This paper describes many of the challenges encountered when establishing a large multicentre trial in cardiac anesthesia. We address funding, authorship, multisite ethics review, patient recruitment, data quality management, communication with individual sites, and strategies to enhance cooperation and patient recruitment.

the harary index h can be viewed as a molecular structure descriptor composed of increments representing interactions between pairs of atoms, such that their magnitude decreases with the increasing distance between the respective two atoms. a generalization of the harary index, denoted by hk, is achieved by employing the steiner-type distance between k-tuples of atoms. we show that the linear c...

Social marketing communication (social marcom) campaign production can be more challenging when the audience includes individuals from ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) communities. Additional issues such as culturally related values, practices, and attitudes need consideration. Normally, social marcoms campaigns for CALD audiences involve directly translating mainstream campaign m...

In light of recent data showing that both helper and cytotoxic T cells can detect even a single molecule of an agonist peptide-MHC, alphabeta T cells are clearly a type of sensory cell, comparable to any in the nervous system. In addition, endogenous (self) peptides bound to MHCs are not just important for thymic selection, but also play an integral role in T cell activation in the response to ...

Methodological challenges arise when one uses various Veterans Health Administration (VHA) data sources, each created for distinct purposes, to characterize length of stay (LOS). To illustrate this issue, we examined how algorithm choice affects conclusions about mental health condition (MHC)-related differences in LOS for VHA patients with diabetes nationally (n = 784,321). We assembled a reco...

BACKGROUND Guided online psychological self-management interventions offer broad prospects for the treatment of people with mild to moderate mental health problems, but implementation is challenging. The aims of this study are (1) to gain insight into use of and intention to use these interventions among primary care health professionals, (2) to determine the main barriers to use such intervent...

BACKGROUND Prolonged fasting increases organic response to trauma. This multicenter study investigated the gap between the prescribed and the actual preoperative fasting times in Brazilian hospitals and factors associated with this gap. METHODS Patients (18-90-years-old) who underwent elective operations between August 2011 and September 2012 were included in the study. The actual and prescri...

The FISE (Federazione Italiana Sport Equestri) Pindar is a multicentre research project aimed at testing the potential effects of therapeutic riding on schizophrenic patients. Twenty-four subjects with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were enrolled for a 1 year-treatment involving therapeutic riding sessions. All subjects were tested at the beginning and at the end of treatment with a series of val...

OBJECTIVE This study examined whether there were differences in costs for mental health court (MHC) participants and a matched comparison group for three years after a target arrest. METHODS Data from the MacArthur Mental Health Court Study, the first multisite study of MHCs, were used to compare behavioral health treatment and criminal justice costs for MHC participants and a matched group (...

OBJECTIVE We compared quality of care for uninsured patients with diabetes in private physician offices and community/migrant health centers (C/MHCs). RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional medical record review in a convenience sample of eight physician offices and three C/MHC sites in rural North Carolina. Billing systems generated lists of self-pay patients with diabete...