PURPOSE Among the medications approved for Alzheimer's disease (AD), rivastigmine is the only one available as transdermal patch. The aim of this study was to evaluate compliance and caregivers' preference with oral and transdermal (rivastigmine) monotherapy in patients with mild-to-moderate AD from Taiwan. METHODS Real-world Evaluation of Compliance And Preference in Alzheimer's disease trea...

AIM Controversies and disagreement exist on conventional treatment strategies of hemorrhoids due to relapse, inefficacy, and complications. We intend to evaluate the role of individualized homeopathic treatment in hemorrhoids. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this prospective, open, observational trial, hemorrhoids patients were treated using five standardized scales measuring complaints severity and...

OBJECTIVE Little is known about the association between gout and socioeconomic status (SES). Inequalities in rheumatology provision associated with SES may need to be addressed by health care planners. The aim of this study is to investigate the association of gout and SES in the community at both the individual and area levels. METHODS Questionnaires were sent to all patients older than age ...

BACKGROUND We studied the scientific yield of the medical PhD program at all Danish Universities. METHODS We undertook a retrospective observational study. Three PhD schools in Denmark were included in order to evaluate the postdoctoral research production over more than 18 years through individual publications accessed by PubMed. RESULTS A total of 2686 PhD-graduates (1995-2013) with a med...

BACKGROUND A core task for commanders in charge of an emergency response operation is to make decisions. The purposes of the study were to describe what critical decisions the ambulance commander and the medical commander make in a mass casualty incident response and to explore what the underlying conditions affecting decision-making are. The study was conducted in the context of the 2011 gover...

PURPOSE There is strong evidence supporting the link between nonadherence to antipsychotic medication and relapse of schizophrenia. However, less obvious are the economic consequences of nonadherence. The systematic review reported here evaluated the economic aspects of nonadherence to antipsychotic medication. METHODS A systematic review of scientific papers in the PubMed MEDLINE, Embase, Ps...

OBJECTIVE Randomized trials showed that changes in healthcare organization improved diabetes care. This study aimed to identify which organizational determinants were associated with patient outcomes in routine diabetes care. DESIGN Observational study, in which multilevel regression analyses were applied to examine the impact of 12 organizational determinants on diabetes care as separate mea...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to determine whether biologic-free remission of RA is possible with discontinuation of abatacept. METHODS Japanese RA patients in 28-joint DAS with CRP (DAS28-CRP) remission (<2.3) after >2 years of abatacept treatment in a phase II study and its long-term extension entered this 52 week, multicentre, non-blinded, prospective, observational study. At enrolme...

UNLABELLED This study aimed to investigate the relationship between on-treatment morning home blood pressure (HBP) and incidence of cardiovascular events using data from the Home Blood Pressure Measurement With Olmesartan Naive Patients to Establish Standard Target Blood Pressure (HONEST) study, a prospective observational study of 21 591 outpatients with essential hypertension (mean age, 64.9 ...

BACKGROUND Chiropractic care is a complex health intervention composed of both treatment effects and non-specific, or placebo, effects. While doctor-patient interactions are a component of the non-specific effects of chiropractic, these effects are not evaluated in most clinical trials. This study aimed to: 1) develop an instrument to assess practitioner-patient interactions; 2) determine the e...