BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to measure HrQoL during acute exacerbations of COPD using generic and disease-specific instruments, and to assess completeness, proportion with best or worst health state, sensitivity to change and discriminative ability for each instrument. METHODS EQ-5D, SF-12 and SGRQ were obtained from COPD patients with GOLD stage III and IV hospitalized for an acute ...

OBJECTIVES Several preference-based health-related quality of life (HRQoL) instruments have been published and widely used in different populations. However no consensus has emerged regarding the most appropriate instrument in therapeutic area of stable angina. This study compared and validated the psychometric properties of two generic preference-based instruments, the EQ-5D and SF-6D, among C...

The holographic interpretation is a useful tool to describe 5D field theories in a 4D language. In particular it allows one to relate 5D AdS theories with 4D CFTs. We elaborate on the 5D/4D dictionary for the case of fermions in AdS5 with boundaries. This dictionary is quite useful to address phenomenological issues in a very simple manner, as we show by giving some examples.

Sexual dimorphism in ventrally measured digit ratios (2D:4D and other) has been related to prenatal sex-hormone levels. In the present series of three studies, we measured all digit lengths (excluding the thumb) on the dorsal, rather than the ventral, side of left and right hands and investigated the sexual dimorphism in digit ratios in three independent samples, two of them comprising adults (...

The synthesis of lanthanide-activated phosphors is pertinent to many emerging applications, ranging from high-resolution luminescence imaging to next-generation volumetric full-color display. In particular, the optical processes governed by the 4f-5d transitions of divalent and trivalent lanthanides have been the key to enabling precisely tuned color emission. The fundamental importance of lant...

OBJECTIVE Economic evaluation typically is conducted using health state utilities to estimate treatment benefits. However, such outcomes are often missing from studies of clinical effectiveness. This study aims to bridge that gap by providing appropriate methods to link values from the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) to the EQ-5D utility instrument. METH...

BACKGROUND We aimed to compare the performance of EQ-5D-3 L and howRu, which are short generic patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), in assessing the outcome of hip and knee replacements, using the Oxford Hip Score (OHS) and the Oxford Knee Scores (OKS) for comparison. METHODS Outcome was assessed as the difference between pre-surgery and 6-month post-surgery scores. We used a large samp...

BACKGROUND This paper investigates the properties and performance of the two generic measures, EQ-5D and SF-12, for Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) assessments of pregnant women living with HIV in Kunming City, Yiliang County, Daguan County, Longchuan County, Tengchong County, Longling County and Fengqing County in Yunnan Province, China. METHODS As part of a screening programme for th...