1,874 research outputs found

    Effectiveness of combined extracorporeal shock-wave therapy and hyaluronic acid injections for patients with shoulder pain due to rotator cuff tendinopathy: a person-centered approach with a focus on gender differences to treatment response

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    Background Rotator cuff (RC) tendinopathy is a common shoulder pain condition. Extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) and hyaluronic acid peritendinous injection are viable treatment options for RC tendinopathy. The aim of this study is to evaluate the response in two different therapeutic rehabilitative approaches, the combined treatment ESWT plus hyaluronic acid injections (E + Hy) compared to ESWT alone (ESWT-al), in a cohort of patients with RC tendinopathy according to gender differences. Methods This is a retrospective longitudinal cohort study of patients with painful RC tendinopathy. Patients that had received a clinical evaluation, a shoulder ultra sound examination, as well as the Shoulder Pain and Disability Index (SPADI) questionnaire, and the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) for pain at baseline, 1-month (T1) and 2-month follow-ups (T2) were included. Results Medical records of 53 patients were analyzed. In the comparison between baseline to T1 and similarly from baseline to T2, a statistically significant reduction has been reported in the NRS (p < 0.001) and in the SPADI (p < 0.001) in the entire study group. At T1, patients in the E + Hy compared to ESWT-al group, showed a slight but statistically significant reductions in both NRS and SPADI score, while these changes were more evident at T2 (p < 0.001). Interestingly, a gender dimorphism in NRS and in SPADI was found, with female patients that apparently responded better to the combined E + Hy compared to ESWT-al approach. Conclusion This retrospective cohort study suggests that the combination of ESWT plus HyA injections seems to be more effective than ESWT alone in RC tendinopathy in both genders. Moreover, in ESWT alone treatment, male patients reported better outcomes compared to females. However, further randomized controlled trials should be structured to confirm and enforce these conclusions

    A new neurocognitive interpretation of shoulder position sense during reaching: unexpected competence in the measurement of extracorporeal space

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    Background.The position sense of the shoulder joint is important during reaching. Objective. To examine the existence of additional competence of the shoulder with regard to the ability to measure extracorporeal space, through a novel approach, using the shoulder proprioceptive rehabilitation tool (SPRT), during reaching. Design. Observational case-control study. Methods. We examined 50 subjects: 25 healthy and 25 with impingement syndrome with a mean age [years] of 64.52 +/− 6.98 and 68.36 +/− 6.54, respectively. Two parameters were evaluated using the SPRT: the integration of visual information and the proprioceptive afferents of the shoulder (Test 1) and the discriminative proprioceptive capacity of the shoulder, with the subject blindfolded (Test 2). These tasks assessed the spatial error (in centimeters) by the shoulder joint in reaching movements on the sagittal plane. Results. The shoulder had proprioceptive features that allowed it to memorize a reaching position and reproduce it (error of 1.22 cm to 1.55 cm in healthy subjects). This ability was lower in the impingement group, with a statistically significant difference compared to the healthy group ( < 0.05 by Mann–Whitney test). Conclusions. The shoulder has specific expertise in the measurement of the extracorporeal space during reaching movements that gradually decreases in impingement syndrome

    Effectiveness of High-Intensity Laser Therapy Plus Ultrasound-Guided Peritendinous Hyaluronic Acid Compared to Therapeutic Exercise for Patients with Lateral Elbow Tendinopathy

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    Lateral elbow tendinopathy (LET) is a common painful musculoskeletal disorder. Several treatments have been proposed to provide pain reduction and functional recovery, including laser therapy, hyaluronic acid peritendinous injection (Hy-A), and therapeutic exercise (TE). Our study aims to assess the effectiveness of a combined approach with high-intensity laser therapy (HILT) and Hy-A injections compared to TE on pain, muscle strength, and disability in patients with painful LET. A retrospective longitudinal study was carried out by consulting the medical records of patients with a diagnosis of painful LET formulated by clinical and instrumental findings that received functional evaluations, including the Patient-Rated Tennis Elbow Evaluation (PRTEE) and muscle strength measurement at least four times: T0 (“baseline”), 1-month (T1), 3-month (T2), and 6-month follow-ups (T3). Medical records of 80 patients were analyzed. In the HILT + HyA group, the Peak-strength (p &lt; 0.001) and mean strength (p &lt; 0.001) significantly increased compared to the TE group between study times. For the PRTEE-total-score as for the subscales, the HILT + HyA group reported statistically significant reductions only for the comparisons of baseline versus T1 and baseline versus T2. No serious adverse events occurred. Our findings suggest that Hy-A associated with HILT might be more effective than TE for people with LET in the short–medium term

    Telerehabilitation proposal of mind-body technique for physical and psychological outcomes in patients with fibromyalgia

