33 research outputs found

    Home visit improves knowledge, self-care and adhesion in heart failure: randomized Clinical Trial HELEN-I

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    OBJECTIVE: To verify the effect of an educative nursing intervention composed of home visits and phone calls on patients' knowledge about the disease, self-care and adhesion to the treatment. METHODS: Randomized clinical trial with patients with recent hospitalization caused by decompensated heart failure. There were two groups: the intervention group, which has received four home visits and four phone calls to reinforce the guidelines during six months of follow up; and the control group, which has received conventional follow up with no visits or phone calls. RESULTS: Two hundred patients were randomized (101 in the intervention group and 99 in the control group). After six months, a significant improvement was observed in self-care and knowledge about the disease in the intervention group (P=0.001 and P<0.001), respectively; the adhesion to the treatment, measured and compared between the groups, was significantly higher in the intervention group (P=0.001). CONCLUSION: the strategy of home visits to patients who were recently hospitalized with decompensated heart failure was effective in improving the outcomes assessed and its implementation deserves to be considered in Brazil aiming at avoiding unplanned hospitalizations. NCT-0121386

    Scientific Validation of Three-Dimensional Stereophotogrammetry Compared to the IGAIS Clinical Scale for Assessing Wrinkles and Scars after Laser Treatment

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    Measuring outcomes from treatments to the skin is either reliant upon patient’s subjective feedback or scale-based peer assessments. Three-Dimensional stereophotogrammetry intend to accurately quantify skin microtopography before and after treatments. The objective of this study is comparing the accuracy of stereophotogrammetry with a scale-based peer evaluation in assessing topographical changes to skin surface following laser treatment. A 3D stereophotogrammetry system photographed skin surface of 48 patients with facial wrinkles or scars before and three months after laser resurfacing, followed immediately by topical application of vitamin C. The software measured changes in skin roughness, wrinkle depth and scar volume. Images were presented to three observers, each independently scoring cutaneous improvement according to Investigator Global Aesthetic Improvement Scale (IGAIS). As for the results, a trend reflecting skin/scar improvement was reported by 3D SPM measurements and raters. The percentage of topographical change given by the raters matched 3D SPM findings. Agreement was highest when observers analysed 3D images. However, observers overestimated skin improvement in a nontreatment control whilst 3D SPM was precise in detecting absence of intervention. This study confirmed a direct correlation between the IGAIS clinical scale and 3D SPM and confirmed the efficacy and accuracy of the latter when assessing cutaneous microtopography alterations as a response to laser treatment

    Biodiversity inventories in high gear: DNA barcoding facilitates a rapid biotic survey of a temperate nature reserve

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    Comprehensive biotic surveys, or ‘all taxon biodiversity inventories’ (ATBI), have traditionally been limited in scale or scope due to the complications surrounding specimen sorting and species identification. To circumvent these issues, several ATBI projects have successfully integrated DNA barcoding into their identification procedures and witnessed acceleration in their surveys and subsequent increase in project scope and scale. The Biodiversity Institute of Ontario partnered with the rare Charitable Research Reserve and delegates of the 6th International Barcode of Life Conference to complete its own rapid, barcode-assisted ATBI of an established land trust in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

    Venous Blood Derivatives as FBS-Substitutes for Mesenchymal Stem Cells: A Systematic Scoping Review

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    Ontology matching benchmarks:

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    The OAEI Benchmark test set has been used for many years as a main reference to evaluate and compare ontology matching systems. However, this test set has barely varied since 2004 and has become a relatively easy task for matchers. In this paper, we present the design of a flexible test generator based on an extensible set of alterators which may be used programmatically for generating different test sets from different seed ontologies and different alteration modalities. It has been used for reproducing Benchmark both with the original seed ontology and with other ontologies. This highlights the remarkable stability of results over different generations and the preservation of difficulty across seed ontologies, as well as a systematic bias towards the initial Benchmark test set and the inability of such tests to identify an overall winning matcher. These were exactly the properties for which Benchmark had been designed. Furthermore, the generator has been used for providing new test sets aiming at increasing the difficulty and discriminability of Benchmark. Although difficulty may be easily increased with the generator, attempts to increase discriminability proved unfruitful. However, efforts towards this goal raise questions about the very nature of discriminability
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