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Sensitivity Rates (sensitivity + rate)
Selected AbstractsSentinel node biopsy in squamous cell cancer of the oral cavity and oral pharynx: A diagnostic meta-analysis,HEAD & NECK: JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENCES & SPECIALTIES OF THE HEAD AND NECK, Issue 9 2005Vinidh Paleri MS FRCS (ORL-HNS) Abstract Background. The sentinel node biopsy concept has been gaining support in the head and neck cancer literature during only the last few years, and several pilot studies have been published. This procedure aims to avoid unnecessary treatment to the clinically negative neck by identifying the patients with occult neck disease. Methods. We performed a systematic review and a diagnostic meta-analysis of all published literature regarding sentinel node biopsies in head and neck cancer until December 2003 using established guidelines. Using the pooled sensitivity rates obtained from the meta-analysis and treatment outcomes from published literature, we created a decision analysis model to identify the treatment arm with better payoffs. Results. A total of 301 patients with oral cavity primary tumors and 46 patients with oropharyngeal primary tumors from 19 articles were included for the meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity result using the random effects model was 0.926 (95% confidence interval, 0.852,0.964). The cumulative payoff for the sentinel node biopsy arm was lower than that for the elective node dissection arm by about 1%. The payoffs were assigned for the recurrence and mortality rates only and did not take into account the morbidity caused by the procedures. Conclusions. The sentinel node biopsy procedure has shown high sensitivity rates in pilot studies for oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell cancer across the globe and is reliable and reproducible. This study provides a firm evidence base for forthcoming trials on the role of sentinel node biopsy in head and neck cancer. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck27: XXX,XXX, 2005 [source] Construction and validation of a patient- and user-friendly nursing home version of the Geriatric Depression Scale,INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, Issue 9 2007K. Jongenelis Abstract Objective To construct a patient- and user-friendly shortened version of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) that is especially suitable for nursing home patients. Methods The study was carried out on two different data bases including 23 Dutch nursing homes. Data on the GDS (n,=,410), the Mini Mental State Examination (n,=,410) and a diagnostic interview (SCAN; n,=,333), were collected by trained clinicians. Firstly, the items of the GDS-15 were judged on their clinical applicability by three clinical experts. Subsequently, items that were identified as unsuitable were removed using the data of the Assess project (n,=,77), and internal consistency was calculated. Secondly, with respect to criterion validity (sensitivity, specitivity, area under ROC and positive and negative predictive values), the newly constructed shortened GDS was validated in the AGED data set (n,=,333), using DSM-IV diagnosis for depression as measured by the SCAN as ,gold standard'. Results The eight-item GDS that resulted from stage 1 showed good internal consistency in both the Assess data set (,,=,0.86) and the AGED dataset (,,=,0.80). In the AGED dataset, high sensitivity rates of 96.3% for major depression and 83.0% for minor depression were found, with a specificity rate of 71.7% at a cut-off point of 2/3. Conclusion The GDS-8 has good psychometric properties. Given that the GDS-8 is less burdening for the patient, more comfortable to use and less time consuming, it may be a more feasible screening test for the frail nursing home population. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Comparing self-reported and measured high blood pressure and high cholesterol status using data from a large representative cohort studyAUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, Issue 4 2010Anne Taylor Abstract Objective: To examine the relationship between self-reported and clinical measurements for high blood pressure (HBP) and high cholesterol (HC) in a random population sample. Method: A representative population sample of adults aged 18 years and over living in the north-west region of Adelaide (n=1537) were recruited to the biomedical cohort study in 2002/03. In the initial cross-sectional component of the study, self-reported HBP status and HC status were collected over the telephone. Clinical measures of blood pressure were obtained and fasting blood taken to determine cholesterol levels. In addition, data from a continuous chronic disease and risk factor surveillance system were used to assess the consistency of self-reported measures over time. Result: Self-report of current HBP and HC showed >98% specificity for both, but sensitivity was low for HC (27.8%) and moderate for HBP (49.0%). Agreement between current self-report and clinical measures was moderate (kappa 0.55) for HBP and low (kappa 0.30) for HC. Demographic differences were found with younger people more likely to have lower sensitivity rates. Self-reported estimates for the surveillance system had not varied significantly over time. Conclusion: Although self-reported measures are consistent over time there are major differences between the self-reported measures and the actual clinical measurements. Technical aspects associated with clinic measurements could explain some of the difference. Implications: Monitoring of these broad population measures requires knowledge of the differences and limitations in population settings. [source] Computational identification of altered metabolism using gene expression and metabolic pathwaysBIOTECHNOLOGY & BIOENGINEERING, Issue 4 2009Hojung Nam Abstract Understanding altered metabolism is an important issue because altered metabolism is often revealed as a cause or an effect in pathogenesis. It has also been shown to be an important factor in the manipulation of an organism's metabolism in metabolic engineering. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to measure the concentration levels of all metabolites in the genome-wide scale of a metabolic network; consequently, a method that infers the alteration of metabolism is beneficial. The present study proposes a computational method that identifies genome-wide altered metabolism by analyzing functional units of KEGG pathways. As control of a metabolic pathway is accomplished by altering the activity of at least one rate-determining step enzyme, not all gene expressions of enzymes in the pathway demonstrate significant changes even if the pathway is altered. Therefore, we measure the alteration levels of a metabolic pathway by selectively observing expression levels of significantly changed genes in a pathway. The proposed method was applied to two strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene expression profiles measured in very high-gravity (VHG) fermentation. The method identified altered metabolic pathways whose properties are related to ethanol and osmotic stress responses which had been known to be observed in VHG fermentation because of the high sugar concentration in growth media and high ethanol concentration in fermentation products. With the identified altered pathways, the proposed method achieved best accuracy and sensitivity rates for the Red Star (RS) strain compared to other three related studies (gene-set enrichment analysis (GSEA), significance analysis of microarray to gene set (SAM-GS), reporter metabolite), and for the CEN.PK 113-7D (CEN) strain, the proposed method and the GSEA method showed comparably similar performances. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009;103: 835,843. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] | ||||||||||