This study evaluated the correlations between spiritual beliefs and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of hemodialysis (HD) patients in Taiwan. Participants had to complete two questionnaires: the 36-item Short Form Health Survey Questionnaire and the Royal Free Interview for Spiritual and Religious Beliefs. They were then divided into three groups according to their strength of spiritual beliefs-having no, weak, or strong beliefs. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory data among groups were compared. Correlations between spiritual beliefs and HRQOL were then determined by the analysis of covariance and the post hoc Scheffe tests. Six hundred thirty-three patients completed the study. There were more women in the group of patients with strong beliefs (P = 0.005) and more less-educated patients in the group of patients with weak beliefs (P = 0.005). Patients with no or with strong spiritual beliefs had higher role physical (P = 0.01) and social functioning (SF) (P = 0.001) scores than patients with weak beliefs. After adjustment for gender, age, marital status, education, comorbidities, and time on dialysis, patients with no or with strong spiritual beliefs were found to have higher SF scores (P = 0.02) than patients with weak beliefs. HD patients with no or strong spiritual beliefs had higher SF HRQOL than those with weak spiritual beliefs.

Abnormal intra-QRS potentials (AIOPs) in signal-averaged electrocardiograms have been proposed as a risk evaluation index for ventricular arrhythmias. The purpose of the paper was to develop an automatic algorithm for selecting the optimum parametric model order in the analysis of AIOPs to make the modelling approach clinically more feasible. A total of 130 normal Taiwanese subjects and 87 patients with ventricular premature contractions and 23 with sustained ventricular tachycardia were recruited. The unpredictable AIQP signal was estimated from the modelling residual. The cross-correlation coefficient between the original signal and the ORS estimate was employed to evaluate the accuracy of the estimate. A pre-selected threshold cross-correlation coefficient of 0.9999 was used to determine the optimum order. The mean AIQP in lead Y for ventricular tachycardia patients was 3.9 microV, which was significantly smaller than 4.9 microV for ventricular premature contraction patients (p < 0.01) and 6.3 microV for normal subjects (p < 0.001). The linear combination of AIQP in lead Y and the time-domain parameter RMS40 provided the best global performance (the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 89.1%). A higher risk of ventricular arrhythmias was associated with lower AIQP in lead Y, and the automatic modelling algorithm improved the clinical feasibility of AIQP analysis.

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