bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Level of Evidence and Grade Recommendation for the Diagnosis of Patients with Pseudoarthrosis in Traumatic Fractures of the Thoracolumbar Spine (T11–L2): Systematic Review
Authors: Garcia Dávila Jorge Arturo 
Published: May 2015

Objective This study aims to study the through a systematic review to identify the level of evidence and grade of recommendation for the diagnosis of nonunion in patients with traumatic fractures of the thoracolumbar spine. Summary The thoracolumbar spine fractures account for more than 50% of all fractures of the spine and a large proportion of acute injuries of the spinal cord, so predictable is the presence of nonunion or malunion in this type of fracture. Although some articles mention as one of the complications in these injuries to the nonunion, in national or world literature, there are no consistent data in terms of diagnosis and/or percentage. Therefore, we did a systematic review looking for the level of evidence and grade of recommendation for the diagnosis of nonunion in this type of injury. Method A study of systematic review designed according to the recommendations of the Cochrane Group were identified and searched for keywords, reason for the study, according to the criteria of the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH), which were researched through the Boolean algebra, using managers in primary and secondary search of the complete discharge of items. Articles obtained according to the search criteria were assessed in a standardized manner and blinded by two observers using the criteria of Jadad and Delphi. The statistical analysis was a description of the variables and then identify the values of agreement between observers using kappa values, considering how reliable the values of kappa = 0.80, p value = 0.05. Results The data provided by the two observers, yielded the following results: by type of study: zero articles as case reports, seven articles as a series of cases, six review articles, two clinic assays, and one cohort study. Regard to level of evidence: 14 articles with evidence level IV and 2 articles with evidence level III. With regard to recommendation grade: 14 articles with recommendation D and 2 articles with recommendation C. As for the statistical analysis, the percentage of agreement for Jadad was 100% and for Delphi 87%. The intraclass correlation coefficient for level of evidence and recommendation grades was 0.939. Conclusions (1) There is a low level of evidence (grade IV) and grade of recommendation (D) for the diagnosis of pseudoarthrosis in traumatic fractures of the thoracolumbar spine. (2) No single study is sufficient for the diagnosis of pseudoarthrosis in these fractures. (3) The literature on the problem of pseudoarthrosis in thoracolumbar spine are more focused on the pathology degenerative than traumatic thoracolumbar fractures. (4) Systematic reviews found no reference to this pathology. (5) Could not be diagnosticating the incidence of this pathology in the service of this hospital due to at not systematic clinical and radiographic criteria for the diagnosis of pseudoarthrosis in fractures of the thoracolumbar spine.
Administration of a maple syrup extract to mitigate their hepatic inflammation induced by a high-fat diet: a transcriptome analysis
Authors: Kamei Asuka , Watanabe Yuki , Shinozaki Fumika , Yasuoka Akihito , Kondo Takashi , Ishijima Tomoko , Toyoda Tsudoi , Arai Soichi , Abe Keiko 
Published: May 2015

AbstractEffects of the administration of maple syrup extract (MSX) on hepatic gene expression were investigated in mice fed a high-fat diet. Gene annotation enrichment analysis based on gene ontology revealed some changes in the expression of genes related to lipid metabolism and the immune response in MSX-fed mice. Detailed analysis of these data indicated that MSX ingestion mitigates hepatic inflammation.
Entrepreneurship research amid transitional economies: domains and opportunities
Authors: Lin Song , Lasserre Philippe 
Published: May 2015

