The clinical effectiveness of transurethral incision of the prostate : a systematic review of randomised controlled trials

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.Peer reviewedPostprin

State Transition Graphs for Semantic Analysis of Movement Behaviours

A behaviour can be defined as a sequence of states or activities occurring one after another. A behaviour consisting of a finite number of reoccurring states/activities may be represented by a directed weighted graph with nodes and edges corresponding, respectively, to the possible states and transitions between them, while the weights represent the probabilities or frequencies of the state and transition occurrences. The same applies to multiple behaviours sharing the same set of possible states. In analysis of movement data, state transition graphs can be used to represent semantic abstractions of mobility behaviours, where states correspond to semantic categories of visited places (such as ‘home’, ‘work’, ‘shop’), activities of moving objects (‘driving’, ‘walking’, ‘exercising’, etc.) or characteristics of the movement (‘straight movement’, ‘sharp turn’, ‘acceleration’, ‘stop’, etc.). Such a representation supports the exploration and analysis of the semantic aspect (i.e. the meaning or purposes) of movement. For comprehensive analysis of movement data, state transition graphs need to be combined with representations reflecting the spatial and temporal aspects of the movement. This requires appropriate coordination between different visual displays (graphs, maps and temporal views) and appropriate reaction to analytical operations applied to any of the representations of the same data. We define in an abstract way the reactions of a graph display to analytical operations of querying, partitioning and direct selection. We also propose visual and interactive display features supporting comparisons between data subsets and between results of different operations. We demonstrate the use of the display features by examples of real-world and synthetic data sets

Comparison of the Danish prostatic symptom score with the International Prostatic Symptom Score, the Madsen-Iversen and Boyarsky symptom indexes

Objective To compare the Danish Prostatic Symptom Score (DAN-PSS) with the International Prostatic Symptom Score (IPSS), Madsen-Iversen and Boyarsky symptom indexes in a clinical setting, and to evaluate the potential significance of ally differences in information obtained from these questionnaires. Patients and methods The study comprised two substudies: in the first, 205 patients with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) suggestive of bladder outlet obstruction (BOO), a Madsen-Iversen score >6 and a maximum flow rate of Results The DAN-PSS, IPSS and Madsen-Iversen indexes were correlated on a pairwise basis. The DAN-PSS and IPSS indexes bare significant construct validity in terms of correlation with the Madsen-Iversen system (Spearman's correlation coefficient, r(s)=0.51 and r(s)=0.45, respectively). The DAN-PSS and the IPSS indexes were correlated (r(s)=0.61). The DAN-PSS was more sensitive than the IPSS to changes after pharmacological treatment, with scores decreasing 70% and 29% (P Conclusions The DAN-PSS index is more sensitive than the IPSS. Madsen-Iversen and Boyarsky symptom indexes, incorporates important outcome events, includes a patient-weighting of each symptom, thereby reflecting better the patients' global assessment of outcome