Composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals

BACKGROUND: Researchers from the developing world contribute only a limited proportion to the total research output published in leading medical education journals. Some of them believe that there is a substantial editorial bias against their work. To obtain an objective basis for further discussion the present study was designed to assess the composition of the editorial boards of leading medical education journals. METHODS: The editorial boards of the three leading medical education journals according to their impact factor were retrieved from the respective January issue of the year 2003. We evaluated in which countries the editorial board members were based and classified these countries using the World Bank income criteria. RESULTS: Individuals from a number of countries can be found on the editorial boards of the investigated journals, but most of them are based in high-income countries. CONCLUSION: The percentage of editorial board members which are based in developing world countries is higher for the leading medical education journals than in most of their psychiatry and general medicine counterparts. But it is still too low

Therapeutic Plasma Exchange Decreases Levels of Routinely Used Cardiac and Inflammatory Biomarkers

Therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE) plays a key role in the management of various diseases, from thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura and Goodpasture's syndrome to cardiac allograft rejection. In many of these disease states cardiac and inflammatory involvement is common and biomarkers are routinely used for diagnosis or assessment of therapeutic success. The effect of TPE on biomarkers used in the clinical routine has not been investigated.TPE was initiated for established clinical conditions in 21 patients. Troponin T, NT-proBNP, C-reactive protein, procalcitonin and routine chemistry were drawn before and after TPE, as well as before and after the 2(nd) TPE. The total amount of these markers in the waste bag was also analyzed.In 21 patients 42 TPEs were performed. The procedure reduced plasma levels of the examined biomarkers: 23% for NT-proBNP (pre vs. post: 4637±10234 ng/l to 3565±8295 ng/l, p<0.001), 64% for CRP (21.9±47.0 mg/l vs. 7.8±15.8 mg/l, p<0.001) and 31% for procalcitonin (0.39±1.1 µg/l vs. 0.27±0.72 µg/l, p=0.004). TPE also tended to reduce plasma levels of troponin T by about 14% (60.7±175.5 ng/l vs. 52.2±141.3 ng/l), however this difference was not statistical significant (p=0.95). There was a significant correlation between the difference of pre TPE levels to post TPE levels of all examined biomarkers and the total amount of the removed biomarker in the collected removed plasma.TPE significantly reduces plasma levels of inflammatory and cardiac biomarkers. Therefore, post TPE levels of cardiac and inflammatory biomarkers should be viewed with caution

Quadricuspid aortic valve by using intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography

Quadricuspid aortic valve is a rare congenital malformation of the aortic valve. Its diagnosis is often missed even with the use of transthoracic echocardiogram. Many of these patients progress to aortic incompetence later in life, hence requiring surgical intervention

Pregnancy Outcomes in Women After Arterial Switch Operation for Transposition of the Great Arteries: Results From ROPAC (Registry of Pregnancy and Cardiac Disease) of the European Society of Cardiology EURObservational Research Programme.

Background In the past 3 decades, the arterial switch procedure has replaced the atrial switch procedure as treatment of choice for transposition of the great arteries. Although survival is superior after the arterial switch procedure, data on pregnancy outcomes are scarce and transposition of the great arteries after arterial switch is not yet included in the modified World Health Organization classification of maternal cardiovascular risk. Methods and Results The ROPAC (Registry of Pregnancy and Cardiac disease) is an international prospective registry of pregnant women with cardiac disease, part of the European Society of Cardiology EURObservational Research Programme. Pregnancy outcomes in all women after an arterial switch procedure for transposition of the great arteries are described. The primary end point was a major adverse cardiovascular event, defined as combined end point of maternal death, supraventricular or ventricular arrhythmias requiring treatment, heart failure, aortic dissection, endocarditis, ischemic coronary events, and thromboembolic events. Altogether, 41 pregnant women (mean age, 26.7±3.9 years) were included, and there was no maternal mortality. A major adverse cardiovascular event occurred in 2 women (4.9%): heart failure in one (2.4%) and ventricular tachycardia in another (2.4%). One woman experienced fetal loss, whereas no neonatal mortality was observed. Conclusions Women after an arterial switch procedure for transposition of the great arteries tolerate pregnancy well, with a favorable maternal and fetal outcome. During counseling, most women should be reassured that the risk of pregnancy is low. Classification as modified World Health Organization risk class II seems appropriate