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    Fibromyalgia (FM) syndrome is characterized by the close correlation of chronic widespread pain and other non-pain related symptoms. Aim of this study was to investigate whether telerehabilitation that provides physical and psychological support services of the mind-body techniques can affect the clinical profile and pain relief of FM patients. The study included twenty-eight female FM patients, mean aged 56.61 +/- 8.56 years. All patients underwent a rehabilitation treatment (8 sessions, 1/week, 1 h/each) through Zoom platform, with the following principles of rehabilitation treatment: Anchoring to a positive emotion; listen and perceive your own body; conscious breathing; improve interoceptive awareness; relax. All patients then underwent clinical assessment of the physical distress and fear of movement for the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS); the Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS); the Fear Avoidance Belief Questionnaire (FABQ); with measures of physical and mental disability for the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ); the 12-Items Short Form Survey; the Resilience Scale for Adults and the Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised. The evaluations were performed at T0 (baseline), T1 (after 8 weeks of treatment), and T2 (after 1 month of follow-up). The main finding was that telerehabilitation reduced physical and mental distress, fear, and disability (p &lt; 0.001). Resilience and coping ability were less affected by the rehabilitative treatment. Our attempt of mind-body technique telerehabilitation has shown good results in the improvement of painful symptoms and quality of life for the FM patients but showed fewer positive impacts for the resilience and coping abilities aspects

    Performance isolation for network slices in Industry 4.0: The 5Growth approach

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    Network slicing plays a key role in the 5G ecosystem for verticals to introduce new use cases in the industrial sector, i.e., Industry 4.0. However, a widely recognized challenge of network slicing is to provide traffic isolation and concurrently satisfy diverse performance requirements, e.g., bandwidth and latency. Such challenge becomes even more important when serving a large number of network traffic flows under a resource-limited condition between distributed sites, e.g., factory floor and remote office. In this work, we present the capability to retain these two goals at the same time, by applying the virtual queue notion over a priority queuing based pipeline in P4 switch over software-defined networks. To examine the effectiveness of our approach, a proof-of-concept is setup to serve different requests of Industry 4.0 use cases over a mixed data path, including P4 switch and Open vSwitch, for a large number of network flows.This work was supported in part by the EU H2020 5GROWTH Project under Grant 856709

    Intervention of Occupational Therapy in patient with Stroke in acute phase: Systematic Review

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    Objective: The objective of this work was both to fill this gap in the scientific literature, and to evaluate the results of an Occupational Therapy treatment in individuals affected by an acute phase stroke, taking into account Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). Methods: A systematic review was carried out according to PRISMA guidelines. Three bibliographic databases were searched, namely MEDLINE, CINAHL and PEDro. The minimal prerequisites included in existing papers on such systematic reviews were: (a) Randomized Controlled Trial, (b) published in English (c) during the last ten years (2006 -2016). Studies were evaluated according to Jadad Score. Results: 12 studies were included. Selected papers showed an average Jadad score of 2,15. Conclusions: The review suggests that so far there is not a more effective treatment in comparison to others; moreover, available studies lack available samples and overall show to have a poor Jadad score. Nevertheless, a number of suggestive results emerged by the study carried out. Occupational therapists shall perform and report higher quality clinical studies as well as an increased evidence level with the aim to build up a trustworthy arsenal of evidence-based interventions for people with acute stroke

    Development and validation of a framework for the assessment of school curricula on the presence of evolutionary concepts (FACE)

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    Evolution is a key concept of biology, fundamental to understand the world and address important societal problems, but research studies show that it is still not widely understood and accepted. Several factors are known to influence evolution acceptance and understanding, but little information is available regarding the impacts of the curriculum on these aspects. Very few curricula have been examined to assess the coverage of biological evolution. The available studies do not allow comparative analyses, due to the different methodologies employed by the authors. However, such an analysis would be useful for research purposes and for the development of appropriate educational policies to address the problem of a lack of evolution acceptance in some countries. In this paper we describe the steps through which we developed a valid and reliable instrument for curricula analysis known as FACE: “Framework to Assess the Coverage of biological Evolution by school curricula.” This framework was developed based on the “Understanding Evolution Conceptual Framework” (UECF). After an initial pilot study, our framework was reformulated based on identified issues and experts’ opinions. To generate validity and reliability evidence in support of the framework, it was applied to four European countries’ curricula. For each country, a team of a minimum of two national and two foreign coders worked independently to assess the curriculum using this framework for content analysis. Reliability evidence was estimated using Krippendorf's alpha and resulted in appropriate values for coding the examined curricula. Some issues that coders faced during the analysis were discussed and, to ensure better reliability for future researchers, additional guidelines and one extra category were included in the framework. The final version of the framework includes six categories and 34 subcategories. FACE is a useful tool for the analysis and the comparison of curricula and school textbooks regarding the coverage of evolution, and such results can guide curricula development.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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