BACKGROUND Joint arthroplasty patients have a high prevalence of co-morbidities and this impacts their surgical outcomes. There are different ways to ascertain co-morbidities and appropriate measurement is necessary. The purpose of this study was to: (1) describe the prevalence of co-morbidities in a cohort of total hip arthroplasty (THA) and knee arthroplasty (TKA) patients using two diagnoses...

The reliability of the radiological assessment of the healing of tibial fractures remains undetermined. We examined the inter- and intraobserver agreement of the healing of such fractures among four orthopaedic trauma surgeons who, on two separate occasions eight weeks apart, independently assessed the radiographs of 30 patients with fractures of the tibial shaft which had been treated by intra...

or Outlier Report 2001 3rd Quarter QIC Outlier Report: Key Performance Indicators for QIC 199 variable level description Chg from history Chg from previous 2001 3Q 2001 2Q 2001 1Q 2001 0Q BL HXASCVD 1 Yes extreme increase significant increase 26% 17% 0.4% 4.3% 2 No extreme decrease significant decrease 74% 83% 100% 96% TOBSTATUS 1 Current user increased increased 19% 19% 18% 18% 2 Former user i...

Malocclusion assessment methods are based on registrations and measurements made on study casts, which requires that impressions be taken. In addition to being costly and time-consuming, this process can be unpleasant for very young children. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the reliability of intra-oral measurements that compute a malocclusion index score to determine malocclus...

OBJECTIVES To provide valid predictions of outcome, the variables included in a prognostic model must be capable of reliable collection. The authors have recently reported a set of simple but rigorously developed models that predict outcome after stroke. The aim of this study was to establish the inter-rater reliability of the variables included in the models. METHODS Inter-rater agreement wa...

The Fuzzy Kappa statistic expresses the agreement between two categorical raster maps. The statistic goes beyond cell-by-cell comparison and gives partial credit to cells based on the categories found in the neighborhood. When matching categories are found at shorter distances the agreement is higher. Like the well-established Kappa statistic the Fuzzy Kappa statistic expresses the mean agreeme...

BACKGROUND - Gastric polyps are elevated mucosal lesions. Most of them are less than 1 cm and when larger than 2 cm, has a high malignancy probability. The histopathological types are mainly fundic gland polyps, hyperplastic polyps and adenomatous polyps. OBJECTIVE - To evaluate the agreement between three different pathologists in the histopathological diagnosis of 128 biopsied gastric polyp...

OBJECTIVES To compare two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) transvaginal ultrasound with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the gold standard in assessment of parametrial infiltration of cervical cancer and to determine if all parts of the cervix are equally assessable with ultrasound. METHODS Patients with macroscopically evident and histologically confirmed cervical cancer were s...

BACKGROUND Most composite indices of disease activity and response criteria in RA have been validated and compared in clinical trials rather than routine care. We therefore wanted to compare the performance of the DAS28, SDAI and CDAI activity indices, their activity states, their response criteria, and also compare with the ACR response criteria in an observational clinical setting. METHODS ...