Influenza vaccination: incidence of symptoms and resulting absenteeism in hospital employees.

A convenience sample of hospital workers, those receiving influenza vaccine and those not receiving vaccine, were asked to complete questionnaires delineating the occurrence of symptoms (e.g., fever, headache, extreme tiredness, dry cough, sore throat, runny nose, stuffy nose, muscle aches) and absenteeism in the 7-day period post-vaccination if vaccinated. Those unvaccinated completed the questionnaire in a self-selected 7 consecutive day period during the study conducted from November 2004 to February 2005. Those receiving either Fluzone or FluMist reported significantly fewer symptoms and related absenteeism than the unvaccinated group (p < .05). Administration of influenza vaccine did not result in higher rates of post-vaccination symptoms as compared to an unvaccinated group. Further, vaccinated employees did not experience higher absenteeism rates as a result of receiving either influenza vaccine. However, for those reporting absenteeism as a result of symptoms, mean absenteeism days were highest in the FluMist group (4.5 days) compared to the unvaccinated group (2.1 days) and the Fluzone group (1.9 days).     

On verification of hyperthermia treatment planning for cervical carcinoma patients.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to verify hyperthermia treatment planning calculations by means of measurements performed during hyperthermia treatments. The calculated specific absorption rate (SAR(calc)) was compared with clinically measured SAR values, during 11 treatments in seven cervical carcinoma patients. METHODS: Hyperthermia treatments were performed using the 70 MHz AMC-4 waveguide system. Temperatures were measured using multisensor thermocouple probes. One invasive thermometry catheter in the cervical tumour and two non-invasive catheters in the vagina were used. For optimal tissue contact and fixation of the catheters, a gynaecological tampon was inserted, moisturized with distilled water (4 treatments), or saline (6 treatments) for better thermal contact. During one treatment no tampon was used. At the start of treatment the temperature rise (DeltaT(meas)) after a short power pulse was measured, which is proportional to SAR(meas). The SAR(calc) along the catheter tracks was extracted from the calculated SAR distribution and compared with the DeltaT(meas)-profiles. RESULTS: The correlation between DeltaT(meas) and SAR(calc) was on average R = 0.56 +/- 0.28, but appeared highly dependent on the wetness of the tampon (preferably with saline) and the tissue contact of the catheters. Correlations were strong (R approximately 0.85-0.93) when thermal contact was good, but much weaker (R approximately 0.14-0.48) for cases with poor thermal contact. CONCLUSION: Good correlations between measurements and calculations were found when tissue contact of the catheters was good. The main difficulties for accurate verification were of clinical nature, arising from improper use of the gynaecological tampon. Poor thermal contact between thermocouples and tissue caused measurement artefacts that were difficult to correlate with calculations.     

Mutations in SOX2 cause anophthalmia-esophageal-genital (AEG) syndrome

Table 1     

Importance of speech production for phonological awareness and word decoding: The case of children with cerebral palsy

The goal of this longitudinal study was to investigate the precursors of early reading development in 52 children with cerebral palsy at kindergarten level in comparison to 65 children without disabilities. Word Decoding was measured to investigate early reading skills, while Phonological Awareness, Phonological Short-term Memory (STM), Speech Perception, Speech Production and Nonverbal Reasoning were considered reading precursors. Children with cerebral palsy lag behind on all reading precursors at the beginning of the second year of kindergarten. For the children without disabilities, early reading skills in Grade 1 were best predicted by Phonological Awareness and Phonological STM while Speech Production was the most important predictor of early reading success for the children with cerebral palsy, followed by Phonological Awareness and Speech Perception. Furthermore, for children with cerebral palsy, Speech Production appears to dominate reading development, as Speech Production measured at the beginning of the second year of kindergarten was strongly predictive of all other reading precursors measured at the end of the second year of kindergarten. The results of this study reveal that children with cerebral palsy with additional speech impairments are at risk for limited literacy development. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Statistical clues to postoperative blood loss: Moving averages applied to medical data

With the advent of computerized databases, medical data has become easy to accumulate; however, effective use of this data continues to pose significant problems. In other circumstances, smoothing algorithms have been used to uncover non-obvious correlations, trends and relationships in noisy data. We have applied four such algorithms to a large dataset of postoperative blood replacement in cardiopulmonary bypass patients. When applied to this dataset, one of the algorithms proved surprisingly effective. It confirmed several previously observed correlations, and also provided an additional series of counterintuitive and apparently unrelated associations. These associations have been explored in an accompanying paper.