Dutch translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the PROMIS? physical function item bank and cognitive pre-test in Dutch arthritis patients

Introduction

Patient-reported physical function is an established outcome domain in clinical studies in rheumatology. To overcome the limitations of the current generation of questionnaires, the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS^®) project in the USA has developed calibrated item banks for measuring several domains of health status in people with a wide range of chronic diseases. The aim of this study was to translate and cross-culturally adapt the PROMIS physical function item bank to the Dutch language and to pretest it in a sample of patients with arthritis.

Methods

The items of the PROMIS physical function item bank were translated using rigorous forward-backward protocols and the translated version was subsequently cognitively pretested in a sample of Dutch patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Results

Few issues were encountered in the forward-backward translation. Only 5 of the 124 items to be translated had to be rewritten because of culturally inappropriate content. Subsequent pretesting showed that overall, questions of the Dutch version were understood as they were intended, while only one item required rewriting.

Conclusions

Results suggest that the translated version of the PROMIS physical function item bank is semantically and conceptually equivalent to the original. Future work will be directed at creating a Dutch-Flemish final version of the item bank to be used in research with Dutch speaking populations.     

Physical medicine and rehabilitation: lumbar stabilizing exercises for the nonoperative treatment of disc lesions

The Scientific Board of the California Medical Association presents the following inventory of items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and important clinical significance. The items are presented in simple epitome, and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item. The purpose is to assist busy practitioners, students, research workers, or scholars to stay abreast of these items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation that have recently achieved a substantial degree of authoritative acceptance, whether in their own field of special interest or another.The items of progress listed below were selected by the Advisory Panel to the Section on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the California Medical Association, and the summaries were prepared under its direction.     

轻度认知损伤患者的联系记忆损伤特征

遗忘型轻度认知损伤患者(aMCI)在项目记忆和联系记忆上都有损伤．本文通过临床记忆量表中的项目记忆和联系记忆测验,研究aMCI的联系记忆是否比项目记忆有更显著的损伤．另外,通过分析配对联想学习测验,进一步研究aMCI联系记忆损伤的特点．25名aMCI和28名健康老人参与了两个联系记忆测验(配对联想学习测验和联想回忆测验)和两个项目记忆测验(图像自由回忆和无意义图形再认),aMCI患者在联系记忆测验上表现出了更显著的损伤,即使控制了项目记忆的损伤,aMCI的联系记忆仍然比健康老人显著降低．另外,ROC分析表明联系记忆测验比项目记忆测验对aMCI病人有更高的区分度．对配对联想学习测验的分析表明,相对于健康老人,aMCI患者在记忆有语言联系的词对要比记忆无语义联系的词对更为困难．本研究进一步表明aMCI患者的联系记忆比项目记忆有更大的损伤．相对于健康老人,aMCI患者不仅难以在两个无关项目间创建记忆连接,而且在有效利用项目间本身的语义联系方面存在更大的损伤．联系记忆测验比项目记忆测验对aMCI患者有更高的区分度．在神经心理评估中增加联系记忆测验,能更加有效地识别aMCI患者．     

Analysis of Causal Relationships by Structural Equation Modeling to Determine the Factors Influencing Cognitive Function in Elderly People in Japan

The purpose of this study is to identify a potentiality factor that is a preventive factor for decline in cognitive function. Additionally, this study pursues to clarify the causal relationship between the each potential factor and its influence on cognitive function. Subjects were 366 elderly community residents (mean age 73.7 ± 6.4, male 51, female 315) who participated in the Taketoyo Project from 2007 to 2011. Factor analysis was conducted to identify groupings within mental, social, life, physical and cognitive functions. In order to detect clusters of 14 variables, the item scores were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. We performed Structural Equation Modeling analysis to calculate the standardization coefficient and correlation coefficient for every factor. The cause and effect hypothesis model was used to gather two intervention theory hypotheses for dementia prevention (direct effect, indirect effect) in one system. Finally, we performed another Structural Equation Modeling analysis to calculate the standardization of the cause and effect hypothesis model. Social participation was found to be activated by the improvement of four factors, and in turn, activated “Social participation” acted on cognitive function.     

Physical medicine and rehabilitation: somatosensory evoked potentials in monitoring spinal operations

The Scientific Board of the California Medical Association presents the following inventory of items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and important clinical significance. The items are presented in simple epitome and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item. The purpose is to assist busy practitioners, students, research workers, or scholars to stay abreast of these items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation that have recently achieved a substantial degree of authoritative acceptance, whether in their own field of special interest or another.The items of progress listed below were selected by the Advisory Panel to the Section on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the California Medical Association and the summaries were prepared under its direction.     

Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation: Late Effects of Poliomyelitis—An Update on Fatigue and Weakness

The Council on Scientific Affairs of the California Medical Association presents the following inventory of items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and important clinical significance. The items are presented in simple epitome, and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item. The purpose is to assist busy practitioners, students, researchers, and scholars to stay abreast of these items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation that have recently achieved a substantial degree of authoritative acceptance, whether in their own field of special interest or another.The items of progress listed below were selected by the Advisory Panel to the Section on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the California Medical Association, and the summaries were prepared under its direction.     

Physical medicine and rehabilitation-important advances in clinical medicine: mechanical prophylaxis of deep vein thrombosis

The Scientific Board of the California Medical Association presents the following inventory of items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and important clinical significance. The items are presented in simple epitome and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item. The purpose is to assist busy practitioners, students, research workers or scholars to stay abreast of these items of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation that have recently achieved a substantial degree of authoritative acceptance, whether in their own field of special interest or another.The items of progress listed below were selected by the Advisory Panel to the Section on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the California Medical Association and the summaries were prepared under its direction.     

The analysis of a blood pressure diary for a patient report

In order to make a more valid assessment of blood pressure (BP), self-monitoring of BP by the patient is generally advised. Self-monitoring usually results in a lower BP level. We are currently investigating whether the BP lowering effect of self-monitoring may be enhanced by not only monitoring BP but also monitoring physical and emotional status at the moment of and activity prior to the BP measurement in a diary. In this article we focus on the individual feedback that the participating patients received. Various methods that can be used for this purpose are described. For our individual reports we first assessed linear trends in the variables. When a trend was present, residuals were calculated. Then a principal-components analysis on BP measurements, BP estimates, symptoms, moods, and activities was performed. Results are presented for two hypertensive patients.     

生态系统健康评价的研究进展

生态系统健康评价是环境管理和生态系统监控的基础,生态系统监控可促进生态系统健康评价。首先介绍了生态系统健康概念的产生,发展及其不同的内涵,并着重回顾和讨论了生态系统健康评价指标及其存在的问题,生态系统健康评价指标包括生态指标,物理化学指标,人类健康与社会经济指标3大类,生态指标是反映生态系统特征和状态的生物指标,它分为生态系统,群落和种群与个体等不同层次的指标或指标体系,物理化学指标是检测生态系统的非生物环境的指标。人类健康与社会经济指标着眼于生态系统对人类生存与社会发展的支持作用,采用经济参数和社会发展的环境压力指标等来衡量生态服务的质量与可持续性,根据其敏感程度和功能性,生态系统健康评价指标分为早期预警指标,适宜程度指标和诊断指标3类,一个完整的生态系统评价应包括上述3大类指标或指标体系,但在具体的评价实践中往往因评价目的和对象的不同而有所选择,生态系统健康评价目前有两个亟待解决的问题,如何有效确立评价标准与参照系以及如何正确区分人为压力和自然干扰。     

Incorporating Inter‐item Correlations in Item Response Data Analysis

This paper concerns with the analysis of item response data, which are usually measured on a rating scale and are therefore ordinal. These study items tended to be highly inter‐correlated. Rasch models, which convert ordinal categorical scales into linear measurements, are widely used in ordinal data analysis. In this paper, we improve the current methodology in order to incorporate inter‐item correlations. We have advocated the latent variable approach for this purpose, in combination with generalized estimating equations to estimate the Rasch model parameters. The data on a study of families of lung cancer patients demonstrate the utility of our methods.     

Measurement of global functional performance in patients with rheumatoid arthritis using rheumatology function tests

