Point of care testing for C-reactive protein

Copyright © 2006 Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Copyright to Australian Family Physician. Reproduced with permission. Permission to reproduce must be sought from the publisher, The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.BACKGROUND: New approaches are needed to reduce antibiotic usage in respiratory tract infections in general practice without compromising patient safety. Point of care tests for C-reactive protein (CRP) are now being used for this purpose in some European countries. OBJECTIVE: Current knowledge about the CRP response in respiratory tract infections is presented, as well as the usefulness of applying the test when sinusitis and pneumonia may be suspected. DISCUSSION: A promising ability of the test in ruling in or out severe infection has been demonstrated in clinical studies. There are still controversies about the use of the CRP test in respiratory tract infections, however clinical research supports its use for some conditions, and therefore introduction into Australian general practice should be considered. Further evaluation of its utility is needed.H. Melbye and N. Stock

What factors facilitate a GP survey high response rate?

Copyright © 2005 Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Copyright to Australian Family Physician. Reproduced with permission. Permission to reproduce must be sought from the publisher, The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.General practitioners are inundated with surveys seeking information about their beliefs and practices by a range of health researchers, policy makers and marketers. Their time for these surveys is often unpaid, or under-rewarded, or impinges on other responsibilities. If response rates are too low – something all too common – results are impossible or difficult to interpret.J. Fielding, H. Clothier, N. Stocks N and H. Kell

An Examination of the Impact of Alternative Accounting Procedures on Risk-Taking Behavior: A Test of Prospect Theory

Many business decisions which use accounting information are made under conditions of uncertainty and are biased, in part, on relative gains and losses. Therefore, accounting settings appear to be a particularily appropriate setting to test the predictions of prospect theory. To date, little accounting research has been conducted which has used prospect theory as its theoretical foundation. Using a discount period decision under risk, practicing accountants were asked to indicated he likelihood of making an inventory payment. The results of the study provide limited support fo prospect theory propositions. It also is interesting that the perceptions of and ethical conflict by subjects significantly impacts the likelihood assessments made by the subjects

An Examination of the Impact of Alternative Accounting Procedures on Risk-Taking Behavior: A Test of Prospect Theory

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Calculation of electronic properties of amorphous alloys

We describe the application of the locally-self-consistent-multiple-scattering (LSMS)[1] method to amorphous alloys. The LSMS algorithm is optimized for the Intel XP/S-150, a multiple-instruction-multiple-data parallel computer with 1024 nodes and 2 compute processors per node. The electron density at each site is determined by solving the multiple scattering equation for atoms within a specified distance of the atom under consideration. Because this method is carried out in real space it is ideal for treating amorphous alloys. We have adapted the code to the calculation of the electronic properties of amorphous alloys. In these calculations we determine the potentials in the atomic sphere approximation self consistently at each site, unlike previous calculations[2] where we determined the potentials self consistently at an average site. With these self-consistent potentials, we then calculate electronic properties of various amorphous alloy systems. We present calculated total electronic densities of states for amorphous Ni$_{80}$P$_{20}$ and Ni$_{40}$Pd$_{40}$P$_{20}$ with 300 atoms in a supercell.Comment: 10 pages, plain tex, 2 figures. Paper accepted for publication in Proceedings of LAM-9 and Journal of non-Crystalline Solids. Please request preprints from J.C. Swihart ([email protected]

Statin prescribing in Australia: socioeconomic and sex differences - A cross-sectional study

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.OBJECTIVE: To assess if there are any differences in statin prescribing across Australia by socioeconomic status or sex and to relate prescribing rates to coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality rates. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study using data on statin prescribing by age, sex and patient postcode for the period May to December 2002. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: The Australian population, stratified by sex and quintile of Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage (IRSD). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Age-standardised rates of statin scripts per 1000 population per month for each sex and IRSD quintile. RESULTS: 9.1 million prescriptions for statins were supplied between May and December 2002, for a total cost of $570 million. The age-standardised rates for statin prescribing in women varied from 56.9 (95% CI, 56.6–57.2) scripts per 1000 population per month in the most disadvantaged socioeconomic quintile through 53.4 (95% CI, 53.0–53.7), 50.3 (95% CI, 50.0–50.6), 48.4 (95% CI, 48.1–48.7) to 46.3 (95% CI, 46.0–46.6) in the least disadvantaged quintile. For men the figures were 52.6 (95% CI, 52.3–52.9), 50.9 (95% CI, 50.6–51.2), 48.8 (95% CI, 48.6–49.1), 47.7 (95% CI, 47.4–47.9), and 51.9 (95% CI, 51.6–52.2). There was a significant linear association between statin prescribing and CHD mortality by quintile of socioeconomic disadvantage in women (weighted least squares slope, 0.380; 95% CI, 0.366 to 0.395; P < 0.0001), but not in men (slope, −0.002; 95% CI, −0.010 to 0.006; P = 0.65). Conclusions: Our results suggest that in men there is either overprescribing of statins in the highest socioeconomic quintile or underprescribing in the lowest. Furthermore, contrary to expectation, women — relative to men — are prescribed statins at higher rates at lower levels of risk (using CHD deaths as a proxy MJA 2004; 180: 229–231 measure of risk).Nigel P Stocks, Philip Ryan, Heather McElroy and James Alla

Acute bronchitis in Australian general practice - a prescription too far?

OBJECTIVE: To quantify how frequently general practitioners in Australia prescribe antibiotics for acute bronchitis, which antibiotics are used, and whether there are subgroups of patients who might benefit from their use. DESIGN AND SETTING: A retrospective descriptive study using 3 sets of data: Australian Sentinel Practice Research Network, the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) Program, and the General Practice Research Network (GPRN). RESULTS: Over 50% of all patients with ‘acute bronchitis’ had either chest or one or more systemic signs on physical examination. The rate of antibiotic prescribing for acute bronchitis was 79.6% of acute bronchitis visits using BEACH data 2001–2002 and varied from 68.6 (95% CI: 62.8–74.5%) in 2001 to 78.7 (95% CI: 72.2–85.2%) in 1999 using GPRN data. Penicillins, followed by macrolides, were the most commonly prescribed antibiotics. DISCUSSION: Australian GPs frequently prescribe antibiotics for ‘acute bronchitis’ despite guidelines to the contrary. One reason may be that many patients present with chest or systemic signs.N.P. Stocks, H. McElroy, G.P. Sayer and K. Duszynsk

Cluster coherent potential approximation for electronic structure of disordered alloys

We extend the single-site coherent potential approximation (CPA) to include the effects of non-local disorder correlations (alloy short-range order) on the electronic structure of random alloy systems. This is achieved by mapping the original Anderson disorder problem to that of a selfconsistently embedded cluster. This cluster problem is then solved using the equations of motion technique. The CPA is recovered for cluster size $N_{c}=1$, and the disorder averaged density-of-states (DOS) is always positive definite. Various new features, compared to those observed in CPA, and related to repeated scattering on pairs of sites, reflecting the effect of SRO are clearly visible in the DOS. It is explicitly shown that the cluster-CPA method always yields positive-definite DOS. Anderson localization effects have been investigated within this approach. In general, we find that Anderson localization sets in before band splitting occurs, and that increasing partial order drives a continuous transition from an Anderson insulator to an incoherent metal.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures. submitted to PR