Background - The Norwegian registry for spine surgery (NORspine) is a national clinical quality registry which has recorded more than 10,000 operations for degenerative conditions of the cervical spine since 2012. Registries are large observational cohorts, at risk for attrition bias. We therefore aimed to examine whether clinical outcomes differed between respondents and non-respondents to standardized ...

What if becoming information literate were an adventure? This question was posed in a keynote for the Creating Knowledge Conference 2021. It was answered in a thought piece by examining adventure-based ways to prepare students to be information literate adults through the principles and mechanisms that people find arousing and pleasurable and that are not classically a part of university pedagogy. ...

Helse- og omsorgstjenestene vil i årene som kommer møte en fremskrevet utfordring med å rekruttere nok helsepersonell, i tillegg til demografiske endringer som innebærer en høyere andel eldre i befolkningen, ofte med sammensatte og komplekse hjelpebehov. Som følge av dette har kommunene, gjennom nasjonale føringer, blitt bedt om være innovative, og se etter nye måter å levere helse- og omsorgstjenester. ...

Objectives - Shift work is associated with myocardial infarction and stroke. We studied if shift work is also associated with incident atrial fibrillation (AF) and if this association differs, depending on sex and age.<p> <p>Methods - We studied 22 339 participants (age 37.0±9.8 years, 49% women) with paid work from the third (1986–1987), fourth (1994–1995), fifth (2001) and sixth (2007–2008) ...

We found that compstatin, which inhibits the cleavage of complement component C3 to its components C3a and C3b, reduced the E. coli-induced platelet aggregation by 42%-76% (p = 0.0417). This C3-dependent aggregation was not C3a-mediated as neither inhibition of C3a using a blocking antibody or a C3a receptor antagonist, nor the addition of purified C3a had any effects. In contrast, a C3b-blocking ...

Objective: To evaluate the lipid-lowering effect and safety of Gynostemma pentaphyllum (GP) used alone or as adjunctive therapy for dyslipidemia.<p> <p>Methods: Eight databases and three clinical trial registries were searched until January 2022. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) assessing the effectiveness of GP for dyslipidemia were included. Trial quality was assessed using the Cochrane Risk ...

Change in theoretical framework over the last decades and recent research in pediatric physiotherapy, has created a debate surrounding therapeutic touch. What is the role of or is there a need for handling and hands-on facilitated guidance (facilitation)? Does it limit and/or interfere with children's learning and development? It is frequently argued that therapeutic touch represents a passive and/or ...

<p><b> Background</b> There is a dearth of studies on how neighbourhood environmental attributes relate to the metabolic syndrome (MetS) and profiles of MetS components. We examined the associations of interrelated aspects of the neighbourhood environment, including air pollution, with MetS status and profiles of MetS components. <p><b> Methods</b> We used socio-demographic and MetS-related ...

Treatment of a limited number of brain metastases (oligometastases) might include complex and sometimes invasive approaches, e.g. neurosurgical resection followed by post-operative stereotactic radiotherapy, and thus, correct identification of patients who are appropriate candidates is crucial. Both, staging procedures that visualize the true number of metastastic lesions and prognostic assessments ...

Calibrated Automated Thrombography (CAT) is a versatile and sensitive method for analyzing coagulation reactions culminating in thrombin generation (TG). Here, we present a CAT method for analyzing TG in murine whole blood by adapting the CAT assay used for measuring TG in human plasma. The diagnostically used artificial and physiologic factor XII (FXII) contact activators kaolin, ellagic acid ...