bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Ticagrelor Does Not Improve Endothelial Dysfunction in Stable Survivors of Acute Coronary Syndrome
Authors: Lim Sungmin , Choo Eun Ho , Kim Chan Joon , Choi Ik Jun , Lee Kwan Yong , Hwang Byung-Hee , Lee Jong-Min , Chung Wook Sung , Chang Kiyuk 
Published: April 2019

Background: Ticagrelor is an intriguing antiplatelet agent with a potentially beneficial impact on endothelial dysfunction and confers a mortality benefit beyond 1 month after acute coronary syndrome (ACS). However, little data exist on whether ticagrelor improves endothelial dysfunction in stable patients who survive the acute period and receive guideline-directed medical therapy. Methods and Results: This study is a prospective, randomized, parallel, open-labeled study that enrolled 30-day survivors of non-ST-segment elevation ACS (NSTE-ACS). Forty patients with NSTE-ACS were randomly assigned to ticagrelor or clopidogrel groups. The primary end point was the change in the percentage brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (baFMD) from baseline. Baseline characteristics were not different between the 2 groups. The median time from the stent implantation to screening was 269 days. After 30 days of study medication administration, the change in the percentage baFMD value was similar between the ticagrelor and clopidogrel groups (−0.08 [1.42] vs 0.30 [1.69], P = .66). There was no difference in the change in high-sensitive C-reactive protein (−0.61 [1.48] vs −0.01 [0.57], P = .28); however, the change in platelet inhibition significantly differed (P2Y12 reaction units, −140.5 [49.5] vs −3.9 [51.4], P < .001). Conclusions: This dual time point baFMD study demonstrated that treatment with ticagrelor was not superior to clopidogrel for improving endothelial dysfunction in stabilized patients with NSTE-ACS.
Institutional protocols for the oral administration (gavage) of chemicals and microscopic microbial communities to mice: Analytical consensus
Authors: Rodriguez-Palacios Alexander , Khoretonenko Mikhail V , Ilic Sanja 
Published: April 2019

Although there are numerous Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) protocols aimed at standardizing the oral administration (gavage) of liquid chemicals to laboratory rodents, there is ample variability across protocols, and there are no protocols intended for the gavage of microbial communities to mice or rats. The objective of this study was to conduct a scoping review of publically available IACUC protocols from institutions in the United States, identify protocol criteria and deficiencies, and generate an ‘analytical consensus’ to unify such criteria into two revised protocols: one for chemicals, and another for microbes in mice. Eighteen (n = 18) written institutional protocols from prominent universities, and 26 demonstrations videos from various sources (accounting for >155,000 views) were identified in the World Wide Web. Although written protocols listed up to five criteria for consideration (dosing/volume, pregnancy, animal weight), collectively there was major variability and poor statistical agreement across methods (0% Kappa, p = 0.98). Because protocols also lacked details relevant for the bypassing and survival of live microorganisms in the gastric (antimicrobial) environment, we compiled two ‘analytical (Kappa-based) consensus’ protocols from available and new criteria, for the ‘gavage of chemicals’ and for the ‘gavage of delicate microscopic microbial communities’ to mice. A major difference lies in the volume of administration, (i.e., 20 mL/kg, without restrictions, after 4-6 h of fasting, for microbes), which was graphically illustrated simulating the predicted impact of administering large and small volumes on microbial distribution of simple microscopic communities. In conclusion, publicly available IACUC gavage protocols are highly variable, and do not reflect the need to adjust the dose volumes to ensure the rapid bypassing of the gastric environment which would impact the survival of microbes, especially if composing delicate microscopic communities. An ‘analytical consensus’ of IACUC-approved protocols is herein presented as a unifying baseline protocol for consideration. Impact statement Institutional protocols designed for the oral administration of live microbial communities, either complex or microscopic (microcosmic), to mice do not exist. However, this approach is increasingly employed by investigators focusing on the gut microbiome in experimental research. Herein, we propose two analytically Kappa-based consensus protocols to promote reproducibility and standardization in research practices and describe biologically relevant factors in achieving optimal microbial engraftment of communities in germ-free mice.
Adolescents’ participation in their healthcare: A sociomaterial investigation of a diabetes app
Authors: Ledderer Loni , Møller Anne , Fage-Butler Antoinette 
Published: April 2019

