Pilot study to determine the effectiveness of a new neck brace design for patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background/Objective: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease. People with ALS who exhibit neck extensor weakness stop ambulating because they no longer can hold their head erect. Neck braces currently available resist or restrict lung expansion and are not an option for this population. This was a study of the impact a prototype neck brace had on quality of life, mobility, and breathing capacity of people with ALS. Methods: Five subjects were recruited and fitted for the prototype brace. Subjects completed a demographic form, ALS-Specific Quality of Life (ALSSQOL) survey, Timed Up and Go (TUG) test, and Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) test with and without the brace. Subjects wore the brace 1 to 3 months and then repeated the measurements. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the sample and summarize the data. Results: The initial average ALSSQOL score was 6.0. After 1 to 3 months of wearing the brace, the ALSSQOL score was 4.8. The initial FVC average showed 34.6% predicted without the brace and 37.4% predicted with the brace. After 1 to 3 months, the FVC average was 32.85% without the brace and 36% with the brace. Conclusion: The prototype neck brace allows ALS patients with neck weakness to remain ambulatory while improving or maintaining their respiratory status. Although this pilot study had a small number of subjects, the brace was shown to be beneficial in terms of quality of life and improved respirations. Even small improvements have a large impact clinically in this patient population. Normal 0 7.8 磅 0 2 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".