Development of a Self-reported Olfactory Dysfunction Questionnaire (SODQ) to screen olfactory disorders in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
X. Liu ◽  
J. Huang ◽  
P. Tian ◽  
J. Hu ◽  
L. Zou

Background: The diagnosis of olfactory dysfunction is challenging given the negligence during routine physical examination, inconvenience of diagnosis in clinical practice, and the inattention to cross-cultural adaptability. The study aimed to develop and validate a simple and effective self-reported olfactory dysfunction questionnaire (SODQ) for the initial screening of clinical olfactory disorders in China. Methods: A total of 121 subjects participated in the study; of these, 96 subjects completed the T&T olfactometer test and 12-item questionnaire, and 25 participants were retested using the SODQ after one week. The T&T olfactometer test examined the olfactory function and the questionnaire measured the ability to perceive common odors in daily life. We evaluated the factor structure, reliability, validity, and discriminative ability of the SODQ. Results: The final version of the SODQ consisted of 10 items with one factor. Test–retest and internal consistency were excellent. Convergent validity of the questionnaire with the T&T olfactory test was high. Furthermore, the discrimination ability was high for the questionnaire with an area under the curve of 0.95 and a cut-off point of 22. Conclusions: The SODQ is a brief, valid, and repeatable tool that has the potential to effectively screen for clinical olfactory disorders from a subjective perspective.

2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Chuen Kwong Lam ◽  
John Ka Keung Sung ◽  
Victor James Abdullah ◽  
Charles Andrew van Hasselt

Objective: To establish an olfactory test in the Hong Kong Chinese population. Study design: Prospective analysis of the results of a combined olfactory test (COT) for patients with olfactory dysfunction and for normal subjects attending a secondary and tertiary ear, nose and throat centre.Method: Our COT was based on and modified from the Connecticut Chemosensory Research Centre test. It consisted of an odour identification test involving nine substances and a threshold test using a series of threefold dilutions of 1-butanol. From September 1998 to June 2002, 188 Hong Kong Chinese patients with olfactory dysfunction and subjects with normal olfaction were prospectively recruited. The subjects were categorized into normal, hyposmic and anosmic groups. The olfactory function of the main group of subjects (n = 153) was assessed with the COT by a blinded observer and also quantified with a visual analogue scale; the results were analysed to validate the discriminative ability of the COT. Another subgroup of subjects (n = 35) was tested with the COT twice with a two-week interval to evaluate test–retest reliability.Results: There were 42 normal, 68 hyposmic and 43 anosmic subjects within the main group (total n = 153). The identification scores, threshold scores and combined olfactory scores were statistically significantly different between the anosmic, hyposmic and normal groups of subjects (p < 0.001). The combined olfactory score correlated with the visual analogue score and the correlation coefficient was 0.56 (p < 0.01). The mean time spent on each COT was 8.6 minutes (standard deviation = 3.4 minutes). The test–retest reliability of the COT was satisfactory, with a one-way model intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.87 (n = 35).Conclusion: The satisfactory discriminative ability and test–retest reliability of the COT have been demonstrated in this study. The COT is a feasible method for assessing sense of smell in the Hong Kong Chinese population.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sisi Huang ◽  
Limin Chen ◽  
Jiao Liu ◽  
Sheng Zhang ◽  
Lidi Zhang ◽  
...  