Purpose– This special issue ofChinese Management Studiesaims to focus on entrepreneurship in China by addressing a variety of topics. The purpose is to provide some insights for entrepreneurship research based on the context of China as a representative emerging economy.Design/methodology/approach– Review and reflection.Findings– The research presented in the eight articles that constitute this special issue concern different topics, including entrepreneurship in the Chinese historical context, entrepreneurship in the context of networks and relationships and entrepreneurship in specialized industries. These articles provide valuable contributions to theory construction in entrepreneurship research for emerging economies, not just for enterprises in China but also for people and ventures around the world.Research limitations/implications– Developing an indigenous understanding of the opportunity for entrepreneurship research in an emerging economy such as China, we would argue, is only the beginning for the research work based on the historical context, networks and relationships, and specialized industries that could boom in the wide open workspaces of the developing world.Originality/value– The studies published here provide valuable contributions to theory construction in entrepreneurship research, as well as some basic ideas for concept definition and structural comparison in entrepreneurship research in other different domains.
Cultural beliefs, agency relationship, and network governance
Authors: Hu Shao-Dong , Chen Si-Yan 
Published: May 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of cultural beliefs on governance in a business network without a legal institutional framework. Particular emphasis is placed on the cross-country remittance mail operating network in Chaoshan, China, during the period 1860-1949. This investigation builds on Greif’s business governance theory and develops an analytical framework that considers cultural beliefs, agency relationships and multilateral punishment mechanisms. Furthermore, it uses the institutional analysis method to identify the institutional factors that sustained the remittance mail operating networks and their underlying mechanisms.

Design/methodology/approach
– This paper adopts the qualitative research method. First, it investigates the history of the remittance mail operating network and agency relationships by searching through the contents of the relevant historical documents preserved in the official archives and information found in other records. Thereafter, it summarizes and demonstrates the cultural beliefs inferred from that research. The archival materials permit analysis of the interactions between cultural beliefs, agency relationships and multilateral punishment mechanisms by the institutional analysis method.

Findings
– Due to the lack of legal institutions in China during the period under review, cultural beliefs played a central institutional role in cross-country business relations. Network governance was coupled with clan cultural beliefs in the remittance mail operating network. This relationship was the key to sustain the efficient operation of the remittance mail network.

Originality/value
– In the West, corporate governance has been influenced by and has become an integral feature of Western culture and values. This is not necessarily so for the corporate governance in terms of Chinese culture and values. Thus, instead of mimicking the modes of developed countries, it is important for Chinese enterprises to seek a mode of corporate governance that is in accord with their local cultures. This may be an important focus for enterprise development.
Implementing hospital quality assurance policies in Iran
Authors: Aghaei Hashjin Asgar , Delgoshaei Bahram , Kringos Dionne S , Tabibi Seyed Jamaladin , Manouchehri Jila , Klazinga Niek S 
Published: May 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of applied hospital quality assurance (QA) policies in Iran.

Design/methodology/approach
– A mixed method (quantitative data and qualitative document analysis) study was carried out between 1996 and 2010.

Findings
– The QA policy cycle forms a tight monitoring system to assure hospital quality by combining mandatory and voluntary methods in Iran. The licensing, annual evaluation and grading, and regulatory inspections statutorily implemented by the government as a national package to assure and improve hospital care quality, while implementing quality management systems (QMS) was voluntary for hospitals. The government’s strong QA policy legislation role and support has been an important factor for successful QA implementation in Iran, though it may affected QA assessment independency and validity. Increased hospital evaluation independency and repositioning, updating standards, professional involvement and effectiveness studies could increase QA policy impact and maturity.

Practical implications
– The study highlights the current QA policy implementation cycle in Iranian hospitals. It provides a basis for further quality strategy development in Iranian hospitals and elsewhere. It also raises attention about finding the optimal balance between different QA policies, which is topical for many countries.

Originality/value
– This paper describes experiences when implementing a unique approach, combining mandatory and voluntary QA policies simultaneously in a developing country, which has invested considerably over time to improve hospital quality. The experiences with a mixed obligatory/voluntary approach and comprehensive policies in Iran may contain lessons for policy makers in developing and developed countries.
Clinical pathways in China – an evaluation
Authors: He Jingwei Alex , Yang Wei 
Published: May 2015

Purpose
– Clinical pathways (CPs) are multidisciplinary care plans with essential care steps for patients with specific clinical problems. CPs were introduced in China in 2009 to assure quality, reduce risks, increase resource efficiency and control costs. The purpose of this paper is to present a Chinese public hospital case study where a CP pilot was undertaken to evaluate two main outcomes: length of stay and hospitalization costs for a tertiary hospital from 2010 to 2012 using a mixed-methods approach.

