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Mark Jones

Publications and source records attributed to Mark Jones.

44 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Panel 2.13: the role of media and communication.

This is a summary of the presentations and discussion of Panel 2.13, The Role of Media and Communication, of the Conference, Health Aspects of the Tsunami Disaster in Asia, convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Phuket, Thailand, 04-06 May 2005. The topics discussed included issues related to the role of media and communication as pertain to the responses to the damage created by the Tsunami of 26 December 2004.

Communication↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Predicting treatment time with the Lidcombe Program: replication and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The benefits of treating stuttering close to onset have become obvious in recent years, and the Lidcombe Program has emerged as an effective and safe treatment method for children in their preschool years. The benefits of implementing the programme with young children, however, need to be weighed against the knowledge that many children recover from stuttering without treatment. In light of this, speech-language therapists need to know how long treatment is likely to take and whether treatment time can be predicted. In particular, they need to know if adopting a 'watchful waiting' approach--to see if natural recovery occurs--jeopardizes responsiveness to treatment. A recent Australian study of 250 preschool-age children found that stuttering rate was the only significant predictor of treatment time with the Lidcombe Program. In other words, children whose stuttering was more severe took longer to pass through the programme. There were other trends in the data but they did not reach significance. AIMS: The present study, conducted independently in the UK, was designed to replicate the Australian study. Direct replication enabled pooling of the data from the two studies in a meta-analysis. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The study included 66 children who began treatment before 6 years of age. They were treated with the Lidcombe Program at a specialist stuttering clinic in Norwich. Logistic regression analyses were conducted on the data. The data from both the British and Australian cohorts were pooled in a meta-analysis. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Results indicated that Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program was completed in a median of 11 clinic visits, which is in line with the findings of the Australian study. Stuttering rate at first clinic visit was again found to be a significant predictor of treatment time. The remaining data trends were similar to those in the Australian data. In the meta-analysis, stuttering rate was once more found to be a predictor of treatment time. Of particular interest, however, was that the increased power provided by the meta-analysis identified an additional predictor, namely onset-to-treatment interval. Contrary to what is known about the responsiveness of children to the Starkweather and Gottwald treatment, and contrary to what might be expected given what we know about natural recovery, children who had been stuttering for more than 12 months took less time to progress through the programme than children who had been stuttering for less than 12 months. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that delaying intervention with the Lidcombe Program for 1 year after onset, within the preschool years, is unlikely to jeopardize responsiveness to treatment. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Indocyanine green elimination: a comparison of the LiMON and serial blood sampling methods.

BACKGROUND: Indocyanine green (ICG) elimination is a test widely used to evaluate hepatic functional reserve in patients being assessed for hepatic resection. This study compares a non-invasive liver function monitoring system, the LiMON (Pulsion Medical Systems, Munich, Germany), with serial blood sampling methods. METHODS: ICG elimination was measured by the LiMON, spectrophotometry and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in 20 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and cirrhosis as part of their preoperative work-up. RESULTS: The ICG 15-min retention rates obtained by spectrophotometry and HPLC correlated well (correlation coefficient = 0.91), and there was good agreement between the tests (mean bias = 2.93, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.59-4.28). There was a reasonably strong correlation between results obtained with the LiMON and spectrophotometry (correlation coefficient = 0.81), and again there was good agreement between the tests (mean bias = 2.71, 95% CI = 0.19-5.22). On average, 15-min retention rates measured by the LiMON were 2.71 lower than those measured with spectrophotometry. CONCLUSION: In patients being assessed for suitability of hepatic resection, the LiMON provides results similar to those obtained by serial blood sampling methods. This is important as techniques of carrying out ICG elimination vary widely between institutions and results are frequently incorporated into scoring systems that are used to determine surgical decisions.

Carcinoma, Hepatocellular↗