Background No prior study has investigated the dynamics of body weight with body muscle mass as a prognostic factor in advanced biliary tract cancer (BTC) patients undergoing palliative chemotherapy. We investigated whether low skeletal muscle mass affects survival in patients with BTC, with a co-analysis of body weight loss and body mass index (BMI). Results By multivariate analysis, low ske...

BACKGROUND Socioeconomic status has important associations with disease-specific mortality in the general population. Although individuals with Severe Mental Illnesses (SMI) experience significant premature mortality, the relationship between socioeconomic status and mortality in this group remains under investigated. We aimed to assess the impact of socioeconomic status on rate and cause of de...

BACKGROUND Treatments for drug addiction and smoking in severely mentally ill (SMI) adults are needed. OBJECTIVES To investigate the effect of a contingency management (CM) intervention targeting psycho-stimulant on cigarette smoking. METHODS 126 stimulant dependent SMI smokers were assigned to CM or a non-contingent control condition. Rates of smoking-negative (<3 ppm) carbon monoxide brea...

Abbt and Alderson remark ‘how little time we spend in general practice ... perhaps 8 weeks over an entire degree’ but at Imperial College London and probably at most other medical schools, this represents greater time allotted than for many other specialties. We suggest the focus in medical schools should shift towards improving the quality of general practice placements and promoting the integ...

INTRODUCTION Despite increasing attention to employment within the mental health sector, reports indicate that people with serious mental illness (SMI) continue to experience limited employment success in the province of Ontario, Canada. Research specifies that people with SMI who live in rural places are less likely than those living in urban centers to have access to satisfactory employment s...

Diagonal loading imparts Robustness to the adaptive beamformer against signal mismatch due to low sample support. It helps to achieve desired sidelobe level and to improve Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR). In this paper, variants of Minimum Variance Distortionless Response-Sample Matrix Inversion (MVDR-SMI) beamformer with diagonal loading are analyzed. A novel hybrid algorithm, M...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW The projected increase of Americans aged 65 years and older will have an unprecedented impact on the healthcare delivery system. As a result, new models to support individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) will become increasingly more important. This selective overview highlights recent reports addressing psychosocial functioning and interventions for older adults with SM...

609 Abstract: In order to determine the seminal activity of LDH-C4 and to investigate its correlation with other fertility indexes, we studed total LDH, total CK avtivities, and LDH-C4 in relation to sperm count, motility and sperm motility index (SMI). SMI is the measurement of electro-optical fluctuations caused by motile sperm. Total LDH and total CK were determined with a Technicon RA 1000 ...

Correspondence: rick Hodder Divisions of Pulmonary and Critical Care, The Ottawa Hospital, 1053 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Tel +1 (613) 761 4130 Fax +1 (613) 761 4152 email [email protected] Abstract: Device satisfaction and preference are important patient-reported outcomes to consider when choosing inhaled therapy. A subset of adults (n = 153) with moderate or severe a...

A 2-step clustering procedure, using indexes derived from principal component analysis, was used to disclose sperm subpopulations within the canine ejaculate and its relationship to sperm cryoresistance. Semen from 4 dogs was frozen-thawed by a standard protocol: before freezing, computer-assisted sperm analysis of motility and morphometry were performed; after thawing, motility analysis was pe...