Bmc Med Res Methodol
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Jan 2012
Quality of life of Chinese urban community residents: a psychometric study of the mainland Chinese version of the WHOQOL-BREF.
The short version of the World Health Organization's Quality of Life Instrument (WHOQOL-BREF) is widely validated and popularly used in assessing the subjective quality of life (QOL) of patients and the general public. We examined its psychometric properties in a large sample of community residents in mainland China. ⋯ This study has provided psychometric properties of the WHOQOL-BREF as used in China and should definitely be useful for researchers who would like to use or further refine the instrument.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Jan 2012
Comparative StudyConstructing episodes of inpatient care: data infrastructure for population-based research.
Databases used to study the care of patients in hospitals and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) typically contain a separate entry for each segment of hospital or ICU care. However, it is not uncommon for patients to be transferred between hospitals and/or ICUs, and when transfers occur it is necessary to combine individual entries to accurately reconstruct the complete episodes of hospital and ICU care. Failure to do so can lead to erroneous lengths-of-stay, and rates of admissions, readmissions, and death. ⋯ In Manitoba is it not uncommon for critically ill patients to be transferred between hospitals and between ICUs. Failure to account for transfers resulted in inaccurate assessment of parameters relevant to researchers, clinicians, and policy-makers. The details of the method used to identify transfers, at least among the variations tested, made relatively little difference. In addition, we showed that these methods for constructing episodes of hospital and ICU care can be implemented in a large, complex dataset.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Jan 2012
Enhanced reporting of deaths among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples using linked administrative health datasets.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are under-reported in administrative health datasets in NSW, Australia. Correct reporting of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is essential to measure the effectiveness of policies and programmes aimed at reducing the health disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This study investigates the potential of record linkage to enhance reporting of deaths among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in NSW, Australia. ⋯ Record linkage creates a statistical construct that helps to correct under-reporting of deaths and potential bias in mortality statistics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Jan 2012
Comparative Study30-day in-hospital mortality after acute myocardial infarction in Tuscany (Italy): an observational study using hospital discharge data.
Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of mortality in the world. One of the outcome indicators recently used to measure hospital performance is 30-day mortality after acute myocardial infarction (AMI). This indicator has proven to be a valid and reproducible indicator of the appropriateness and effectiveness of the diagnostic and therapeutic process for AMI patients after hospital admission. The aim of this study was to examine the determinants of inter-hospital variability on 30-day in-hospital mortality after AMI in Tuscany. This indicator is a proxy of 30-day mortality that includes only deaths occurred during the index or subsequent hospitalizations. ⋯ We have shown that it is possible to use routinely collected administrative data to predict mortality risk and to highlight inter-hospital differences. The distinction between STEMI and NSTEMI proved to be useful to detect organisational characteristics, which affected only the STEMI subgroup.
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Bmc Med Res Methodol · Jan 2012
Assessment of reporting quality of conference abstracts in sports injury prevention according to CONSORT and STROBE criteria and their subsequent publication rate as full papers.
The preliminary results of a study are usually presented as an abstract in conference meetings. The reporting quality of those abstracts and the relationship between their study designs and full paper publication rate is unknown. We hypothesized that randomized controlled trials are more likely to be published as full papers than observational studies. ⋯ No significant differences with respect to type of study (randomized controlled versus observational), impact factor, and time to publication existed for the likelihood that a World Congress of Sports Injury conference abstract could be published as a full paper.