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Temporal artery biopsy (TAB) is the gold standard for diagnosing temporal arteritis; however, sensitivity is relatively poor (30‐40 per cent). The British Society of Rheumatology (BSR) guidelines state two major factors that can improve sensitivity: TAB specimen size >10mm; and pre‐biopsy steroid treatment <7 days. Owing to the low sensitivity, TA treatment is often commenced/continued despite negative histology. The purpose of this paper is to establish the extent to which TAB results influence clinical management and determine specimen adequacy regarding BSR guidelines.

In total, 55 patients underwent TAB between 2009‐2011. Patients' medical notes were analysed, specifically looking at biopsy specimen size, histology results and steroid therapy duration, pre‐ and post‐biopsy.

From 55 TABs, three (6 per cent) were positive, 47 (85 per cent) were negative and five (9 per cent) were “inadequate”. Of those patients with negative results, 18 (46 per cent) received > six months steroid treatment. From 50 “adequate” specimens, 31 (62 per cent) were <10 mm and 11 (28 per cent) received > seven days steroid treatment pre‐biopsy.

Despite negative results, many patients went on to receive long‐term steroids. Action must be taken to reduce false and true negative biopsies. False negatives may be reduced by improving adherence to BSR guidance (increased specimen size and early biopsy after commencing steroids). To reduce total true‐negative biopsies, the authors suggest implementing the American College of Rheumatology scoring system, designed to objectify the decision to perform TAB.

This article addresses a common problem seen in most UK hospitals. There is little literature discussing a plausible solution to reducing negative biopsies.

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic the United Kingdom Government implemented a policy to rapid discharge hospital patients into care homes. This study aimed to examine how the media in the United Kingdom portrayed hospital discharge to care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study was a qualitative document analysis. Four sources (Daily Mail, The Independent, The Guardian and BBC News) were selected to represent political orientations encompassing right-wing, centrist and left-wing perspectives, and were searched for mention of hospital discharge, care homes and Covid-19 pandemic between 1st January 2020 and 24th February 2022. Article text was copied verbatim into Microsoft Word documents prior to analysis. Data were thematically analysed, followed by coding the sentiment in the included articles as well as coding the sentiment of themes and sub-themes.

Of 722 identified articles, 133 were eligible for inclusion as the final corpus. Data represented a moralistic narrative consisting of four themes: (1) Government as villain, (2) care homes as antiheroes, (3) patients as ideal victims and (4) moral outcomes. Most of the corpus had a negative sentiment (78.1%). One theme, moral outcomes, had considerably more positive sentiment (32.4%) than others (range 15.1%–21.9%).

A moralistic argument for improving cross-boundary interactions between health and social care services is provided, and the media can play a role pushing cross-boundary working higher up the policy agenda. Future work should examine how direct stakeholders, including those working in healthcare and care home settings, perceived the discharge policy.

The purpose of this paper is to incorporate factors that characterize the agricultural activity as productivity indices to compute the agricultural competitiveness of regions in order to rank the regions, and compare the results with those obtained by applying other commonly used social and economic indicators.

The authors identify regional factors related to the use of water, soil, production, revenues, and rural population, which conform a total of six productivity indices, that the authors then employ to calculate the regional agricultural competitiveness index.

The agricultural-related indices are informative in supporting the regional ranking related to resources and technology utilization. The results reveal that the coastal regions are the most competitive when compared to the regions located in the highlands and the jungle. Nevertheless, in contrast with other existing competitiveness rankings, the present study identifies the regions with the greatest potential for agriculture.

The authors identify the regions which have a higher potential of development considering the natural resources and agricultural production. The authors hope that this paper can assist regional and national policymakers in their endeavor to improve regional and national competitiveness.

The authors identify the regions with a higher potential of development considering natural resources and agricultural production and the possibilities to improve their competitiveness.

The study also bears social implications, given that the rural activities in Peru are carried out by approx. 7 million inhabitants, whose contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is as much as 7 percent, making use of about 94 percent of the available water.

The originality of the present paper resides in the attempt to compute a regional competitiveness index by taking agricultural resources as determinant factors. The authors rank the regions based on their agricultural competitiveness.

This study aims to look at the prevalence of obesity and its association with sleep problems among police officers.

The authors conducted a cross‐sectional study of the relationship between obesity and sleep disorders among 110 randomly selected police officers from the Buffalo, New York, Police Department in 1999. Participants, who ranged in age from 26 to 61 years (mean±SD=39.5±7.5), responded to sleep related questions and had anthropometric measurements taken.

Results show that several measures of obesity were significantly associated with sleep‐disordered breathing in police officers, but not with other sleep problems.

A major strength of the study was that it was conducted in a cooperative and motivated study population. It was possible to assess a wide range of anthropometric measurements, including many that are important but are rarely used to measure obesity in epidemiologic studies such as abdominal height, neck circumference, and neck‐to‐height ratio. In addition, the assessment of the anthropometric indices was performed by trained clinic staff using standardized procedures.

The real estate industry is known as a late adopter when it comes to changes and innovations. While the industry is slowly evolving, parts of the sector are increasingly being conquered by property-related start-ups, known as “PropTechs”. These companies offer solutions and cutting-edge technologies to increase efficiencies and solve industry-wide problems. However, little is known about these companies' survival. This paper analyses the survival rate of PropTech firms and the determinants.

Based on a sample of 1,052 firms, factors that influence the firms' survival rate are analysed using the Cox Proportional Hazards Model, which is expanded with non-linear splines to capture turning points in the survival.

The authors find that in addition to the size, financing condition plays the most critical role in the success of Prop-Tech firms, including the number of financing rounds and maximum number of investors over lifetime. Moreover, the relationships are non-linear. Founding years and technology focus can also statistically influence the success rate. Companies founded before 2008 focussing on Sustainability Technology, Data and Business Analytics, Real Estate-related FinTech and Visualisation show the highest success rates.

The results are critical for investors interested in PropTechs to understand the success of their investments better. The importance of financing conditions shows that both investors and PropTechs may benefit from better financing processes that provide funds in a timelier manner.

The authors exploit a new and comprehensive data set that includes over 6,000 PropTechs globally. The authors' study fills in the literature gap on the determinants of the survival rate of PropTechs.