Objective This article explores how a diabetes app called Diapplo affected adolescents’ participation in their healthcare by investigating adolescents’ meaning-making in relation to their use of the app. Methods Using a qualitative single case-study design, we adopted a multimethod responsive approach to data generation that included written data from the app development process, individual and group interviews and observations of the adolescents in the clinical situation. This article presents the results from a qualitative content analysis of group and individual semi-structured interviews conducted with five adolescents diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during and after the four-week test phase of a prototype of the app. Results The adolescents appreciated the diabetes app’s design and interface and having an overview of their blood glucose values. However, they stated that the app’s content only partly met their needs and they considered several of its features unnecessary. They would have liked the app to have a social platform and emphasized that the app should be compatible with their blood glucose monitors and pumps for them to continue using it. Conclusions The participants in our study highlighted the value of social platforms integrated in health apps for patient participation, as well as their preference for health app features that reduced the effort of managing their chronic condition and facilitate greater knowledge. Theories of sociomateriality and material participation helped to account for the challenges of integrating users’ perspectives, suggesting the value of early, comprehensive identification and prioritization of users’ values when developing mobile health technologies.
Hemiarthroplasty or Total Hip Arthroplasty: Is There a Racial Bias in Treatment Selection for Femoral Neck Fractures?
Authors: Rudasill Sarah E. , Dattilo Jonathan R. , Liu Jiabin , Kamath Atul F. 
Published: April 2019

Introduction: Hip fractures in the elderly individuals are associated with significant morbidity and mortality, and outcomes are directly related to prompt surgical intervention with either total hip arthroplasty (THA) or hemiarthroplasty. Minority hip fracture patients have increased delays to surgical intervention and poorer functional outcomes. This study explored racial biases in the surgical treatment decision between THA and hemiarthroplasty for displaced femoral neck fractures as well as racial disparities in postoperative complications, readmission rates, and 30-day mortality. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) from 2006 to 2014. Patients were identified using diagnosis code for transcervical femoral neck fractures and Current Procedural Terminology codes for THA or hemiarthroplasty. A multivariable regression analysis was conducted including race, demographic information, and medical comorbidities. Results: Of 11 408 patients, race was recorded in 8538 individuals. Most patients were white (88.3%), followed by Hispanic (4.7%), African American (4.1%), and Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander/American Indian/Alaska Native (2.9%). No differences were observed in the likelihood of receiving a THA versus hemiarthroplasty among racial groups. Only younger age and steroid use were independent risk factors for receiving a THA. Race was significantly associated with postoperative mortality ( P = .014) and major postoperative complications for the Asian cohort ( P = .013). Discussion: The NSQIP data do not support a racial bias in the selection of patients for THA versus hemiarthroplasty. However, this study found racial disparities in postoperative mortality and complications. The reasons underlying the differences in postoperative outcomes are uncertain but may be the result of specific challenges to accessing care. Conclusion: There was no racial bias in the treatment of femoral neck fractures. However, there were racial disparities in postoperative mortality and complication rates. Further research is warranted to elucidate the true causes of these observed disparities.
Patients’ Perspectives on the Quality and Safety of Intravenous Infusions: A Qualitative Study
Authors: Wheeler Carly , Furniss Dominic , Galal-Edeen Galal H , Blandford Ann , Franklin Bryony Dean 
Published: April 2019

Background: The administration of medication or fluids via the intravenous route is a common intervention for many hospital inpatients. However, little research has explored the safety and quality of intravenous therapy from the patient’s perspective, despite the role of the patient in patient safety receiving increased attention in recent years. Objective: To explore patients’ perspectives on the perceived quality and safety of intravenous infusions and identify implications for practice. Method: Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted with 35 hospital patients receiving intravenous infusions in critical care, oncology day care, general medicine, and general surgery areas within 4 National Health Service hospitals in England. Data were analyzed thematically. Results: Four underlying and interlinked themes were identified: knowledge about intravenous infusions, challenges associated with receiving intravenous infusions, the role of health-care professionals, and patients’ attitudes toward receiving infusions. Conclusions: Patients were generally satisfied with receiving infusions; however, factors that contributed to decreased feelings of quality and safety were identified, suggesting areas for intervention. Issues to do with infusion pump alarms, reduced mobility, cannulation, and personal preferences for information, if given more attention, may improve patients’ experiences of receiving intravenous infusions.
Indicators of Risk for Dental Caries in Children: A Holistic Approach
Authors: Fernando S. , Tadakamadla S.K. , Bakr M. , Scuffham P.A. , Johnson N.W. 
Published: April 2019