Background: Complicated intra-abdominal infections (cIAIs) in the abdominal cavity or within an abdominal organ are numerous and frequent dangerous entities in the treatment of critically ill patients. Early clinical evaluation is necessary.Methods: This retrospective multicenter study included patients from 10 intensive care units (ICUs). Risk factors for the overall survival (OS) of patients with cIAI were selected using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression, and a nomogram was constructed subsequently. Calibration curve and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to evaluate the calibration and discriminative ability.Results: In total, 544 patients diagnosed with cIAI were enrolled and divided into the study (n = 276) and validation (n = 268) sets. Sex, acute gastrointestinal injury, acute kidney injury, rare bacterium infection, Charlson score, and APACHE II score were identified as independent risk factors and were constructed for the nomogram. The nomogram showed marked calibration capability with a concordance index (C-index) of 0.909 and 0.831 in the study and validation set, respectively. Compared with the common clinical prognostic scoring system, the nomogram achieved the highest discrimination ability with an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.91 and 0.83 in the study set and validation set, respectively.Conclusions: Our newly constructed nomogram provides a useful tool for risk stratification and prognosis evaluation of cIAI.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sisi Huang ◽  
Limin Chen ◽  
Jiao Liu ◽  
Sheng Zhang ◽  
Lidi Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Complicated Intra-abdominal infections (cIAIs) in the abdominal cavity or within an abdominal organ are numerous and frequent dangerous entities in the treatment of critically ill patients. Early clinical evaluation is necessary. Methods: This retrospective multi-center study included patients from ten intensive care units (ICUs). Risk factors for the overall survival (OS) of patients with cIAI were selected using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression, a nomogram was constructed subsequently. Calibration curve and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to evaluate the calibration and discriminative ability.Results: In total, 544 patients diagnosed with cIAI were enrolled and divided into the study (n = 276) and validation (n = 268) sets. Sex, acute gastrointestinal injury, acute kidney injury, rare bacterium infection, Charlson score, and APACHE II score were identified as independent risk factors and were constructed for the nomogram. The nomogram showed marked calibration capability with a concordance index (C- index) of 0.909 and 0.831 in the study and validation set. Comparing with common clinical prognostic scoring system, the nomogram achieved the highest discrimination ability with an area under the curve (AUC) value of 0.91 and 0.83 in the study set and validation set, respectively.Conclusions: Our newly constructed nomogram provides a useful tool for risk stratification and prognosis evaluation of cIAI.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 117727192110270
Author(s):  
Gönül Açıksarı ◽  
Mehmet Koçak ◽  
Yasemin Çağ ◽  
Lütfiye Nilsun Altunal ◽  
Adem Atıcı ◽  
...  

Background: The current knowledge about novel coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) indicates that the immune system and inflammatory response play a crucial role in the severity and prognosis of the disease. In this study, we aimed to investigate prognostic value of systemic inflammatory biomarkers including C-reactive protein/albumin ratio (CAR), prognostic nutritional index (PNI), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) in patients with severe COVID-19. Methods: This single-center, retrospective study included a total of 223 patients diagnosed with severe COVID-19. Primary outcome measure was mortality during hospitalization. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify independent predictors associated with mortality in patients with severe COVID-19. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to determine cut-offs, and area under the curve (AUC) values were used to demonstrate discriminative ability of biomarkers. Results: Compared to survivors of severe COVID-19, non-survivors had higher CAR, NLR, and PLR, and lower LMR and lower PNI ( P < .05 for all). The optimal CAR, PNI, NLR, PLR, and LMR cut-off values for detecting prognosis were 3.4, 40.2, 6. 27, 312, and 1.54 respectively. The AUC values of CAR, PNI, NLR, PLR, and LMR for predicting hospital mortality in patients with severe COVID-19 were 0.81, 0.91, 0.85, 0.63, and 0.65, respectively. In ROC analysis, comparative discriminative ability of CAR, PNI, and NLR for hospital mortality were superior to PLR and LMR. Multivariate analysis revealed that CAR (⩾0.34, P = .004), NLR (⩾6.27, P = .012), and PNI (⩽40.2, P = .009) were independent predictors associated with mortality in severe COVID-19 patients. Conclusions: The CAR, PNI, and NLR are independent predictors of mortality in hospitalized severe COVID-19 patients and are more closely associated with prognosis than PLR or LMR.