Design/methodology/approach
– Data were drawn from hospital records and in-depth interviews with hospital staff in a Shanxi Province tertiary hospital, northern China.

Findings
– The authors found that the main objectives: to standardize treatment procedures by reducing length of stay and containing costs, were not fully achieved. Staff implementing CPs clearly encountered several barriers; i.e., managers did not see the pilot as a useful managerial instrument but were still driven by revenue generation. Physicians, too, lacked incentive to follow the guidelines due to income concerns.

Practical implications
– The authors point to the daunting challenges brought about by perverse incentives embedded in the country’s health system. The authors argue that concerted efforts are needed to undertake difficult health policy reforms in China.

Originality/value
– The authors present the first empirical study in the English-language literature that examines China’s ongoing CP pilots from a micro perspective. The authors combine qualitative and quantitative methods and reveal the hospital-level dynamics in its implementation.
An evaluation of just-in-time initiatives in the Indian industries
Authors: Singh Gurinder , Ahuja Inderpreet Singh 
Published: May 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to develop an insight into the prevalent just-in-time (JIT) practices adopted in Indian manufacturing industry for realizing the development and growth of the industrial sector. The endeavor of Indian manufacturing organizations to achieve manufacturing performance enhancement through JIT implementation has been highlighted in the present study.

Design/methodology/approach
– The present study has been conducted in the large- and medium-scale manufacturing industries of India that have successfully implemented or are in the various stages of implementing JIT. The approach of study has been directed toward assessment of JIT initiatives in Indian manufacturing industries.

Findings
– From the present study it is apparent that Indian organizations have been reasonably successful in improving the business performance by implementing holistic JIT initiatives and have successfully reaped the benefits of JIT implementation. However, it is also revealed in present study that Indian manufacturing industries need to work more aggressively on managing few issues of JIT.

Originality/value
– The value of paper is in calculation of percent point score for each issue of JIT in context to Indian manufacturing industry and to find out significant as well as issues that need to worked aggressively by Indian manufacturing industry to reap the benefits of JIT.
Seeking and measuring the essential behaviors of servant leadership
Authors: Winston Bruce , Fields Dail 
Published: May 2015

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of how servant leadership is established and transmitted among members of an organization. The second goal was to identify and evaluate the unique actions by a leader essential to establishing servant leadership. The authors’ efforts resulted in identification and validation of ten leader behaviors that seem to be essential to servant leadership.

Design/methodology/approach
– The authors’ methodology consisted of two stages. In the first stage, The authors developed an item pool of 116 items drawn from previously developed operationalizations of servant leadership. The authors then engaged a panel of 23 researchers attending a conference focused exclusively on the study of servant leadership to evaluate the. Each participant was asked to independently rate each item using a four-point scale where 1=not useful in describing servant leaders and 4=contributes greatly to describing servant leaders. The authors retained only the most highly rated items. This resulted in retention of 22 leader behaviors for further analysis. In the second stage, the authors developed a questionnaire including these items as well as items measuring transformational leadership behaviors, transactional leader behaviors, servant leadership as measured by the instrument developed by Liden et al. (2008), and a measure of leadership effectiveness developed and used by Ehrhart and Klein (2001). The questionnaire was placed in internet-based survey software and the link provided to students and faculty at a private mid-Atlantic university and to university alumni and colleagues in a variety of organizations. Each respondent was asked to describe a leader he/she had worked for in the past five years and included specification of the job role for both the respondent and the leader.

Findings
– The ten-item scale accounts for 75 percent of the variance with a scale reliability α=0.96. Convergent validity was determined through comparison to Liden et al. (2008) measure of servant leadership. Discriminant validity was established through confirmatory analysis of leader effectiveness, transformational leadership’s four dimensions, a measure of transactional leadership, and an alternative multi-dimensional measure of servant leadership.

