ABSTRACT
Background and Objective. Needle electromyography can be used to detect the number of changes and morphological changes in motor unit potentials of patients with axonal neuropathy. General mathematical methods of pattern recognition and signal analysis were applied to recognize neuropathic changes. This study validates the possibility of extending and refining turns-amplitude analysis using permutation entropy and signal energy. Methods. In this study, we examined needle electromyography in 40 neuropathic individuals and 40 controls. The number of turns, amplitude between turns, signal energy, and "permutation entropy" were used as features for support vector machine classification. Results. The obtained results proved the superior classification performance of the combinations of all of the above-mentioned features compared to the combinations of fewer features. The lowest accuracy from the tested combinations of features had peak-ratio analysis. Conclusion. Using the combination of permutation entropy with signal energy, number of turns and mean amplitude in SVM classification can be used to refine the diagnosis of polyneuropathies examined by needle electromyography.
Subject(s)
Algorithms , Electromyography , Peripheral Nervous System Diseases/physiopathology , Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted , Support Vector Machine , Adult , Aged , Entropy , Female , Humans , Male , Middle Aged , Young AdultABSTRACT
Fall-related injuries in nursing homes for the aged are frequent and cost-intensive. Their iatrogenic causes are well known and avoided in modern geriatric institutions. We examined all falls in an institution during the period of 19 months. Patients who carry out daily tasks on a semi-independent level were most at risk. The main risk-factor was dementia. Medication did not prove a major risk-factor. At 37% p. a. the risk of falling was lower than in previous studies. This was due to a restriction on benzodiazepines with short term effects, minimising of neuroleptics, diuretics and other types of antihypertensives as well as avoidance of polypharmacy. Unavoidable risks need to be identified and should result in use of a hip protector.
