Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a non-invasive imaging technology that shows detailed anatomical and pathological images. It is often used for disease detection, diagnosis, and treatment monitoring, in particular with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Multiple sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. However, conventional MRI provides only qualitative inf...

OBJECTIVES To examine the relationship between ordinal and cardinal valuation of health states. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING We analyzed rank, visual analog scale (VAS), and time trade-off (TTO) responses for 52 health states defined using the EQ-5D classification system developed by the EuroQol Group. We analyzed 179,431 responses from 11,483 subjects in eight countries: Slovenia, Argentina, Den...

BACKGROUND Although previous studies suggest that Gypsy Travellers have poorer health status and excess mortality compared with the general population, there is no epidemiological evidence using validated measures in this nomadic ethnic group. The aim of this study was to compare the health status of traditional Gypsy Travellers with norms from the UK population, and with a concurrent compariso...

OBJECTIVES Modafinil has recently been approved for the treatment of shift work sleep disorder, making it potentially available for shift-working emergency physicians. The authors' objectives were to determine whether modafinil improved cognitive performance of emergency physicians following overnight shifts and to record symptoms and subjective evaluations of the effect of modafinil on the par...

The comparison of scaling methods used to value health states sometimes rests upon an analysis of aggregate scores. This analysis is usually undertaken once 'inconsistent' respondents have been excluded from the data. However, it is important to be able to judge the extent to which respondents as a whole are logically consistent when assigning values to health states. The degree of inconsistenc...

In this paper, results from a perception experiment on perceived prosodic boundary strength in spontaneous speech are presented. The analysis of the listeners’ responses reveals a good agreement in rating the strength of prosodic phrase boundaries on a visual analogue scale (VAS), and a strong correlation between perceived boundary strength and pause duration.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the sources of cross-national variation in disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) in the European Disability Weights Project. METHODS Disability weights for 15 disease stages were derived empirically in five countries by means of a standardized procedure and the cross-national differences in visual analogue scale (VAS) scores were analysed. For each country the burden...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the efficiency, difficulty and operator's preference of a digital impression compared with a conventional impression for single implant restorations. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty HSDM second year dental students performed conventional and digital implant impressions on a customized model presenting a single implant. The outcome of the imp...