Digital supports are any type of technologies that have been intentionally developed to improve daily living in some way. A wide array of digital supports (such as apps) have been developed for the autism community specifically, but there is little or no evidence of whether they work or not. This study sought to identify what types of evidence the autistic community valued and wanted to see provided to enable an informed choice to be made regarding digital supports. A consensus was developed between autistic people and their families, practitioners (such as therapists and teachers) as well as researchers, to identify the core aspects of evidence that everyone agreed were useful. In all, 27 people reached agreement on three categories for which evidence is required reliability, engagement and the effectiveness of the technology. Consensus was also reached on four key sources of evidence for these three categories hands-on experience, academic sources, expert views and online reviews. The resulting framework allows for any technology to be evaluated for the level of evidence identifying how effective it is. The framework can be used by autistic people, their families, practitioners and researchers to ensure that decisions concerning the provision of support for autistic people is informed by evidence, that is, 'evidence-based practice'.BACKGROUND The occurrence of periodontitis is rather infrequent in children and adolescence and increases with age. We conducted this study because there have been few epidemiological studies on prevalence of periodontitis in children in Saudi Arabia. OBJECTIVE Determine the prevalence of periodontitis in high school children in Saudi Arabia. DESIGN Cross-sectional, using cluster and multistage sampling. SETTING High school children in Saudi Arabia. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS Periodontal examinations were conducted on a randomized sample of high school children between the ages 15 to 19 in Saudi Arabia. The study spanned from September 2012 to January 2016. Clinical examinations included measurements of the probing depth (PD) percentage of PD ≥4 mm per patient. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The prevalence of periodontitis (PD ≥4 mm and CAL ≥1 mm), the mean percentage PD ≥4 mm, the mean percentage CAL ≥1 mm, plaque index (PI) and gingival index (GI). SAMPLE SIZE 2435 high school students. RESULTS Of 2435 high school children in the sample, 209 students (8.6%) had periodontitis. The mean (standard deviation) for the PD was 0.59 (0.17) mm. https://www.selleckchem.com/ Differences in percentage PD ≥4 mm and CAL ≥1 mm were greater in students with periodontitis ( P less then .001). The prevalence of periodontitis was higher among non-Saudis, students who did not brush their teeth and did not visit their dentist regularly. In the bivariate analysis, periodontitis was positively associated with GI, PI, number of teeth extracted, mean percentage PD ≥4 mm, and mean PD. However, in the multivariate analysis, tooth brushing was the main factor protective against periodontitis (odds ratio 0.62, 95% CI 0.42-0.92, P=.017). CONCLUSION Periodontitis prevalence was high compared with Western countries in a nationally representative sample of high school students in Saudi Arabia. LIMITATIONS Partial mouth study design, which may underestimate the disease prevalence. CONFLICT OF INTEREST None.BACKGROUND/AIMS In a stepped wedge study design, study clusters usually start with the baseline treatment and then cross over to the intervention at randomly determined times. Such designs are useful when the intervention must be delivered at the cluster level and are becoming increasingly common in practice. In these trials, if the outcome is death or serious morbidity, one may have an ethical imperative to monitor the trial and stop before maximum enrollment if the new therapy is proven to be beneficial. In addition, because formal monitoring allows for the stoppage of trials when a significant benefit for new therapy has been ruled out, their use can make a research program more efficient. However, use of the stepped wedge cluster randomized study design complicates the implementation of standard group sequential monitoring methods. Both the correlation of observations introduced by the clustered randomization and the timing of crossover from one treatment to the other impact the rate of information growth, an important component of an interim analysis. METHODS We simulated cross-sectional stepped wedge study data in order to evaluate the impact of sequential monitoring on the Type I error and power when the true intracluster correlation is unknown. We studied the impact of varying intracluster correlations, treatment effects, methods of estimating the information growth, and boundary shapes. RESULTS While misspecified information growth can impact both the Type I error and power of a study in some settings, we observed little inflation of the Type I error and only moderate reductions in power across a range of misspecified information growth patterns in our simulations. CONCLUSION Taking the study design into account and using either an estimate of the intracluster correlation from the ongoing study or other data in the same clusters should allow for easy implementation of group sequential methods in future stepped wedge designs.Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor (IMT) is a neoplasm of intermediate biological potential. Few cases of spermatic cord IMT have been reported in the literature. Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor is a consequence of the proliferation of fibroblasts and inflammatory cells. Despite its benign nature, the tumor often clinically mimics intrascrotal malignancy and usually remains undiagnosed preoperatively. The diagnosis of spermatic IMT is difficult preoperatively due to the non-specific findings. Therefore, if testicular tumors cannot be precisely excluded, radical orchiectomy should be performed for the diagnosis and treatment. However, it mainly occurs in children and young adults; spermatic IMT may also be seen among elderly men. Here, we report two cases of inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor involving the spermatic cord. SIMILAR CASES PUBLISHED There are seven cases entitled "inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor of spermatic cord" in the literature. In our study we present two cases that had a spermatic cord IMT.