In this study a comparison between direct and indirect methods of obtaining blood pressure has been made. A statistical analysis of the data supports the view that the muffling of sounds, or the fourth phase of Korotkow, bears a closer and more constant relationship to diastolic pressure measured directly. This report, therefore, recommends the acceptance of muffling of the sounds of Korotkow as the measure of diastolic pressure.
In this study the range and upper limits of seven QRS-voltage criteria for left ventricular hypertrophy have been established in healthy, fit male young and middle-aged populations. The upper limits of normal for younger and older populations differ considerably. Agreement with the published literature occurred with some of the criteria in the older age group.
BackgroundFor patient undergoing cataract surgery in India, existing patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures are either not culturally relevant, have not been adequately validated, or are too long to be used in a busy clinical setting. We sought to develop and validate a brief and culturally relevant point-of-care PRO measure to address this need.MethodsTwelve items from the Indian Visual Functioning Questionnaire (IND-VFQ) were selected based on preliminary data. Patients 18 years and older were prospectively recruited at Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, India. Clinical and sociodemographic data were collected and the 12-item short-form IND-VFQ (SF-IND-VFQ) was administered pre- and post-operatively to 225 patients; Factor analysis and Rasch modeling was performed to assess its psychometric properties.ResultsOne item that did not fit a unidimensional scale and had poor fit with the Rasch model was eliminated from the questionnaire. The remaining 11 items represented a single construct (no residual correlations> 0.1) and were largely unaffected by differential item functioning. Five items had disordered thresholds resolved by collapsing the response scale from four to three categories. The survey had adequate reliability (0.80) and good construct (infit range, 0.77–1.29; outfit range, 0.56–1.30) and content (item separation index, 5.87 logits) validity. Measurement precision was fair (person separation index, 1.97). There was evidence that items were not optimally targeted to patients’ visual ability (preoperatively, − 1.92 logits; overall, − 3.41 logits), though the survey measured a very large effect (Cohen’s d 1.80). In a subset of patients, the average time to complete the questionnaire was 2 min 6.3 s.ConclusionsThe SF-IND-VFQ is a valid, reliable, sensitive, and rapidly administered point-of-care PRO measure to assess changes in visual functioning in patients undergoing cataract surgery in India.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12955-018-0855-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.