To better understand postsurgical macular pucker in rhegmatogenous retinal detachment, we reviewed a consecutive series of 277 eyes in 268 patients in whom retinal detachment had spared the macular area and in whom no preretinal membrane with distortion of the retinal vessels had been present preoperatively. Postoperatively, 17 eyes (6.1%) developed obvious macular pucker; 260 eyes (93.9%) did ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the occurrence of temporomandibular joint disk displacement and its correlation with pain and osseous abnormalities using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients under 21 years of age. STUDY DESIGN MRI images in open- and closed-mouth positions from 102 patients, under 21 years of age (mean age 17 years), were studied retrospectively. Patients were divided into six ...

OBJECTIVE To compare compensatory sweating after lowering or restricting the level of sympathectomy. METHOD A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted of all randomized controlled trials published in English that compared compensatory sweating after lowering or restricting the level of sympathectomy. The Cochrane collaboration tool was used to assess the risk of bias, and the Mantel...

Our aim is to study the termination of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and the causes of withdrawal. We have reviewed the prospective protocols of patients with PsA and collected the data on treatments and causes of withdrawal. Fifty-four out of 96 patients (48 male and 48 female) have undergone one or more courses of DMARD (n = 109). The life-table ...

A performance slam is a competition among a xed set of performances whereby pairs of performances are judged by audience participants. When performances are recorded on electronic media, performance slams become amenable to audiences that watch online and judge asynchronously ( crowdsourced ). In order to better entertain the audience, we want to show the better performances ( exploitation ). I...

OBJECTIVE To compare perinatal mortality, stratified for risk level, in home births attended by a relative or traditional birth attendant without formal training with births attended by trained personnel in a dispensary or hospital. STUDY DESIGN A prospective community based study in five villages in Northwestern Tanzania during 1990, involving 222 women delivering at home and 199 in a dispen...

The use of cross-over trials in investigating treatments for infertility is discussed. A simple possible approach to analyzing such trials using the Mantel-Haenszel procedure is explained. A more flexible approach based on the normal-binomial mixture model of Ezzet and Whitehead is examined. It is shown how this may be implemented in various statistical packages by applying it to two real examp...

Existing linear rank statistics cannot be applied to cross-sectional survival data without follow-up since all subjects are essentially censored. However, partial survival information are available from backward recurrence times and are frequently collected from health surveys without prospective follow-up. Under length-biased sampling, a class of linear rank statistics is proposed based only o...

Metal-on-metal (MOM) hip articulations represent a potential alternative to conventional metal-on-polyethylene total hip arthroplasty (THA). We performed a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature in search of studies comparing MOM with conventional primary THA with regard to functional outcomes, radiographic outcomes, and complication rates. Four Level I randomized controlled trials r...

The aim of this study was to determine whether the items from a reading comprehension test in European Portuguese function differently across students from rural and urban areas, which biases the test validity and the equity in assessment. The sample was composed of 653 students from second, third and fourth grades. The presence of differential item functioning (DIF) was analysed using logistic...