Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society (ASAS) Consensus on Spanish Nomenclature for Spondyloarthritis. / Consenso ASAS en nomenclatura en español para las espondiloartritis.

OBJECTIVE: To develop a consensus to standardize the use of Spanish terms, abbreviations and acronyms in the field of spondyloarthritis (SpA). METHODS: An international task force comprising all native Spanish-speaking Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society (ASAS) members, the executive committee of Grupo para el estudio de la Espondiloartritis de la Sociedad Española de Reumatología (GRESSER), two methodologists, two linguists from the Real Academia Nacional de Medicina de España (RANM) and two patients from the Spanish Coordinator of Spondylitis Associations (CEADE) was established. A literature review was performed to identify the conflicting terms/abbreviations/acronyms in SpA. This review examined written sources in Spanish including manuscripts, ICF and ICD, guidelines, recommendations and consensuses. This was followed by a nominal group meeting and a three-round Delphi. The recommendations from the RANM based on the Panhispanic dictionary were followed throughout the process. RESULTS: Consensus was reached for 46 terms, abbreviations or acronyms related to the field of SpA. A Spanish translation was accepted for 6 terms and 6 abbreviations to name or classify the disease, and for 6 terms and 4 abbreviations related to SpA. It was agreed not to translate 15 acronyms into Spanish. However, when mentioning them, it was recommended to follow this structure: type of acronym in Spanish and acronym and expanded form in English. With regard to 7 terms or abbreviations attached to acronyms, it was agreed to translate only the expanded form and a translation was also selected for each of them. CONCLUSIONS: Through this standardization, it is expected to establish a common use of the Spanish nomenclature for SpA. The implementation of this consensus across the community will be of substantial benefit, avoiding misunderstandings and time-consuming processes.

BEACON: A Summary Framework to Overcome Potential Reimbursement Hurdles.

OBJECTIVE: To provide a framework for addressing payers' criteria during the development of pharmaceuticals. METHODS: A conceptual framework was presented to an international health economic expert panel for discussion. A structured literature search (from 2010 to May 2015), using the following databases in Ovid: Medline(®) and Medline(®) In-Process (PubMed), Embase (Ovid), EconLit (EBSCOhost) and the National Health Service Economic Evaluation Database (NHS EED), and a 'grey literature' search, were conducted to identify existing criteria from the payer perspective. The criteria assessed by existing frameworks and guidelines were collated; the most commonly reported criteria were considered for inclusion in the framework. A mnemonic was conceived as a memory aide to summarise these criteria. RESULTS: Overall, 41 publications were identified as potentially relevant to the objective. Following further screening, 26 were excluded upon full-text review on the basis of no framework presented (n = 13), redundancy (n = 11) or abstract only (n = 2). Frameworks that captured criteria developed for or utilised by the pharmaceutical industry (n = 5) and reimbursement guidance (n = 10) were reviewed. The most commonly identified criteria-unmet need/patient burden, safety, efficacy, quality-of-life outcomes, environment, evidence quality, budget impact and comparator-were incorporated into the summary framework. For ease of communication, the following mnemonic was developed: BEACON (Burden/target population, Environment, Affordability/value, Comparator, Outcomes, Number of studies/quality of evidence). CONCLUSIONS: The BEACON framework aims to capture the 'essence' of payer requirements by addressing the most commonly described criteria requested by payers regarding the introduction of a new pharmaceutical.

Applying an equity lens to interventions: using PROGRESS ensures consideration of socially stratifying factors to illuminate inequities in health.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the utility of an acronym, place of residence, race/ethnicity/culture/language, occupation, gender/sex, religion, education, socioeconomic status, and social capital ("PROGRESS"), in identifying factors that stratify health opportunities and outcomes. We explored the value of PROGRESS as an equity lens to assess effects of interventions on health equity. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We assessed the utility of PROGRESS by using it in 11 systematic reviews and methodological studies published between 2008 and 2013. To develop the justification for each of the PROGRESS elements, we consulted experts to identify examples of unfair differences in disease burden and an intervention that can effectively address these health inequities. RESULTS: Each PROGRESS factor can be justified on the basis of unfair differences in disease burden and the potential for interventions to reduce these differential effects. We have not provided a rationale for why the difference exists but have attempted to explain why these differences may contribute to disadvantage and argue for their consideration in new evaluations, systematic reviews, and intervention implementation. CONCLUSION: The acronym PROGRESS is a framework and aide-memoire that is useful in ensuring that an equity lens is applied in the conduct, reporting, and use of research.

