ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) sonography has been proposed as a reliable bedside tool for the detection of increased intracranial pressure (ICP). ONSD reacts almost simultaneously to oscillations in ICP. The aim of this study was to investigate the ONSD dynamics in the acute stage of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and to compare ONSD dynamics to the clinical outcome. METHODS: We enrolled 35 acute ICH patients and 20 healthy volunteers in this prospective study. At the admission, all patients underwent brain CT scan and ONSD sonography. We repeated the ONSD on the second and the third day in all patients while CT scan was repeated if a patient condition deteriorated. The changes in serial ONSD measurements were termed as stable or unstable ONSD trend. ONSD trend was considered as unstable if variations of average ONSD were above 5%. The outcome of the patient was assessed with the Modified Rankin Scale (mRS) and Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS). RESULTS: In healthy volunteers serial ONSD recordings for 3 days revealed a stable trend in 100%. However, in the study group, 23 patients had unstable and 12 had stable ONSD trend during the acute stage of ICH. The patients with unstable ONSD trend were more likely to have worse outcomes (p value 0.003). CONCLUSION: In patients with ICH, the acute-phase ONSD dynamics can help in predicting the clinical outcome.
ABSTRACT
It is commonly thought that an article published in a renown international journal gives its authors better chances for visibility. The present paper aims at answering three questions: (a) does an article published in a top international journal guarantee that its authors will be visible, (b) is an article published in a domestic journal (not covered by ISI) completely inaccessible to the international public, and (c) which are the information flows and how far does the medical information from Croatia reach. Selected was a corpus of 60 authors, who simultaneously publish in foreign journals and in Lijecnicki vjesnik (LV). The corpus consists of 1053 articles published in the 1961-1986 period. Out of these, 369 articles were published in LV and 684 in foreign journals; 177 among them are covered by the Science Citation Index. A total of 4481 citations were collected for the entire corpus of 1053 articles. The citations pertain to 506 articles, i.e. 48% of articles were cited. There are 190 cited and 83 uncited journals. The citations were distributed among 890 journals. Although the studied authors published their papers in renown international journals, a number of examples proves that this does not guarantee their visibility. An article published in LV need not necessarily remain inaccessible to the world--this depends on the article itself. The present analysis provides a compendious insight into the transfer of information from Croatia into the world. The data from citation analysis enable the deduction of "average number of citations per paper". With an appropriate interpretation it can be used as an indicator of information transfer.
Subject(s)
Bibliometrics , Periodicals as Topic , CroatiaABSTRACT
Presented are the results of a scientometric study carried out on a sample containing 5339 journal articles published by the Croatian authors over the period of 11 years. The analysis is performed on a macro-level, i.e. it is based on journal-aggregates data. To evaluate whether Croatian output in medicine is incorporated into the mainstream of the world science or suffers from the intellectual island effect, the extent of the journals' coverage by high quality international secondary literature, is examined. The extent of coverage is found to be 80%, making only that part of the Croatian output accessible to the world scientific community.