Originality/value
– This paper clarifies and provides a measure of the essential behaviors of servant leaders. This provides a useful measurement tool for leadership development.
Glucocorticoid manipulations in free‐living animals: considerations of dose delivery, life‐history context and reproductive state
Authors: Crossin Glenn T. , Love Oliver P. , Cooke Steven J. , Williams Tony D. 
Published: May 2015

Summary

Experimental glucocorticoid (GC) manipulations can be useful for identifying the mechanisms that drive life‐history and fitness variation in free‐living animals, but predicting the effects of GC treatment can be complicated. Much of the uncertainty stems from the multi‐faceted role of GCs in organismal metabolism, and their variable influence with respect to life‐history stage, ecological context, age, sex and individual variation.

Glucocorticoid hormones have been implicated in the regulation of parental care in many vertebrate taxa but in two seemingly contradictory ways, which sets up a potential GC‐induced ‘reproductive conflict’. Circulating GCs mediate adaptive physiological and behavioural responses to stressful events, and elevated levels can lead to trade offs between reproductive effort and survival (e.g. the current reproduction vs. survival hypothesis). The majority of studies examining the fitness effects of GC manipulations extend from this hypothesis. However, when animals are not stressed (likely most of the time) baseline GCs act as key metabolic regulators of daily energy balance, homoeostasis, osmoregulation and food acquisition, with pleiotropic effects on locomotor activity or foraging behaviour. Slight increases in circulating baseline levels can then have positive effects on reproductive effort (e.g. the ‘cort’ fitness/adaptation hypotheses), but comparatively few GC manipulation studies have targeted these small, non‐stress induced increases.

We review studies of GC manipulations and examine the specific hypotheses used to predict the effects of manipulations in wild, breeding vertebrates. We argue that given the dichotomous function of GCs the current ‘reproduction vs. survival’ paradigm is unnecessarily restrictive and predicts only deleterious GC effects on fitness. Therefore, a broader set of hypotheses should be considered when testing the fitness effects of GC manipulations.

When framing experimental manipulation studies, we urge researchers to consider three key points: life‐history context (e.g. long vs. short lived, semelparous vs. iteroparous, etc.), ecological context and dose delivery.
An Integrative Literature Review of the Factors That Contribute to Professional Nurses and Midwives Making Sound Clinical Decisions
Authors: ten Ham Wilma , Ricks Esmeralda J. , van Rooyen Dalena , Jordan Portia J. 
Published: May 2015

PurposeTo identify available literature concerning the factors that contribute to nurses and midwives making sound clinical decisions.MethodThis is an integrative literature review.FindingsThirty‐eight articles revealed four main domains that influence nurses’ and midwives’ clinical decision making—nurses and midwives’ personal characteristics (n = 30), e.g., clinical experience; organizational factors (n = 26), e.g., colleagues; patient characteristics (n = 26), e.g., physical and clinical status; and environmental factors (n = 9), e.g., time. These four domains of factors combined influence sound clinical decision making in the context of nursing and midwifery.ConclusionsUnderstanding the role of the factors influencing clinical decision making will help to improve patient and health outcomes.Practice ImplicationsFurther understanding about the extent of the impact some factors have on clinical decision making is needed.
Malignant hyperthermia, a Scandinavian update
Authors: Broman M. , Islander G. , Müller C. R. 
Published: May 2015