Chapter 2: medical tests guidance (2) developing the topic and structuring systematic reviews of medical tests: utility of PICOTS, analytic frameworks, decision trees, and other frameworks.

Topic development and structuring a systematic review of diagnostic tests are complementary processes. The goals of a medical test review are to identify and synthesize evidence to evaluate the impacts alternative testing strategies on health outcomes and to promote informed decision making. A common challenge is that the request for a review may state the claim for the test ambiguously. Due to the indirect impact of medical tests on clinical outcomes, reviewers need to identify which intermediate outcomes link a medical test to improved clinical outcomes. In this paper, we propose the use of five principles to deal with challenges: the PICOTS typology (patient population, intervention, comparator, outcomes, timing, setting), analytic frameworks, simple decision trees, other organizing frameworks and rules for when diagnostic accuracy is sufficient.

A comprehensive screening, education, and training tool for the psychological assessment of patients seeking aesthetic surgery: "DESIRABLE OP?".

Patients may seek aesthetic surgery for many reasons. They may present with expectations for both the surgical outcome and the impact that their changed appearance will have on their lives. The desire for an aesthetic procedure is usually driven by increased levels of self-consciousness. The surgeon must be able to identify those patients where the psychological outcome of aesthetic surgery is likely to be poor, and where the self-consciousness of the patient is abnormal. A mnemonic (DESIRABLE OP) is presented with the aim of providing surgeons with a screening tool that can lead them through the psychological assessment of any patient seeking an aesthetic procedure and enable them to determine whether its undertaking constitutes a desirable operation?

Decoding the alphabet soup of future audit risks.

2011 will bring a rise in audit threats facing healthcare organizations. Zone program integrity contractor audits, which can look back 10 years, are potentially most onerous. Providers should take a proactive approach that works in all audit situations. Implementing a clinical documentation improvement program and focusing on physician education are key to reducing revenue losses.

Keeping PEDIATRICS in pediatric disaster management: Before, during, and in the aftermath of complex emergencies.

From 1900 there have been more than 9800 natural disasters affecting more than 67 million children worldwide. Because of unique physical, developmental, and psychosocial characteristics of children, caring for them during complex emergencies is different to caring for adults. However, planning for these unique physical, developmental, and psychosocial needs has not been well addressed when planning for complex emergencies. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to review those characteristics of children that place them at higher disaster risk, and discuss the preparations necessary to meet their needs before, during, and in the aftermath of complex emergencies.

A language independent acronym extraction from biomedical texts with hidden Markov models.

This paper proposes to model the extraction of acronyms and their meaning from unstructured text as a stochastic process using Hidden Markov Models (HMM). The underlying, or hidden, chain is derived from the acronym where the states in the chain are made by the acronyms characters. The transition between two states happens when the origin state emits a signal. Signals recognizable by the HMM are tokens extracted from text. Observations are sequence of tokens also extracted from text. Given a set of observations, the acronym definition will be the observation with the highest probability to emerge from the HMM. Modelling this extraction probabilistically allows us to deal with two difficult aspects of this process: ambiguity and noise. We characterize ambiguity when there is no unique alignment between a character in the acronym with a token in the expansion while the feature characterizing noise is the absence of such alignment. Our experiments have proven that this approach has high precision (93.50%) and recall (85.50%) rates in an environment where acronym coinage is ambiguous and noisy such as the biomedical domain. Processing and comparing the HMM approach with different ones, showed ours to reach the highest F1 score (89.40%) on the same corpus.

Economía de palabras con la propuesta de un término / Economy of words with the proposal of a term

Se propone el uso de un sustantivo derivado de siglas, con vista a economizar 7 de 8 palabras al referirse a especialistas de primer o segundo grado en medicina general integral.

The use of a noun derived from acronyms was proposed to economize 7 of 8 words when referring to first o second degree specialists in General Comprehensive Medicine.

How to try this: Assessment of transient urinary incontinence in older adults.

Urinary incontinence in older adults is associated with an increased risk of institutionalization, as well as with urinary tract infections and depression. Transient urinary incontinence arises suddenly, lasts less than six months, and results from reversible causes. Many caregivers erroneously consider urinary incontinence to be inevitable in older adults, especially in hospitalized patients. Failure to identify and respond to transient urinary incontinence may lead to established incontinence and to other poor outcomes after hospital discharge. A bladder diary and a mnemonic are two methods nurses can use to assess for transient urinary incontinence and its treatable underlying causes. For a free online video showing nurses using these methods, go to http://links.lww.com/A311.