Plos One
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The Text Forum Threads (TFThs) contain a large amount of Initial-Posts Replies pairs (IPR pairs) which are related to information exchange and discussion amongst the forum users with similar interests. Generally, some user replies in the discussion thread are off-topic and irrelevant. Hence, the content is of different qualities. ⋯ Moreover, crowdsourcing platforms were used for judging the quality of the replies and classified them into high-quality, low-quality or non-quality replies to the Initial-Posts. Then, the high-quality IPR pairs were extracted and identified based on their quality, and they were ranked using three classifiers i.e., Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, and the Decision Trees according to their quality dimensions of relevancy, author activeness, timeliness, ease-of-understanding, politeness, and amount-of-data. In conclusion, the experimental results for the TFThs showed that the proposed approach could improve the extraction of the quality replies and identify the quality features that can be used for the Text Forum Thread Summarization.
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Observational Study
Evaluation of blood culture epidemiology and efficiency in a large European teaching hospital.
Blood cultures remain the gold standard for detecting bacteremia despite their limitations. The current practice of blood culture collection is still inefficient with low yields. Limited focus has been given to the association between timing of specimen collection at different time points during admission and their yield. ⋯ This study showed that blood cultures are inefficient in detecting bacteremia. Cultures collected during 24 hours after admission yielded more positive results than those collected later. Significant variations in blood culture epidemiology and efficiency per specialty suggest that guidelines should be reevaluated. Future studies should aim at improving blood culture yield, implementing educational programs to reduce contamination and cost-effective application of modern molecular diagnostic technologies.
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Observational Study
Unscheduled hospital contacts after inpatient discharge: A national observational study of COPD and heart failure patients in England.
Readmissions are a recognised challenge for providers of healthcare and incur financial penalties in a growing number of countries. However, the scale of unscheduled hospital contacts including attendances at emergency departments that do not result in admission is not well known. In addition, little is known about the route to readmission for patients recently discharged from an emergency hospital stay. ⋯ While the majority of patients did not have unscheduled contact with secondary care in the 30 days after index discharge, many patients attended the ED, often multiple times, and many were admitted to hospital, not always via the ED. More frail patients were more likely to be admitted through the ED, suggesting a possible area of focus as discharge bundles are developed.
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The aims of this study were to 1) evaluate the impact of eight common chronic conditions and multimorbidity on preference-based health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and 2) estimate the minimally important difference (MID) in the general population of Hong Kong (HK). ⋯ The findings suggest that having more chronic conditions is strongly associated with a lower HRQoL. Healthcare reforms to address foreseeable challenges arising as more patients live with chronic conditions and multimorbidity could improve the HRQoL of HK citizens.
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Compositional data analysis is one appropriate method for co-dependent data, even when data are collected for a subdivision of the 24-hour period, such as the waking day. Objectives were to use compositional analyses to examine the combined and relative associations of sedentary time (ST), light-intensity physical activity (LPA), moderate-intensity physical activity (MPA), and vigorous-intensity physical activity (VPA) with cardiometabolic biomarkers in a representative sample of children and youth. ⋯ The ST and physical activity composition appears important for many aspects of cardiometabolic health in children and youth. Compositions with more time in higher-intensity activities may be better for some aspects of cardiometabolic health.