Outcome assessment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) includes measurement of physical function. We derived a scale to quantify global physical function in RA, using three performance-based rheumatology function tests (RFTs). We measured grip strength, walking velocity, and shirt button speed in consecutive RA patients attending scheduled appointments at six rheumatology clinics, repeating these measurements after a median interval of 1 year. We extracted the underlying latent variable using principal component factor analysis. We used the Bayesian information criterion to assess the global physical function scale's cross-sectional fit to criterion standards. The criteria were joint tenderness, swelling, and deformity, pain, physical disability, current work status, and vital status at 6 years after study enrolment. We computed Guyatt's responsiveness statistic for improvement according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) definition. Baseline functional performance data were available for 777 patients, and follow-up data were available for 681. Mean ± standard deviation for each RFT at baseline were: grip strength, 14 ± 10 kg; walking velocity, 194 ± 82 ft/min; and shirt button speed, 7.1 ± 3.8 buttons/min. Grip strength and walking velocity departed significantly from normality. The three RFTs loaded strongly on a single factor that explained ≥70% of their combined variance. We rescaled the factor to vary from 0 to 100. Its mean ± standard deviation was 41 ± 20, with a normal distribution. The new global scale had a stronger fit than the primary RFT to most of the criterion standards. It correlated more strongly with physical disability at follow-up and was more responsive to improvement defined according to the ACR20 and ACR50 definitions. We conclude that a performance-based physical function scale extracted from three RFTs has acceptable distributional and measurement properties and is responsive to clinically meaningful change. It provides a parsimonious scale to measure global physical function in RA.     

Assessment of Robotic Patient Simulators for Training in Manual Physical Therapy Examination Techniques

Robots that simulate patients suffering from joint resistance caused by biomechanical and neural impairments are used to aid the training of physical therapists in manual examination techniques. However, there are few methods for assessing such robots. This article proposes two types of assessment measures based on typical judgments of clinicians. One of the measures involves the evaluation of how well the simulator presents different severities of a specified disease. Experienced clinicians were requested to rate the simulated symptoms in terms of severity, and the consistency of their ratings was used as a performance measure. The other measure involves the evaluation of how well the simulator presents different types of symptoms. In this case, the clinicians were requested to classify the simulated resistances in terms of symptom type, and the average ratios of their answers were used as performance measures. For both types of assessment measures, a higher index implied higher agreement among the experienced clinicians that subjectively assessed the symptoms based on typical symptom features. We applied these two assessment methods to a patient knee robot and achieved positive appraisals. The assessment measures have potential for use in comparing several patient simulators for training physical therapists, rather than as absolute indices for developing a standard.     

Measurement properties of the Shiftwork Survey and Standard Shiftwork Index

The Shiftwork Survey (SS) was introduced, along with the Standard Shiftwork Index (SSI), to provide a set of standardized self-report measures to be used in shiftwork research. However, beyond the initial assessment, no attempt has been made to examine the measurement properties of these scales in an independent sample of shiftworkers. Our goal, therefore, was to examine the measurement properties of these scales in an industrial sample of primarily male shiftworkers (N = 370). We found that all scales had acceptable reliabilities (alphas). The confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the chronic fatigue, coping, job satisfaction, and sleep scales are the weakest psychometrically, and the anxiety, personality (extraversion, neuroticism), general health, and physical health scales are the strongest psychometrically. Using item response theory analyses, we found that the scales overall are generally adequate measures of their underlying constructs, although many items should be altered or omitted. Our results, however, are limited by reliance on a single sample.     

Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation: Female Athlete Triad

The Council on Scientific Affairs of the California Medical Association presents the following epitomes of progress in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and clinical importance. The items are presented in simple epitome, and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item. The purpose is to assist busy practitioners, students, researchers, and scholars to stay abreast of progress in medicine, whether in their own field of special interest or another.The epitomes included here were selected by the Advisory Panel to the Section on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation of the California Medical Association, and the summaries were prepared under the direction of Murray E. Brandstater, MD, and the panel.     

Assessing changes in subjective and objective function from pre- to post-knee arthroplasty using the Cardiff Dempster–Shafer theory classifier

The purpose of this study is to assess changes in subjective and objective function from pre- to post-knee arthroplasty (KA) using a combined classifier technique. Twenty healthy adults (50–80 years) and 31 KA patients (39–81 years) were studied (4 weeks pre- and 6 months post-KA). Questionnaire measures of subjective pain, joint stability, activity and function were collected. Objective functional assessment included goniometry, ultrasound imaging and 3-D motion analysis/inverse modelling of gait and sit–stand. An optimal set of variables were used to classify function using the Cardiff Dempster–Shafer theory (DST) method. Out of sample accuracy of the classifiers ranged between 90% and 94% for segregating healthy individuals and pre-KA patients. Post-KA subjective function improved with 74% classified as healthy. However, there was minimal improvement in objective measures (23% classified as healthy). The novel use of Cardiff DST segregated KA patients from healthy individuals and estimated changes in function from pre- to post-surgery. KA patients had improved pain and function post-operation but objective knee joint measures remained different to healthy individuals.     

