the few empirical studies investigating this association have found inconsistent results. Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate whether negative affect and beliefs about exercise of patients with COPD would be related to baseline 6-min walk (6-MW) test results in a pulmonary rehabilitation setting, after correction for physical variables (sex, age, height, weight, and lung function). A second aim was to examine whethe