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Objective: Patient enablement in a disease or disorder comprises the alleviation of medical symptoms, reduced participation restriction and reinforcement of the positive aspects of the condition. The aim of this study was to determine the aspects of positive experiences related to the impact of Ménière's disorder on the individuals' lives. Study design: A postal survey of the members of the Finnish Ménière's Association included a structured questionnaire on positive experiences that have been reported by people with Ménière's disorder. Results: Detailed analyses revealed 10 questions that loaded on three factors related to the impact of the condition. Five questions loaded on two factors – 'Relaxation' and 'Perspective on Ménière's disorder', which accounted for 58% in the variance in the psychological impact of the condition. Eight questions loaded on three factors: 'Relaxation' and 'Perspective on Ménière's disorder' and 'Appreciation of support', which accounted for 56% in the variance in the global impact measures. Conclusions: Aspects of self-reported positive experience in Ménière's disorder can predict the impact of the condition describing ways in which it can be improved, its acceptance, and appreciation of those around the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human postural control system is complex and it combines information from different sources. The most important information comes from vestibular, visual and proprioceptive senses. We studied the effects of removing the visual and proprioceptive information simultaneously. The force feedback from the ground was removed with vibrators attached on the musculus soleus of both calves. By using features of force platform signals, when the vibrators were on, the lengths of the swaying paths were four times the lengths when the vibrators were off. Our results show that it is possible to separate the effects of the visual and proprioceptive senses from that of vestibular sense, which is very useful for investigations of balance problems in otoneurology. This supports our future aim to classify between healthy subjects and different otoneurological patients with signal analysis and pattern recognition methods to be used for force platform signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive experiences have been investigated in a variety of conditions including hearing impairment. In the present investigation we have studied positive experience associated with tinnitus and with balance disorders using an open-ended questionnaire. The first was investigated in consecutive patients attending a tertiary level tinnitus clinic in Wales and the second as part of a study on members of the Finnish Meniere Federation. Forty-one per cent of the respondents with tinnitus listed one or more positive experiences as did 26% of the respondents with balance problems. Using a qualitative analysis, the most common theme to emerge in both groups was 'Treatment-related'. 'Personal development' and 'Disease-specific' were also themes common to both groups and the tinnitus patients also reported effects on 'Other people', either that they had been helpful or that they themselves had developed empathy with other sufferers. We argue that discussion of such positive experiences would be valuable in the therapeutic counselling of both groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines derived from skin fibroblasts of patients suffering from cardiac disorders were differentiated to cardiomyocytes and used to generate a data set of Ca(2+) transients of 136 recordings. The objective was to separate normal signals for later medical research from abnormal signals. We constructed a signal analysis procedure to detect peaks representing calcium cycling in signals and another procedure to classify them into either normal or abnormal peaks. Using machine learning methods we classified signals into normal or abnormal signals on the basis of peak findings in them. We compared classification results obtained to those made visually by an expert biotechnologist who assessed the signals independent of the computer method. Classification accuracies of around 85% indicated high congruence between two modes denoting the high capability and usefulness of computer based processing for the present data.

In this paper we applied altogether 13 classification methods to otoneurological disease classification. The main point was to use Half-Against-Half (HAH) architecture in classification. HAH structure was used with Support Vector Machines (SVMs), k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN) method and Naïve Bayes (NB) methods. Furthermore, Multinomial Logistic Regression (MNLR) was tested for the dataset. HAH-SVM with the linear kernel achieved clearly the best accuracy being 76.9% which was a good result with the dataset tested. From the other classification methods HAH-k-NN with cityblock metric, HAH-NB and MNLR methods achieved above 60% accuracy. Around 77% accuracy is a good result compared to previous researches with the same dataset.

We studied how the splitting of a multi-class classification problem into multiple binary classification tasks, like One-vs-One (OVO) and One-vs-All (OVA), affects the predictive accuracy of disease classes. Classifiers were tested with an otoneurological data using 10-fold cross-validation 10 times with k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN) method and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The results showed that the use of multiple binary classifiers improves the classification accuracies of disease classes compared to one multi-class classifier. In general, OVO classifiers worked out better with this data than OVA classifiers. Especially, the OVO with k-NN yielded the highest total classification accuracies.

Objective: To define the main consequences of Ménière's disease as perceived by individuals with the condition., Study Design and Setting: Open-ended questionnaire sent to a 1-in-6 sample of members of the Finnish Ménière's Association., Patients: Two hundred members of the Finnish Ménière's Association reporting a diagnosis compatible with the condition., Intervention(s): Postal questionnaire, including the question "Please make a list of the main effects that your Ménière's disorder has on your life.", Main Outcome Measure(s): Number of respondents listing 1 or more consequences of their condition. Categories of responses listed and numbers of responses within the different categories as defined by World Health Organization-International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health., Results: There was a 79% response rate to the overall questionnaire, and 91% of the respondents listed 1 or more consequences of their Ménière's disease, with a mean of 3.4 consequences listed. These were divided according to the categories listed in International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. Seventy percent of the respondents listed impairments, 39% activity limitations, 47% participation restrictions, 16% effects on environmental factors, and 28% on personal contextual factors. Although most impairments covered the main symptoms of the condition, 19% of the respondents listed "mental effects." Mobility problems were reported by more than half of those listing activity limitations, with most of the remainder being "communication." The 2 main areas of participation restrictions commonly reported were "community, social and civic life" and "work and employment.", Conclusion: Most individuals with Ménière's disease are able to specify important consequences (principally participation restrictions and activity limitations), many of which are not identified in symptom-orientated approaches.

The human postural control system is complex and it combines information from different sources. The most important information comes from vestibular, visual and proprioceptive senses. We studied the effects of removing the visual and proprioceptive information simultaneously. The force feedback from the ground was removed with vibrators attached on the musculus soleus of both calves. By using features of force platform signals, when the vibrators were on, the lengths of the swaying paths were four times the lengths when the vibrators were off. Our results show that it is possible to separate the effects of the visual and proprioceptive senses from that of vestibular sense, which is very useful for investigations of balance problems in otoneurology. This supports our future aim to classify between healthy subjects and different otoneurological patients with signal analysis and pattern recognition methods to be used for force platform signals.