Search

Research on knowledge discovery in the geospatial domain currently focuses on semi-structured, even on unstructured rather than fully structured content. The attention has been put on the plethora of resources on the Web, such as html pages, news articles, blogs, social media etc. Semantic information extraction in geospatial-oriented approaches is further used for semantic analysis, search, and retrieval. The aim of this paper is to extract, analyse and visualize geospatial semantic information and emotions from texts on climate change. A collection of articles on climate change is used to demonstrate the developed approach. These articles describe environmental and socio-economic dimensions of climate change across the Earth, and include a wealth of information related to environmental concepts and geographic locations affected by it. The results are analysed in order to understand which specific human emotions are associated with environmental concepts and/or locations, as well as which environmental terms are linked to locations. For the better understanding of the above-mentioned information, semantic networks are used as a powerful visualization tool of the links among concepts – locations – emotions.

Background: Low-molecular-weight heparin enoxaparin is widely used in pharmacological thromboprophylaxis after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). The aim of this study was to compare anti-factor X activity (anti-Xa) levels when the thromboprophylactic dose of enoxaparin was provided after CABG, with two different administration routes: continuous intravenous infusion (CIV) and subcutaneous bolus (SCB) injection. We hypothesized that the current standard method of SCB administration might lead to lower anti-Xa levels than recommended in other patient groups, due to reduced bioavailability., Methods: In this prospective, randomized, controlled clinical trial, 40 patients scheduled for elective CABG were randomized to receive 40 mg of enoxaparin per day either as CIV or SCB for 72 h. Enoxaparin was initiated 6-10 h after CABG. Anti-Xa levels were measured 12-14 times during the study period. The primary outcome, that is, the maximum anti-Xa concentration over 0-24 h (C max0-24h ), was calculated from these measured values. Secondary outcomes were C max25-72h and the trough concentration of anti-Xa after 72 h of enoxaparin initiation (C 72h )., Results: Twenty patients were randomized to the CIV-group and 19 to the SCB-group. The median anti-Xa C max0-24h was significantly lower in the CIV-group than in the SCB-group: 0.15 [interquartile range (IQR) 0.13-0.19] IU/ml versus 0.25 (IQR 0.18-0.32) IU/ml, p < .005. The median anti-Xa C max25-72h was 0.12 (IQR, 0.1-0.17) IU/ml versus 0.23 (IQR 0.19-0.31) IU/ml, respectively, p < .005. At 72 h, there was no difference between the groups in their anti-Xa levels., Conclusions: In this low-risk CABG patient population, SCB administration of a thromboprophylactic dose of enoxaparin provided anti-Xa levels that are considered sufficient for thromboprophylaxis in other patient groups. CIV administration resulted in lower anti-Xa levels compared to the SCB route., (© 2022 Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica Foundation.)

Background and Aims: To assess the accuracy of computed tomography in diagnosing acute appendicitis with a special reference to radiologist experience., Material and Methods: Data were collected prospectively in our randomized controlled trial comparing surgery and antibiotic treatment for uncomplicated acute appendicitis (APPAC trial, NCT01022567). We evaluated 1065 patients who underwent computed tomography for suspected appendicitis. The on-call radiologist preoperatively analyzed these computed tomography images. In this study, the radiologists were divided into experienced (consultants) and inexperienced (residents) ones, and the comparison of interpretations was made between these two radiologist groups., Results: Out of the 1065 patients, 714 had acute appendicitis and 351 had other or no diagnosis on computed tomography. There were 700 true-positive, 327 true-negative, 14 false-positive, and 24 false-negative cases. The sensitivity and the specificity of computed tomography were 96.7% (95% confidence interval, 95.1-97.8) and 95.9% (95% confidence interval, 93.2-97.5), respectively. The rate of false computed tomography diagnosis was 4.2% for experienced consultant radiologists and 2.2% for inexperienced resident radiologists (p = 0.071). Thus, the experience of the radiologist had no effect on the accuracy of computed tomography diagnosis., Conclusion: The accuracy of computed tomography in diagnosing acute appendicitis was high. The experience of the radiologist did not improve the diagnostic accuracy. The results emphasize the role of computed tomography as an accurate modality in daily routine diagnostics for acute appendicitis in all clinical emergency settings.