Quadricuspid aortic valve not discovered by transthoracic echocardiography

BACKGROUND: Quadricuspid aortic valve is a rare congenital heart defect. Several different anatomical variations of a quadricuspid aortic valve has been described and aortic regurgitation is the predominant valvular dysfunction associated with quadricuspid aortic valve. CASE PRESENTATION: A 68-year-old woman presented with almost a years history of increasing dyspnoea on exertion. The patient have had two previous transthoracic echocardiographic exams in the last six years and they had only documented moderate aortic regurgitation. Transoesophageal echocardiography displayed a rare case of quadricuspid aortic valve with three cusps of equal size and one larger cusp. The malformation was associated with severe aortic regurgitation. CONCLUSION: Liberal use of transoesophageal echocardiography is often warranted if optimal display of valvular morphology is desired

Pregnancy outcomes in women after arterial switch operation for transposition of the great arteries: results from ROPAC (Registry of Pregnancy and Cardiac Disease) of the European Сociety of cardiology EURObservational Research Programme

The ROPAC (Registry of Pregnancy and Cardiac disease) is an international prospective registry of pregnant women with cardiac disease, part of the European Society of Cardiology EURObservational Research Programme. Pregnancy outcomes in all women after an arterial switch procedure for transposition of the great arteries are described. The primary end point was a major adverse cardiovascular event, defined as combined end point of maternal death, supraventricular or ventricular arrhythmias requiring treatment, heart failure, aortic dissection, endocarditis, ischemic coronary events, and thromboembolic events. Altogether, 41 pregnant women (mean age, 26.7±3.9 years) were included, and there was no maternal mortality. A major adverse cardiovascular event occurred in 2 women (4.9%): heart failure in one (2.4%) and ventricular tachycardia in another (2.4%). One woman experienced fetal loss, whereas no neonatal mortality was observe

Type F congenital quadricuspid aortic valve: A very rare case diagnosed by 3-dimenional transoesophageal echocardiography

Congenital quadricuspid aortic valve (QAV) is a rare cardiac anomaly. Several different anatomical variations of a quadricuspid aortic valve have been described. Aortic regurgitation is the predominant valvular dysfunction associated with QAV and patients tend to present in their 5(th) or 6(th) decade of life. This anomaly is rarely picked up by transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE). A comprehensive transoesophageal echocardiography (TOE) study is more likely to diagnose it. We describe a very rare type of QAV - Type F in a 52-year-old lady who presented with symptoms of shortness of breath and pre-syncope. We include TOE images and intra-operative valve images

An automatic method to generate domain-specific investigator networks using PubMed abstracts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Collaboration among investigators has become critical to scientific research. This includes ad hoc collaboration established through personal contacts as well as formal consortia established by funding agencies. Continued growth in online resources for scientific research and communication has promoted the development of highly networked research communities. Extending these networks globally requires identifying additional investigators in a given domain, profiling their research interests, and collecting current contact information. We present a novel strategy for building investigator networks dynamically and producing detailed investigator profiles using data available in PubMed abstracts.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a novel strategy to obtain detailed investigator information by automatically parsing the affiliation string in PubMed records. We illustrated the results by using a published literature database in human genome epidemiology (HuGE Pub Lit) as a test case. Our parsing strategy extracted country information from 92.1% of the affiliation strings in a random sample of PubMed records and in 97.0% of HuGE records, with accuracies of 94.0% and 91.0%, respectively. Institution information was parsed from 91.3% of the general PubMed records (accuracy 86.8%) and from 94.2% of HuGE PubMed records (accuracy 87.0). We demonstrated the application of our approach to dynamic creation of investigator networks by creating a prototype information system containing a large database of PubMed abstracts relevant to human genome epidemiology (HuGE Pub Lit), indexed using PubMed medical subject headings converted to Unified Medical Language System concepts. Our method was able to identify 70–90% of the investigators/collaborators in three different human genetics fields; it also successfully identified 9 of 10 genetics investigators within the PREBIC network, an existing preterm birth research network.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We successfully created a web-based prototype capable of creating domain-specific investigator networks based on an application that accurately generates detailed investigator profiles from PubMed abstracts combined with robust standard vocabularies. This approach could be used for other biomedical fields to efficiently establish domain-specific investigator networks.</p