Modelling the generation of customised poetry in Jess

The present paper presents an application that composes formal poetry in Spanish in a semiautomatic interactive fashion. JASPER is a forward reasoning rule-based system that obtains from the user an intended message, the desired metric, a choice of vocabulary, and a corpus of verses; and, by intelligent adaptation of selected examples from this corpus using the given words, carries out a prose-to-poetry translation of the given message. In the composition process, JASPER combines natural language generation and a set of construction heuristics obtained from formal literature on Spanish poetry.

Toward a comprehensive care of HIV patients: Finding a strategy to detect depression in a Spanish HIV cohort

Depression is a common but frequently undiagnosed feature in individuals with HIV infection. To find a strategy to detect depression in a non-specialized clinical setting, the overall performance of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the depression identification questions proposed by the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) guidelines were assessed in a descriptive cross-sectional study of 113 patients with HIV infection. The clinician asked the two screening questions that were proposed under the EACS guidelines and requested patients to complete the HADS. A psychiatrist or psychologist administered semi-structured clinical interviews to yield psychiatric diagnoses of depression (gold standard). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for the HADS-Depression (HADS-D) subscale indicated that the best sensitivity and specificity were obtained between the cut-off points of 5 and 8, and the ROC curve for the HADS-Total (HADS-T) indicated that the best cut-off points were between 12 and 14. There were no statistically significant differences in the correlations of the EACS (considering positive responses to one [A] or both questions [B]), the HADS-D ≥ 8 or the HADS-T ≥ 12 with the gold standard. The study concludes that both approaches (the two EACS questions and the HADS-D subscale) are appropriate depression-screening methods in HIV population. We believe that using the EACS-B and the HADS-D subscale in a two-step approach allows for rapid, assumable and accurate clinical diagnosis in non-psychiatric hospital settings.

Pregnancy in Spanish elite sportswomen: A qualitative study

Pregnancy and motherhood have been historically considered as reasons why elite sportswomen may end their sport careers. During pregnancy, the safety of both mother and baby has been identified as a key reason for ceasing sport participation. Recent “official” statistics on how many elite athletes are mothers suggest that pregnancy, motherhood, and sport could be no longer mutually exclusive. The aim of this qualitative phenomenological study was to describe the lived pregnancy of Spanish elite sportswomen. Spanish elite sportswomen (n = 20) aged between 18 and 65 years that had been pregnant during their sporting professional career and after the end of their pregnancy had taken up again their professional sporting career for at least one year were included. Data were collected from May 2010 to April 2012 using in-depth personal interviews, investigator’s field notes, and extracts from the participants’ personal letters. Identified themes included: choosing the right moment; fears and doubts; and justifying physical exercise. By giving voice to these elite Spanish sportswomen, their pregnancy experiences are made visible, which might help to gain a better understanding into their expectations and develop policies and practices focused on elite sportswomen during and after pregnancy.

Spanish Rheumatology Society and Hospital Pharmacy Society Consensus on recommendations for biologics optimization in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis

The aim of this study was to establish guidelines for the optimization of biologic therapies for health professionals involved in the management of patients with RA, AS and PsA. Recommendations were established via consensus by a panel of experts in rheumatology and hospital pharmacy, based on analysis of available scientific evidence obtained from four systematic reviews and on the clinical experience of panellists. The Delphi method was used to evaluate these recommendations, both between panellists and among a wider group of rheumatologists. Previous concepts concerning better management of RA, AS and PsA were reviewed and, more specifically, guidelines for the optimization of biologic therapies used to treat these diseases were formulated. Recommendations were made with the aim of establishing a plan for when and how to taper biologic treatment in patients with these diseases. The recommendations established herein aim not only to provide advice on how to improve the risk:benefit ratio and efficiency of such treatments, but also to reduce variability in daily clinical practice in the use of biologic therapies for rheumatic diseases

Comparison of 1-year outcome in patients with severe aorta stenosis treated conservatively or by aortic valve replacement or by percutaneous transcatheter aortic valve implantation (data from a multicenter Spanish registry)

The factors that influence decision making in severe aortic stenosis (AS) are unknown. Our aim was to assess, in patients with severe AS, the determinants of management and prognosis in a multicenter registry that enrolled all consecutive adults with severe AS during a 1-month period. One-year follow-up was obtained in all patients and included vital status and aortic valve intervention (aortic valve replacement [AVR] and transcatheter aortic valve implantation [TAVI]). A total of 726 patients were included, mean age was 77.3 ± 10.6 years, and 377 were women (51.8%). The most common management was conservative therapy in 468 (64.5%) followed by AVR in 199 (27.4%) and TAVI in 59 (8.1%). The strongest association with aortic valve intervention was patient management in a tertiary hospital with cardiac surgery (odds ratio 2.7, 95% confidence interval 1.8 to 4.1, p <0.001). The 2 main reasons to choose conservative management were the absence of significant symptoms (136% to 29.1%) and the presence of co-morbidity (128% to 27.4%). During 1-year follow-up, 132 patients died (18.2%). The main causes of death were heart failure (60% to 45.5%) and noncardiac diseases (46% to 34.9%). One-year survival for patients treated conservatively, with TAVI, and with AVR was 76.3%, 94.9%, and 92.5%, respectively, p <0.001. One-year survival of patients treated conservatively in the absence of significant symptoms was 97.1%. In conclusion, most patients with severe AS are treated conservatively. The outcome in asymptomatic patients managed conservatively was acceptable. Management in tertiary hospitals is associated with valve intervention. One-year survival was similar with both interventional strategies.