introduction: international study on asthma was conducted to study the prevalence of asthma symptoms among 13-14 year old children using written and video questionnaires during the early 90's. the aim of the present study (isaac) was to evaluate the agreement between the two questionnaires which were self-completed by the children. methods: this study, which was a part of the third phase o...

BACKGROUND In clinical practice lateral images of the chest are performed for various reasons. As these lateral chest X rays show the vertebrae of the thoracic and thoraco-lumbar region, we wondered if these X-rays can be used for evaluation of vertebral fractures instead of separate thoracic spine X-rays. METHODS To evaluate the agreement and intraobserver reliability of the semi-quantitativ...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study is to determine whether a qualitative approach or a semi-quantitative approach provides the most robust method for early response evaluation with 2'-deoxy-2'-[(18)F]fluoro-D-glucose (F-18-FDG) positron emission tomography combined with whole body computed tomography (PET/CT) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this study eight Nuclear Medicine consulta...

OBJECTIVE To review the statistical approaches to test for spatial heterogeneity of relative risks. Three different statistical tests (Gail, Martuzzi-Hills and Potthoff-Whittinghill) are reviewed and applied--as motivating example--to the analysis of cause-specific mortality records (years: 1991-2000) of the Municipalities belonging to the Local Health Unit Alto Vicentino. METHODS Spatial het...

BACKGROUND Different methods in pharmacoepidemiology can be used to study hypnotic use in children. But neither questionnaire-based data nor prescription records can be considered a "gold standard". This study aimed to investigate the agreement between mother-reported questionnaire-based data and prescription record data for hypnotic drugs in children aged 0-18 months. The agreement was compare...

BACKGROUND In light of the possibly preventive role of timing and amount of gluten in celiac disease, it would be helpful to have a questionnaire to assess the gluten intake in infants. AIMS Development and validation of a food questionnaire to assess gluten consumption in healthy infants aged 0-12 months (FQ-gluten). METHODS A food frequency questionnaire, previously developed for the Gene...

BACKGROUND Rib series (RS) are a special radiological technique to improve the visualization of the bony parts of the chest. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of rib series in minor thorax trauma. METHODS Retrospective study of 56 patients who received RS, 39 patients where additionally evaluated by plain chest film (PCF). All patients underwent a comp...

background and objectives: antibacterial susceptibility testing of clinical bacterial isolates through disk diffusion method plays a major role in antibacterial treatment. one of the main factors affecting the result of these tests is the type, structure and quality of the disks. the main objective of this study was to compare the agreement of antibiotic disks originated from three companies on...