Quality of life assessment in elderly patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma treated with anthracycline-containing regimens. Report of a prospective study by the Intergruppo Italiano Linfomi

Background and Objectives. The aim of this study was to evaluate quality of life (QOL) in a group of elderly patients ( > 65 years) with aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) treated with chemotherapy regimens containing anthracyclines. Design and Methods. QOL was evaluated in a population of elderly patients with aggressive NHL enrolled in a phase III clinical trial run by the Intergruppo Italiano Linfomi (11L) from 1996 to 1999 to compare two different anthracycline-containing regimens (mini-CEOP vs P-VEBEC). The EORTC-QLQ-C30 questionnaire, which has already been validated in oncology, was used. The questionnaire was administered at the time of diagnosis, half way through the chemotherapy and at the time of restaging. Results. Ninety-one patients completed pre-therapy and post-therapy questionnaires and they are the subject of this report. Baseline QOL assessment showed a strong correlation of poor values of QOL with anemia and high risk according to the International Prognostic Index (IPI). At the end of treatment no functional scales showed worse values. A significant improvement was observed for pain (p = 0.003), appetite (p = 0.006), sleep (p = 0.015) and global health (p = 0.027). Considering only the 50 patients who achieved a complete remission (CR), an improvement was also recorded for emotional state (p = 0.10), role (P = 0.05), constipation (p = 0.04) and global QOL (p = 0.05). Interpretation and Conclusions. The EORTC-QLQ-C30 is feasible even in a population of elderly patients, in whom it had never been tested before. The improvement of QOL at the end of the treatment demonstrated that the symptoms of the disease have a greater negative influence on the patient's life than do the side effects of the therapy

Quantifying Privacy: A Novel Entropy-Based Measure of Disclosure Risk

It is well recognised that data mining and statistical analysis pose a serious treat to privacy. This is true for financial, medical, criminal and marketing research. Numerous techniques have been proposed to protect privacy, including restriction and data modification. Recently proposed privacy models such as differential privacy and k-anonymity received a lot of attention and for the latter there are now several improvements of the original scheme, each removing some security shortcomings of the previous one. However, the challenge lies in evaluating and comparing privacy provided by various techniques. In this paper we propose a novel entropy based security measure that can be applied to any generalisation, restriction or data modification technique. We use our measure to empirically evaluate and compare a few popular methods, namely query restriction, sampling and noise addition.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Demanda de competencias digitales al Contador Público: Una mirada desde la Educación Superior

This article is part of a research project whose scope ranges from university education to professional training and develops questions related to the incidence of generational diversity, technological advances, and the demands of new organizational realities. Here we are concerned with analyzing the Digital Transformation (DT) that the profession is going through, the effects of identifying the new attitudinal competencies and technological capacities that the current and future labor field requires; redefine the role of the professional in the field of organizations and its link with educational careers. This tour is based on bibliographic research, academic-scientific productions presented at Congresses, and the analysis of digital audio strategies implemented in the dictation of signatures that we have in charge of the Accountant Career. We intend to contribute to theoretical reflection and our teaching practice.Este artículo se inscribe en el marco de un proyecto de investigación cuyo alcance abarca desde la formación universitaria hasta el ejercicio profesional, y desarrolla interrogantes relativos a la incidencia de la diversidad generacional, los avances tecnológicos y los requerimientos de las nuevas realidades organizacionales. Aquí nos ocupamos de analizar la Transformación Digital (TD) que atraviesa la profesión, a los efectos de identificar las nuevas competencias actitudinales y capacidades tecnológicas requeridas por el campo laboral actual y a futuro; redefiniendo el rol del profesional en el ámbito de las organizaciones y su vinculación con las trayectorias educativas. El presente recorrido está basado en investigaciones bibliográficas, producciones académico-científicas presentadas en Congresos, y el análisis de estrategias digitales áulicas implementadas en el dictado de asignaturas que tenemos a cargo en la Carrera de Contador. Pretendemos realizar un aporte a partir de la reflexión teórica y desde nuestra práctica docent

Assessing the Predictive Performance of Probabilistic Caries Risk Assessment Models: The Importance of Calibration

Probabilistic caries risk assessment models (P-CRA), such as the Cariogram, are promising tools to planning treatments in order to control and prevent caries. The usefulness of these models for informing patients and medical decision-making depends on 2 properties known as discrimination and calibration. Current common assessment of P-CRA models, however, ignores calibration, and this can be misleading. The aim of this paper was to provide tools for a proper assessment of calibration of the P-CRA models and improve calibration when lacking. A combination of standard calibration tools (calibration plot, calibration in-the-large, and calibration slope) and 3 novel measures of calibration (the Calibration Index and 2 related metrics, E50 and E90) are proposed to evaluate if a P-CRA model is well calibrated. Moreover, an approach was proposed and validated using data from a previous follow-up study performed on children evaluated by means of a reduced Cariogram model; Platt scaling and isotonic regression were applied showing a lack of calibration. The use of the Cariogram overestimates the actual risk of new caries for forecast probabilities <0.5 and underestimates the risk for forecast probabilities >0.6. Both Platt scaling and isotonic regression were able to significantly improve the calibration of the reduced Cariogram model, preserving its discrimination properties. The average specificity and sensitivity for both Platt scaling and isotonic regression using the cut-off point p= 0.5 were >83 and their sum well exceeded 160. The benefits of the proposed calibration methods are promising, but further research in this field is required

Seguimiento e implementación de nuevas metodologías de evaluación continua para la adquisición y evaluación de competencias

Los objetivos principales de esta red se han centrado en definir las líneas de actuación para llevar a cabo una adaptación de la metodología de evaluación continua así como su implementación durante el curso 2017/2018 en la asignatura de Cálculo Numérico II, del Grado de Matemáticas en la Universidad de Alicante, y la evaluación de los resultados de la acción de mejora en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje propuesto atendiendo a los resultados académicos y la percepción por parte del alumno del nivel de formación y éxito en los resultados de aprendizaje. Se ha llevado a cabo un análisis de los resultados académicos, consistente en un análisis descriptivo de las calificaciones obtenidas en las distintas pruebas de evaluación y su puesta en contexto en el marco de los resultados de los cuatro últimos cursos prestando especial atención a las diferencias metodológicas en los distintos cursos. Por otra parte, hemos realizado una encuesta al alumnado que nos ha proporcionado más elementos para evaluar el efecto en el aprendizaje de las modificaciones metodológicas desde el punto de vista del alumnado. Los resultados de la encuesta también se presentan en el contexto de cursos anteriores