Ksenija Klasnić

Assessment of Ultrasound for Use in Detecting Lipoatrophy in HIV-Infected Patients Taking Combination Antiretroviral Therapy

The aim of this study was evaluation of ultrasound (US) as a tool for the assessment of lipoatrophy in a population of HIV-infected patients. We enrolled a convenience sample of 151 HIV-infected Caucasian participants (males, 79%) who were treated for at least 1 year with combination antiretroviral therapy (CART) in Zagreb, Croatia. US measurements of subcutaneous fat thickness were done over the malar, brachial, and crural region. We determined sensitivity and specificity of US as a diagnostic tool for lipoatrophy using receiver-operating curves and concordant patient and clinician assessment as our reference for the presence of lipoatrophy. HIV was acquired through heterosexual contact in 50% of participants and by sex between men in 42%. The mean current CD4 cell count was 503.1 cells=mm3 (standard deviation [SD] = 250.8). Seventy-seven (51%) participants were treated with stavudine and 91 (64%) with a protease inhibitor for at least 6 months. Nineteen (13%)participants had lipoatrophy in at least one anatomic site. Sensitivity of US ranged from 67%-71%, specificity from 65%-71%, positive and negative predictive values ranged from 11%-20% and 96-97%, respectively. US diagnosed lipoatrophy was more frequently found in patients with a history of stavudine treatment and in females. Patients with lipoatrophy had a longer duration of CART than those without lipoatrophy. US is a useful tool in ruling out the presence of clinical lipoatrophy in patients on CART. Using this objective measure of subcutaneous fat may be useful in helping clinicians make decisions about changing therapy.

Quality parameters for the e-learning Omega system

Learning and teaching are considered to be the main activities in higher education. The environment in which these activities take place is rapidly changing and it is getting more and more oriented towards teaching with the help of the new technologies, namely e-learning system, relying not only on technical skills but also on motivation and contextualisation. In the paper, different views towards the quality of e-learning have been presented, and the research regarding the quality of the e-learning Omega system (Moodle) conducted at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb presented in relation to different European policies.

Quality Metrics of an Integrated E-Learning System – students’ perspective

As e-learning has become an increasingly important issue in educational systems in the last several years, a considerable number of generic standards, quality guidelines and frameworks have been published relating to better efficiency and quality improvement of the e-learning. While early initiatives were concentrated on the functional understanding and technical skills of ICT use, nowadays they take more into consideration motivation, satisfaction and contextualization which are reflected in the quality of e-learning. In the first part of the paper, different views towards the quality of an integrated e-learning system have been considered. In the second part, the research results regarding the quality of the integrated e-learning system (Moodle) have been presented and discussed in relation to different European policies. The survey was made on the Croatian version of Moodle (Omega) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.

Information Transfer through Online Summarizing and Translation Technology

Information access – presented in proper language, in understandable way, at the right time and right place can be of considerable importance. Information and communication technology, wrapping also human language technologies, can play important role in information transfer to the specific user. Translation technology along with summarizing technology has opened new possibilities and perspectives, requiring in the same time the critical opinion in information analysis. The main purpose of this research is to present the impact of text summarization and online machine translation tools on information transfer. The research was performed on texts taken from online newspapers in five do- mains (politics, news, sport, film and gastronomy) in English, German and Russian languages. The total of N=240 evaluations were analysed, performed by the same three evaluators. In the research three types of assignments were made. The first assignment was to evaluate machine-translated sentences at the sentence level for the three language pairs (English-Croatian, German-Croatian and Russian-Croatan). In the second task, the similar evaluation was performed, but at the whole text level. In the third assignment, which was related to information transfer, the evaluators were asked to evaluate the overall quality of the texts process in the pipe- lined process (online summarization and online machine translation) for English and German. Assessment was based on the finding the answers to the following questions – who, what, when, where, and how? The results were analysed by ANOVA, t-test and binary logistic regression.

Community-Acquired Legionnaires Disease in Croatia: Clinical and Radiographic Evaluation

Legionella pneumophila is a well-recognized etiologic factor in community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). We analyzed the course of radiographic findings of 49 patients with Legionnaires disease, correlated them with clinical and laboratory parameters, and compared them with CAP caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Chlamydophila pneumoniae, and Coxiella burnetii. The most common radiographic finding at admission was unilobar, patchy infiltrate localized in the lower lobes. At follow-up radiography 4 to 12 days after admission, 42.9% of patients developed progression of infiltrates. Mean complete clearing of the infiltrates in most patients (83.7%) was noted on the 21st day of the onset of symptoms. Most patients with Legionnaires disease presented with a clinically mild-to-moderate form, and radiographic findings differed from those seen in other atypical CAPs.