Author(s):  
Jacopo Pasquini ◽  
Carlo Maremmani ◽  
Stefano Salvadori ◽  
Vincenzo Silani ◽  
Nicola Ticozzi

Abstract Background Olfactory dysfunction in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is common during acute illness and appears to last longer than other symptoms. The aim of this study was to objectively investigate olfactory dysfunction in two cohorts of patients at two different stages: during acute illness and after a median recovery of 4 months. Methods Twenty-five acutely ill patients and 26 recovered subjects were investigated. Acute patients had a molecular diagnosis of COVID-19; recovered subjects had a positive antibody assay and a negative molecular test. A 33-item psychophysical olfactory identification test tailored for the Italian population was performed. Results Median time from symptoms onset to olfactory test was 33 days in acute patients and 122 days in recovered subjects. The former scored a significantly higher number of errors at psychophysical testing (median [IQR]: 8 [13] vs 3 [2], p < 0.001) and were more frequently hyposmic (64% vs 19%, p = 0.002). Recovered subjects reported a variable time to subjective olfactory recovery, from days up to 4 months. Participants included in the study reported no significant nasal symptoms at olfactory testing. Among recovered subject who reported olfactory loss during acute COVID-19, four (27%) were still hyposmic. Demographic and clinical characteristics did not show significant associations with olfactory dysfunction. Conclusion Moderate-to-severe hospitalized patients showed a high level and frequency of olfactory dysfunction compared to recovered subjects. In the latter group, subjects who reported persisting olfactory dysfunction showed abnormal scores on psychophysical testing, indicating that, at least in some subjects, persistent hyposmia may represent a long-term sequela of COVID-19.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie-Yu Zhou ◽  
Kang-Kang Lu ◽  
Wei-Da Fu ◽  
Hao Shi ◽  
Jun-Wei Gu ◽  
...  

Background: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive disease. Nomograms can predict prognosis of patients with TNBC. Methods: A total of 745 eligible TNBC patients were recruited and randomly divided into training and validation groups. Endpoints were disease-free survival and overall survival. Concordance index, area under the curve and calibration curves were used to analyze the predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of nomograms. Results: Based on the training cohort, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, positive lymph nodes, tumor size and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes were used to construct a nomogram for disease-free survival. In addition, age was added to the overall survival nomogram. Conclusion: The current study developed and validated well-calibrated nomograms for predicting disease-free survival and overall survival in patients with TNBC.


1996 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 907-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Freeman

This study investigated the dimensionality of a 21-item questionnaire measure of idiocentrism-allocentrism (the within-culture measure of individualism-collectivism) within the context of Sri Lankan culture. A survey of 438 Sri Lankan respondents, sampled from a wide variety of demographic contexts, provided data. Factor analysis indicated that idiocentrism and allocentrism are two independent, unipolar factors, rather than opposite poles of a single, bipolar dimension. The implications are discussed in the context of existing and future cross-cultural (etic) and within-cultural (emic) research on individualism-collectivism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Zexin Li ◽  
Kaiji Yang ◽  
Lili Zhang ◽  
Chiju Wei ◽  
Peixuan Yang ◽  
...  

Purpose. Several commercial tests have been used for the classification of indeterminate thyroid nodules in cytology. However, the geographic inconvenience and high cost confine their widespread use. This study aims to develop a classifier for conveniently clinical utility. Methods. Gene expression data of thyroid nodule tissues were collected from three public databases. Immune-related genes were used to construct the classifier with stacked denoising sparse autoencoder. Results. The classifier performed well in discriminating malignant and benign thyroid nodules, with an area under the curve of 0.785 [0.638–0.931], accuracy of 92.9% [92.7–93.0%], sensitivity of 98.6% [95.9–101.3%], specificity of 58.3% [30.4–86.2%], positive likelihood ratio of 2.367 [1.211–4.625], and negative likelihood ratio of 0.024 [0.003–0.177]. In the cancer prevalence range of 20–40% for indeterminate thyroid nodules in cytology, the range of negative predictive value of this classifier was 37–61%, and the range of positive predictive value was 98–99%. Conclusion. The classifier developed in this study has the superb discriminative ability for thyroid nodules. However, it needs validation in cytologically indeterminate thyroid nodules before clinical use.