De Cognitieve Screening Test (CST) getoetst aan het schaalmodel van Mokken

The Cognitive Screening Test (CST) is a twenty-item orientation questionnaire in Dutch, that is commonly used to evaluate cognitive impairment. This study applied Mokken Scale Analysis, a non-parametric set of techniques derived from item response theory (IRT), to CST-data of 466 consecutive participants in psychogeriatric day care. The full item set and the standard short version of fourteen items both met the assumptions of the monotone homogeneity model, with scalability coefficient H = 0.39, which is considered weak. In order to select items that would fulfil the assumption of invariant item ordering or the double monotonicity model, the subjects were randomly partitioned into a training set (50% of the sample) and a test set (the remaining half). By means of an automated item selection eleven items were found to measure one latent trait, with H = 0.67 and item H coefficients larger than 0.51. Cross-validation of the item analysis in the remaining half of the subjects gave comparable values (H = 0.66; item H coefficients larger than 0.56). The selected items involve year, place of residence, birth date, the monarch's and prime minister's names, and their predecessors. Applying optimal discriminant analysis (ODA) it was found that the full set of twenty CST items performed best in distinguishing two predefined groups of patients of lower or higher cognitive ability, as established by an independent criterion derived from the Amsterdam Dementia Screening Test. The chance corrected predictive value or prognostic utility was 47.5% for the full item set, 45.2% for the fourteen items of the standard short version of the CST, and 46.1% for the homogeneous, unidimensional set of selected eleven items. The results of the item analysis support the application of the CST in cognitive assessment, and revealed a more reliable 'short' version of the CST than the standard short version (CST14).     

Plant Viability as a Function of Temperature Stress (The Richards Function Applied to Data from Freezing Tests of Growing Shoots)

Frost resistance of growing Salix viminalis L. shoots was determined by rating mortality percentage under two commonly used freezing conditions: a condition in which plants were encased in crushed ice and another in which plants were moistened with tap water prior to freezing. The mortality-temperature data were fitted with a logistic function (having a fixed inflection point halfway between the asymptotes) and with a Richards function, which is a double asymptotic sigmoid function with a variable inflection point. Different frost resistance curves were obtained, depending on the freezing conditions used. However, conditions were inadequate for efficient ice nucleation under either condition. This implies that the applied freezing conditions are not suitable when the purpose is to induce and duplicate early ice crystal formation conditions. The Richards derivatives were negatively skewed in the one case and positively skewed in the other case, giving inflection points, as a function of the upper asymptote, situated at 0.37 when shoots were frosted in the presence of ice and at 0.81 when shoots were frozen in the presence of added moisture. These values differed significantly from 0.50, through which the logistic function would have forced the curves. Because of the significant asymmetry in these frost-resistance curves, the Richards function led to a more accurate reflection of the temperature-mortality course of growing Salix stems than the logistic function. The Richards function possesses the flexibility needed to describe plant injury response in terms of physical and plant physiological mechanisms. Therefore, the Richards function is recommended rather than the logistic function for the assessment of frost resistance.     

醋酸纤维素薄膜电泳实验成绩量化评定模式的设计

通过对实验教学量化评定的内容、类型、考核形式及各部分内容占总成绩的权重,各部分内容中的详细考核项目,各详细考察项目的项目系数等多方面的综合权衡,建立了醋酸纤维素薄膜电泳实验成绩量化评定模式,其使用简便、合理、易行,能科学正确的量化评定学生实验成绩,有效地改进实验教学效果。     

Sib‐sib communication and the risk of prey theft in the barn owl Tyto alba

Conflicts among siblings are widespread and their resolution involves complex physical and communication tools. Observations in the barn owl Tyto alba showed that siblings vocally communicate in the absence of parents to negotiate priority of access to the impending food resources that parents will bring. In the present paper, we hypothesize and provide correlative evidence that after a parent brought a food item to their progeny, sibling competition involves vocal sib‐sib communication. A food item takes a long time to be entirely consumed, and hence siblings continue to compete over prey monopolization even after parents gave a food item to a single offspring. When physical competition is pronounced and thereby the risk of prey theft is high, the individual that received a prey item consumes it in a concealed place. Concomitantly, nestlings vocalize intensely probably to indicate their motivation to siblings to not share their food item, since this vocal behaviour was particularly frequent in younger individuals for which the risk of being robbed is higher than in their older siblings. Furthermore, nestlings consumed more rapidly a food item when their siblings vocalized intensely presumably because the intensity of siblings’ vocalizations is associated with a risk of prey theft. Our correlative study suggests that sibling competition favoured the evolution of sib‐sib communication under a wide range of situations.