Advances in microelectronics have resulted in exponential growth in the number of implanted medical devices. Most people do well adjusting to their devices, but others show signs of depression and/or anxiety. The Implanted Device Adjustment Scale (IDAS) was developed to measure how well a person is adjusting to an implanted device. First, a pool of items was generated and reviewed by 2 panels of clinicians and psychometricians for content validity. The revised version was then administered to a small sample that provided information about problematic items. Finally, a convenience sample of 45 persons (66% males) with implanted devices (18 pacemakers only, 37 cardioverter/defibrillators) completed the revised IDAS twice. After deleting weak items, the Cronbach alpha was 0.90. No age, gender, or device differences were found. Test-retest reliability was 0.92. The IDAS may be useful to evaluate how well a person is adjusting to her/his device. This may lead to more timely and appropriate interventions to improve outcomes.
P. survey of over 100 cited referer.ces 3ertinent to the application of flow graphs t o reliability engineering leads to the conclusion that a large number of r e l i a b i l i t y problems can be reduced t o a few basic patterns.Flow graphs clearly reveal these patterns, thereby providing a systematic approach to solve a wide range of problems by r e v e r t i n g t o e x i s t i n g p a t t e r n s , i f p o s s i b l e , o r by adapting or combining know. solutions.
Basic Flow Graph TechniquesI c ~ P(T,E,C) J r
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.