BACKGROUND Diagnosis of anemia is challenging in resource-poor settings due to inadequate laboratory resources. This study assessed the validity of the Tallquist haemoglobinometer in assessing anemia among pregnant women in Osogbo, Southwestern Nigeria. METHODS This was a cross - sectional study, in which 200 pregnant women of reproductive age were selected using multistage sapling method. A ...

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study is to compare five commonly used malnutrition screening tools against an acknowledged definition of malnutrition in one hospital inpatient sample. BACKGROUND Early identification and intervention of malnutrition in hospital patients may prevent later complications. Several screening tools have reported their diagnostic accuracy, but the criterion ...

BACKGROUND Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is subclassified into four subtypes by the presence of impairment in the memory domain (amnestic vs. nonamnestic) and the number of impaired cognitive domains (single vs multiple). However, predictive validity for outcomes of these criteria and the diagnostic stability of the subtypes are questionable. METHODS We investigated the outcomes of 140 pati...

BACKGROUND The Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20) was developed in 1995. Since then, it has been widely used in cancer research and cancer-related illnesses but has never been validated in fatiguing illnesses or in a large US population-selected sample. In this study, we sought to examine the reliability and validity of the MFI-20 in the population of the state of Georgia, USA. Further...

INTRODUCTION A targeted Hirschsprung disease (HD) diagnostic is necessary, as it determines a specific approach primarily based on surgical resection of the affected aganglionic colonic segment. The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of a contrast enema (CE) for HD diagnosis and to determine whether it should be performed before or after rectal biopsies (RBs). METHODS A...

UNLABELLED Previous research has shown discrepancies between a standard diagnostic interview for schizophrenia (CASH) and a culture sensitive version of this instrument (CASH-CS) in Moroccan patients. More specifically we showed that among Moroccan immigrants the CASH-CS resulted in fewer patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia compared with diagnoses based on the CASH, whereas for Native Du...

BACKGROUND To support GPs in diagnosing and monitoring their patients with asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 'asthma/COPD services' have been developed. Within these services, pulmonologists perform structured diagnostic and therapeutic assessments based on the combination of written history data and spirometry. AIM This study determines the validity of the diagnosis and ad...

Interview methods are widely regarded as the standard for the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD), whereas self-report methods are considered a time-efficient alternative. However, the relative validity of these methods has not been sufficiently tested. The current study used data from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality disorder Study to compare diagnostic base rates and ...

The construction of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual has been guided primarily by concerns of construct validity rather than of clinical utility, despite claims by its authors that the highest priority has in fact been clinical utility. The purpose of this article was to further articulate the concept and importance of utility when constructing and evaluating a diagnosti...

In order to prevent sexual crimes, "sexual predator" laws now allow indefinite preventive civil commitment of criminals who have completed their prison sentences but are judged to have a paraphilic mental disorder that makes them likely to commit another crime. Such proceedings can bypass the usual protections of criminal law as long as the basis for incarceration is the attribution of a mental...