OBJECTIVE Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) develop autoantibodies against a spectrum of antigens, but the clinical significance of these autoantibodies is unclear. Using a phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) approach, we examined the association between autoantibodies and clinical subphenotypes of RA. METHODS This study was conducted in a cohort of RA patients identified from the e...

This document is intended as a model coverage policy for cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) imaging studies and delineates under which clinical situations such a study is indicated. This document examines a variety of patient clinical indications and symptoms which support the use of cardiac PET by cross-referencing the indication with the appropriate use criteria (AUC) for radionuclide...

The Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC) database provides a universal code system for reporting laboratory and other clinical observations. Its purpose is to identify observations in electronic messages such as Health Level Seven (HL7) observation messages, so that when hospitals, health maintenance organizations, pharmaceutical manufacturers, researchers, and public health d...

the present paper aims to study the iranian-made movie “aroos-e-atash” (the bride of fire), using semiotic methodology at the three following levels: description (social codes), representation (technical codes) and ideology (ideological codes). the process of interconnections and interactions between these three types of codes resulted in these findings: although the movie enjoys an emancipatio...

The objective of this study was to determine the relationships among severity and duration of clinical mastitis during first and second lactation and sire transmitting abilities for somatic cell score, udder type traits, productive life, and protein yield. Recording of clinical episodes began at first parturition for 1704 Holstein cows (in six Pennsylvania herds and one Nebraska herd) and conti...

Objectives: This study examined whether clinical evidence in medical records confirms ICD-9-CM diagnoses that identify the Patient Safety Indicator (PSI) accidental puncture or laceration (APL), and examined the utility of procedure codes in identifying patients who suffered an APL. Methods: Validation results were based on a retrospective medical record review of 67 inpatients from the year 20...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of diabetes is increasing with growing levels of obesity and an aging population. New practical guidelines for diabetes provide an applicable classification. Inconsistent coding of diabetes hampers the use of computerised disease registers for quality improvement, and limits the monitoring of disease trends. OBJECTIVE To develop a consensus set of codes that should b...

Limited information is available from large clinical investigations about the agreement among sources of diagnoses for endpoints. The authors used data from the Women's Health Initiative clinical trials and observational study from January 1994 to November 2000 to evaluate the agreement among self-report, hospital discharge codes, and two different levels of physician review of medical records ...

background: iodine brachytherapy sources with low photon energies have been widely used in treating cancerous tumors. dosimetric parameters of brachytherapy sources should be determined according to aapm tg-43u1 recommendations before clinical use. monte carlo codes are reliable tools in calculation of these parameters for brachytherapy sources. materials and methods: dosimetric parameters (dos...