Background Dental caries in children is a major public health problem worldwide, with a multitude of determinants acting upon children to different degrees in different communities. The objective of this study was to determine maternal, environmental, and intraoral indicators of dental caries experience in a sample of 6- to 7-y-old children in South East Queensland, Australia. Methods: A total of 174 mother-child dyads were recruited for this cross-sectional study from the Griffith University Environments for Healthy Living birth cohort study. Maternal education, employment status, and prepregnancy body mass index were maternal indicators, and annual household income was taken as a proxy for environmental indicators. These were collected as baseline data of the study. Clinical data on children’s dental caries experience, saliva characteristics of buffering capacity, stimulated flow rate, and colony-forming units per milliliter of salivary mutans streptococci were collected for the oral health substudy. Univariate analysis was performed with 1-way analysis of variance and chi-square tests. Caries experience was the outcome, which was classified into 4 categories based on the number of carious tooth surfaces. Ordinal logistic regression was used to explore the association of risk indicators with caries experience. Results: Age ( P = 0.021), low salivary buffering capacity ( P = 0.001), reduced levels of salivary flow rate ( P = 0.011), past caries experience ( P = 0.001), low annual household income; <$30,000 (P = 0.050) and <$60,000 (P = 0.033) and maternal employment status ( P = 0.043) were associated with high levels of dental caries. Conclusion These data support the evidence of associations between maternal, environmental, and children’s intraoral characteristics and caries experience among children in a typical Western industrialized country. All of these need to be considered in preventative strategies within families and communities. Knowledge Transfer Statement: The results of this study can be used by clinicians, epidemiologists, and policy makers to identify children who are at risk of developing dental caries. With consideration of costs for treatment for the disease, this information could be used to plan cost-effective and patient-centered preventive care.
Executive Education: BHEL’s Perspective
Authors: Purswani Kishore , Bharadwaj Rekha 
Published: April 2019

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is one of the most preferred employers. Good HR practices, favourable individual development opportunities, an employee-friendly work environment and development opportunities makes it so. In fact, training and development has been at the core in the glorious journey of BHEL. Way back in the 1960s even before the factories came up, training schools (later known as Human Resource Development Centres–HRDCs) were the first to come up at BHEL plants in Bhopal, Hardwar and Hyderabad. BHEL takes pride in the fact that it was the first among the pioneers in Indian PSUs to establish an exclusive set-up for training people, when terms like OD/HRD were still new to HR professionals and academicians in India. In the present times of VUCAD2 (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous and digitally disruptive) business environment, this quest for learning–unlearning and relearning has become all the more important. Thus, BHEL has created Corporate Learning and Development (CLD) function with the underlying theme ‘Learn-Share-Develop for Tomorrow’ for ‘Creating BHEL of Tomorrow’. Through various interventions at various levels, we ensure that the prime resource of the organization–the human capital– is always in a state of readiness to meet the dynamic challenges posed by the fast changing environment.
Rudimentary causes and impacts of supply chain risks in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Moradeyo Adenike Aderonke 
Published: April 2019

Identification of the causes of supply chain risks is a logical step towards its effective management. The purpose of this study is to explore the causes of supply chain risks, their impacts, and the mitigating strategies used among the manufacturing firms in Nigeria. An exploratory qualitative multiple case research methodology combined with the quantitative content analysis is used for this study. A sample of ten manufacturing firms cutting across three different sub-sectors (Pharmaceutical & Health, Food & Beverage, and Conglomerate) was chosen for the study. Partial and complete open-ended questions in the interview guide were used for the interviews conducted among the respondents. The study revealed the common causes of supply chain risks in manufacturing firms in Nigeria which include; transportation delays, variation in raw material prices and quantities, unexpected customer demands, and constant power outages.
Supply Chain Analysis of Contract Farming
Authors: Federgruen Awi , Lall Upmanu , Şimşek A. Serdar 
Published: April 2019

Contract farming is a growing practice in developing countries and first-world economies alike. It generates necessary guarantees to sustain the continued operations of vulnerable farmers while enabling the manufacturers to manage the aggregate supply and price risk. We consider a single manufacturer who owns several manufacturing plants, each with a random demand for the crop. The manufacturer selects a set of farmers to offer a menu of contracts, which is exogenously specified or endogenously determined. Each “selected” farmer chooses a contract from this menu in advance of the growing season. After the growing season, under known demands and supplies, the manufacturer minimizes the distribution costs from the selected farmers to the production facilities. We formulate this problem as a Stackelberg game with asymmetric information, where the manufacturer is the leader and the farmers are the followers. The manufacturer’s problem is a two-stage stochastic planning program for which we develop two solution approaches. We have applied our model to problem instances anchored on data from a large manufacturer of potato chips contracting with thousands of small farmers in India. We report on the performance of the solution methods compared with a lower bound based on the Lagrangean dual of the problem and show that the optimality gap is below 1%, for problem instances with 1,000 potential farmers. We also show how our model can be used to gain various managerial insights. As an example, when constructing the contract menu endogenously, often a small number of contract options suffices, depending on the degree of heterogeneity among the farmer pool. Thus, relatively simple menus often suffice.The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2018.0735 .This paper has been accepted for the Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Special Issue on Value Chain Innovations in Developing Economies.
Diálogos com o Feminino: pelas ondas do rádio mulheres que fazem psicologia para mulheres
Authors: Silva Juliana Ferreira da , Albuquerque Letícia Dias , Santos Marcela Matias , Oliveira Milena Almeida da Costa de 
Published: April 2019