2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tenghui Han ◽  
Jun Zhu ◽  
Xiaoping Chen ◽  
Rujie Chen ◽  
Yu Jiang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Liver is the most common metastatic site of colorectal cancer (CRC) and liver metastasis (LM) determines subsequent treatment as well as prognosis of patients, especially in T1 patients. T1 CRC patients with LM are recommended to adopt surgery and systematic treatments rather than endoscopic therapy alone. Nevertheless, there is still no effective model to predict the risk of LM in T1 CRC patients. Hence, we aim to construct an accurate predictive model and an easy-to-use tool clinically. Methods We integrated two independent CRC cohorts from Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results database (SEER, training dataset) and Xijing hospital (testing dataset). Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) methods were adopted to establish the predictive model. Results A total of 16,785 and 326 T1 CRC patients from SEER database and Xijing hospital were incorporated respectively into the study. Every single ML model demonstrated great predictive capability, with an area under the curve (AUC) close to 0.95 and a stacking bagging model displaying the best performance (AUC = 0.9631). Expectedly, the stacking model exhibited a favorable discriminative ability and precisely screened out all eight LM cases from 326 T1 patients in the outer validation cohort. In the subgroup analysis, the stacking model also demonstrated a splendid predictive ability for patients with tumor size ranging from one to50mm (AUC = 0.956). Conclusion We successfully established an innovative and convenient AI model for predicting LM in T1 CRC patients, which was further verified in the external dataset. Ultimately, we designed a novel and easy-to-use decision tree, which only incorporated four fundamental parameters and could be successfully applied in clinical practice.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christin-Melanie Vauclair

<p>Morality, or what is considered right or wrong, varies seemingly across cultures. However, the literature shows that moral psychologists have mainly investigated moral reasoning assuming a universal morality. Cross-cultural psychologists in contrast have widely neglected moral issues such as prescriptive beliefs of what people ought to do in a culture, and have predominantly measured culture through personal values. This thesis attempts to bridge this gap by focusing on the values concept. Four empirical studies were conducted to critically examine values as a measure of culture and their relationship to morality. Chapter one is an introduction into the topics morality, culture and values. Chapter two outlines the conceptual and methodological issues associated with deriving cultural values through the statistical aggregation of individuals' personal values. A value taxonomy is presented in which personal moral values and societal moral values are proposed as alternatives for measuring the cultural context. Following this critique, personal values are examined in two empirical studies in a cross-cultural context scrutinizing the validity of Schwartz' (1994) Culture-level Value Theory. Study 1 is a cross-cultural meta-analysis using the Rokeach Value Survey (Rokeach, 1973) showing that Schwartz' culture-level value structure was replicable with different samples, and a different method for assessing value priorities. Nonetheless, a set of values not included in Schwartz' analysis formed a new value type: Self-fulfilled Connectedness (SFC) which is related to the pursuit of non-material goals and endorsed in countries in which basic needs are fulfilled. Study 2 tested in a multilevel regression model whether Schwartz' cultural values predicted individuals' moral attitudes with data from more than 40 different countries. The findings indicated that the value dimension Autonomy-Embeddedness explained individuals' lenient attitude towards personal-sexual, but not towards dishonest-illegal issues. Study 3 dealt with the fundamental critique raised in chapter two that Schwartz (1994) does not operationalize micro- and macro-level constructs independently when measuring cultural values. To address this empirically, personal moral values and societal moral values were explicitly measured in student samples from eight cultures. Societal moral values showed greater cross-cultural differences than personal moral values. Furthermore, societal moral values at the culture-level conceptually replicated the multilevel findings from Study 2. This suggests that societal moral values are a valid macro-level variable for the measurement of culture. Finally, Study 4 was conducted to elicit implicit moral values. Respondents from four cultures free-listed their associations of a 'moral person'. correspondence analyses revealed that collectivistic-oriented samples mentioned more traditional moral attributes, whereas individualistic samples reported more liberal attributes. Furthermore, accessibility of implicit moral values - matched with the SVS - correlated with explicit ratings of personal moral values from Study 3, providing convergent validity for this kind of values. This multi-method finding corroborated that personal moral values and societal moral values are different concepts. In sum, these studies support the validity of Schwartz' theory and suggest that notions of right and wrong do indeed tell us something about culture, but it depends on (1) the issues studied (personal-sexual issues), and (2) the kind of values measured (societal moral values).</p>


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