Introduction: Based on the previous data, among the general population aged between 30 and 60 years, snoring is observed in 44% and 28% of males and females, respectively. Therefore, it is important to treat snoring to reduce the disruption of the bed partner's sleep and the patients’ own problems. This study aimed to present a minimally invasive procedure which is easy to perform with le...

OBJECTIVES To study and describe how a group of senior researchers and a group of postgraduate students perceived the so-called "grey zone" between normal scientific practice and obvious misconduct. DESIGN A questionnaire concerning various practices including dishonesty and obvious misconduct. The answers were obtained by means of a visual analogue scale (VAS). The central (two quarters) of ...

OBJECTIVE To determine factors predictive of the score on the visual analogue scale (VAS) of the EQ-5D questionnaire. METHODS The responses of 1159 residents of a socially and ethnically diverse suburb of Cape Town, South Africa, to the EQ-5D questionnaire were analysed using forward stepwise multiple regression. The variables entered included ethnic group, religious affiliation (Christian or...

BACKGROUND . Logical inconsistency for health states preferences occurs when one logically worse health state, in terms of quality of life, is ranked higher than a logically better health state. OBJECTIVE . This study explores the presence of inconsistent responses for the EQ-5D health states valuations in a Brazilian population survey. It compares the level of inconsistency in 3 preference-b...

BACKGROUND The perception of symptoms is a cornerstone in asthma management, but studies concerning this aspect provide conflicting evidence. The visual analog scale has been proposed as a useful tool for assessing perception of respiratory symptoms. The present study investigated whether visual analog scale assessment of perception of asthma symptoms was correlated to lung function or clinical...

PURPOSE To analyze the intra- and inter-rater agreement for visual analog scale and numerical scale in task of sustained vowel and to determine numerical cutoff points to visual analog scale corresponding to the degrees of the numeric scale. METHODS We selected 205 samples of the usual task of the sustained vowel /a/. Six voice specialists rated the overall degree of vocal deviation, first by...