BackgroundMalignant Hyperthermia (MH) is a rare pharmacogenetic disorder, triggered by halogenated anesthetics and/or succinylcholine. In susceptible individuals, these drugs can activate an explosive life threatening clinical reaction. Leading symptoms are hypercarbia, muscle rigidity, and metabolic acidosis. MH is inherited in an autosomal‐dominant manner and linked to mutations in the large ryanodine 1 gene (RYR1) gene in the majority of cases. Very few MH patients have been found to carry mutations in the CACNA1S gene.MethodsFor this review a large litterature search was carried out and the Swedish MH database consisting of 436 probands who have undergone in vitro muscle contraction test (IVCT) during 1984–2014 was analyzed.ResultsTwelve different MH causative mutations have been found in Swedish patients so far. These mutations lead to a disturbed calcium balance in striated muscle tissue. A muscle biopsy for the IVCT or finding of an approved causative mutation are required for the diagnosis.ConclusionA Malignant Hyperthermia susceptible (MHS) patient should be anesthetized with trigger‐free anesthesia. There are a few reports of MH‐like reactions in patients unrelated to anesthesia. The outcome is dependent on early recognizing of the reaction and fast disconnection of the trigger agents and administration of dantrolene.
Using Transdermal Alcohol Monitoring to Detect Low‐Level Drinking
Authors: Roache John D. , Karns Tara E. , Hill‐Kapturczak Nathalie , Mullen Jillian , Liang Yuanyuan , Lamb Richard J. , Dougherty Donald M. 
Published: May 2015

BackgroundSeveral studies demonstrate the utility of Alcohol Monitoring Systems’ (AMS) transdermal alcohol concentration (TAC) monitor to objectively quantify drinking. AMS standard criteria (i.e., TAC >0.02 g/dl) used for drinking detection are deliberately conservative, but consequently only detect drinking equivalent to 5 or more standard drinks. Our study sought to characterize the sensitivity of TAC measurement to detect low‐level drinking defined as the consumption of 1 to 3 beers.MethodsData were pooled from 3 studies giving controlled doses of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 Corona© beers (12 oz = 0.92 standard units) to 32 male and 29 female research volunteers wearing TAC monitors under controlled conditions. Analyses describe the sensitivity to detect drinking at various peak TAC thresholds beginning with any positive reading >0 g/dl, and then using TAC thresholds of 0.02 and 0.03 g/dl.ResultsNearly 40% of participants drinking 1 beer did not have a positive TAC reading. However, positive TAC readings were observed in more than 95 and in 100% of participants drinking 2 and 3 or more beers, respectively. The probability of peak TAC detection was a positive function of the number of beers consumed and a negative function of the minimum TAC threshold for detection. Drinking was somewhat more likely to be detected in females than males drinking 2 to 5 beers, but not after 1 beer. Use of AMS standard criteria only reliably detected the consumption of 5 beers, and 45.9% of all occasions of drinking 1 to 3 beers were undetected using 0.02 g/dl as a threshold.ConclusionsPeak TAC levels between 0 and 0.02 g/dl must be considered to detect the low‐level drinking of 1 to 3 standard drinks, and such thresholds are necessary when researchers and clinicians want to detect low‐level drinking.
Mycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome: Current challenges in assessment, management and prognostic markers
Authors: Hughes Charlotte FM , Newland Kate , McCormack Christopher , Lade Stephen , Prince H Miles 
Published: May 2015

AbstractMycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome are the most common variants of the cutaneous T‐cell lymphomas. Assessment of a patient with a suspected diagnosis requires thorough history taking and physical examination, in combination with skin biopsy. In some cases flow cytometry, molecular studies and imaging are also required in order to diagnose and stage the disease. Staging is derived from the tumour‐node‐metastasis‐blood classification and is currently our best attempt to stratify prognosis and hence guide management in this complex disease. Many other clinical, biological and pathological factors may help to distinguish groups at risk and predict prognosis more accurately. Management remains heavily guided by staging, such that patients with early‐stage disease generally begin treatment with skin‐directed or local therapies and those with advanced‐stage disease have many treatment options, including chemotherapy, the use of biological agents, local and total body radiotherapy, as well as haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Besides staging, many other patient‐related factors influence the treatment strategy, particularly where symptom relief is paramount. There are many challenges remaining in the study of Mycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome and, given the rarity of the disease, concerted worldwide efforts are required to conduct efficient and effective research.