A pesquisa Diálogos com o Feminino aborda a trajetória de mulheres na psicologia brasileira, buscando evidenciar as especificidades do saber psi que se dedicou às questões do feminino e produziu uma intervenção específica de psicologia feita por mulheres e para mulheres. Esta comunicação apresenta dados da primeira fase da pesquisa, constituindo uma análise de abordagem qualitativa, natureza aplicada, com objetivo exploratório e procedimento de análise documental sobre a contribuição da jornalista e mestre em psicologia social Irede Cardoso para a psicologia articulada ao movimento feminista brasileiro. O estudo parte da experiência do programa de rádio Elas por Elas, compreendendo-o como uma original intervenção sobre a questão da mulher, tanto pelo diálogo que propunha com a psicologia, quanto pela utilização de instrumentos de comunicação via rádio e telefone, assim como pela colocação de questões específicas da mulher de forma coletivizada. Em seguida, são discutidos elementos da biografia de Irede Cardoso, abordando sua trajetória e produção acadêmica. Os resultados demonstram que o saber psi estudado na pesquisa formou esforços para a coletivização da pauta feminista.
Does the thigh circumference affect the positioning of the acetabular component when using the direct anterior approach in total hip arthroplasty?
Authors: Jacobs C. A. , Kusema E. T. , Keeney B. J. , Moschetti W. E. 
Published: April 2019

Aims The hypothesis of this study was that thigh circumference, distinct from body mass index (BMI), may be associated with the positioning of components when undertaking total hip arthroplasty (THA) using the direct anterior approach (DAA), and that an increased circumference might increase the technical difficulty. Patients and Methods We performed a retrospective review of prospectively collected data involving 155 consecutive THAs among 148 patients undertaken using the DAA at an academic medical centre by a single fellowship-trained surgeon. Preoperatively, thigh circumference was measured at 10 cm, 20 cm, and 30 cm distal to the anterior superior iliac spine, in quartiles. Two blinded reviewers assessed the inclination and anteversion of the acetabular component, radiological leg-length discrepancy, and femoral offset. The radiological outcomes were considered as continuous and binary outcome variables based on Lewinnek’s ‘safe zone’. Results Similar trends were seen in all three thigh circumference groups. In multivariable analyses, patients in the largest 20 cm thigh circumference quartile (59 cm to 78 cm) had inclination angles that were a mean of 5.96° larger (95% confidence interval (CI) 2.99° to 8.93°; p < 0.001) and anteversion angles that were a mean of 2.92° larger (95% CI 0.47° to 5.37°; p = 0.020) than the smallest quartile. No significant differences were noted in leg-length discrepancy or offset. Conclusion There was an associated increase in inclination and anteversion as thigh circumference increased, with no change in the risk of malpositioning the components. THA can be performed using the DAA in patients with large thigh circumference without the risk of malpositioning the acetabular component. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2019;101-B:529–535.
Guidelines for the follow-up of total hip arthroplasty
Authors: Cassidy R. S. , O hEireamhoin S. , Beverland D. E. 
Published: April 2019

Aims The aim of this retrospective audit was to determine the route of referral or presentation of patients requiring revision following primary total hip arthroplasty (THA). Patients and Methods A total of 4802 patients were implanted with an Orthopaedic Data Evaluation Panel (ODEP) 10A* cementless implant (Corail/Pinnacle) between 2005 and 2015; 80 patients with a mean age of 67.8 years (sd 10.8) underwent a subsequent revision. The primary outcome measure was route of referral for revision. Results Of the 80 revisions, 31 (38.8%) took place within the first year and 69 (86.3%) took place within six years. Only two of the 80 patients were picked up at a routine review clinic, one for infection and the other for liner dissociation. A total of 36 revised patients (45.0%) were reviewed following self-referral. Of the remaining 44 revised patients (55.0%), 15 (18.8%) were General Practitioner referrals, 13 (16.3%) were other hospital referrals, six (7.5%) were inpatients, six (7.5%) were Emergency Department referrals, and two (2.5%) were readmitted from their homes. No revisions were carried out on asymptomatic patients. Conclusion Our experience suggests that if there is a robust system in place for self-referral, patients with an ODEP 10A* hip implant can, if asymptomatic, be safely discharged at the time of their first postoperative review. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2019;101-B:536–539.