Nicolas Nicoloyannis

Effectiveness, Quality of Life, and Cost of Caring for Children in France with Recurrent Acute Rhinopharyngitis Managed by Homeopathic or Non-Homeopathic General Practitioners: A Pragmatic, Prospective Observational Study

Background & ObjectiveIn France, non-homeopathic general practitioners (GPs) often use antibacterials to treat children with recurrent acute viral rhinopharyngitis; whereas homeopathic GPs tend to use homeopathic medicines. We compared the effectiveness, the quality of life of the parents, and the direct and indirect costs associated with treatment from homeopathic and non-homeopathic GPs.MethodWe assessed the direct (consultations, medicines, further tests) and indirect (time off work) costs of the two types of treatment to society, the patient, and social security. We also assessed the effectiveness of the treatment received and the quality of life of the parents.ResultsOf the 499 children included, 231 were treated by 62 non-homeopathic GPs and 268 by 73 homeopathic GPs. The effectiveness (assessed as complications/patient, total number of adverse events, and quality of life) [mean overall Parents of children with Ear, Nose, and Throat infections Quality of Life questionnaire© scale score] was better in the homeopathic GP group than in the non-homeopathic GP group. No significant difference was found between the two groups for the total costs to social security (€98.55 for homeopathic GPs vs €96.17 for non-homeopathic GPs). Homeopathic GPs initiated preventive treatment in 82.2% of their patients and used antibacterials in 20.9% of their patients, while non-homeopathic GPs initiated preventive treatment in 43.3% of patients and prescribed antibacterials for 89.6% of patients.ConclusionThis study produced new findings that indicate that, in France, acute rhinopharyngitis is handled differently by homeopathic GPs and non-homeopathic GPs: homeopathic GPs prescribe fewer antibacterials than non-homeopathic GPs for the treatment of recurrent acute rhinopharyngitis in children aged between 18 months and 4 years. Moreover, homeopathic treatment gave better results in terms of pragmatic medical effectiveness (fewer episodes and fewer complications) and the parents’ quality of life, with similar total medical costs to social security. However, this study is potentially biased by the lack of homogeneity of the two patient-samples in terms of the ‘passive smoking’, ‘patient age’, ‘childcare’, and ‘type of occupation’ criteria because our study protocol did not provide for prior matching of the two patient-samples with respect to these criteria. The observations found in this study need to be confirmed by randomized clinical trials.

A pretopological approach for structuring data in non-metric spaces

Abstract The aim of this paper is to bring out the structure of a space E which is not endowed with a metric. Indeed, there only is a family of binary relationships between points of E. The problem is to define a process to extract the structure E without building a distance between the elements of E. In this way, weve used a method based on pretopological notions.

Pertinence for a Classification

The Clique Partitioning Problem constitutes a general framework for clustering, when similarities assume positive and negative values. The effectiveness of various heuristic methods of solving the above problem has been proved by several authors.

Statistical analysis of textures from compressed images

This paper is devoted to a statistical analysis of textures from two codings. This analysis discriminates textures: a classification is built, not directly upon texture images, but upon a compressed information, which is created from each texture and composed of two coding images. The principle of this analysis is as follows: a texture images set is used. Each texture, composed of 256 gray levels, is encoded by two coding images of 15 colors. Some Kolmogorov-Smirnovs tests are carried out on combinations of two coding images in view to get a first discrimination. In the same time, from each coding image, co-occurrence parameters are computed. These parameters are used, with the previous discrimination, to get classifications. These classifications are compared to another one made only with co- occurrence parameters directly computed from a basis-textures set. In conclusion, we consider advantages and drawbacks of our approach and perspectives for the future.

Texture analysis: pretopological approach versus morphology approach

This paper deals with the problem of texture classification: a new coding images has been developed. The first interest of this article is the presentation of a new approach for texture analysis based on pretopology: pretopology is a mathematical area which generalizes, in our case, mathematical morphology. Instead of using only one structuring element to make transformations on an image, we can use a basis of structuring elements. We can recreate the mathematical-morphology transformations like dilation and erosion, but we can build new transformations, thinner or coarser than dilation or erosion. More over, we can use the all mathematical knowledges of pretopology. The second part of this article presents the coding images based on the pretopological approach: it uses a basis of four structuring elements. One gray scale image is coded by two images of 15 colors. We try to determinate the discrimining capacity of the coding images.