There is an increasing number of reviews investigating the value of ultrasound (US) in the assessment of aging-related muscle loss. The present umbrella review aimed to systematically investigate the evidence of US imaging in the diagnosis and evaluation of sarcopenia. PubMed, Medline, Embase and Web of Science were searched from their inceptions to 31 October 2021. Systematic reviews and reviews using a systematic strategy for literature search were enrolled. The extracted data were narrated at the level of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. This umbrella review included four articles pertaining to 125 original studies and yielded several important findings. First, US is a reliable and valid imaging tool for the assessment of skeletal muscle mass. Second, among all the US parameters in B-mode, muscle thickness is the most commonly used one, which has good correlation with other standard measurements. Third, although sonoelastography and contrast-enhanced US are promising imaging modalities, their clinical utility is still limited at the current stage. Finally, a future systematic review is warranted to analyze how different ultrasonographic diagnostic criteria influence the prevalence of sarcopenia as well as its adverse health outcomes.

Postural stability is an important indicator of balance and is commonly evaluated in neurorehabilitation. We proposed a system based on a virtual reality (HTC Vive) system with a tracker at the lumbar area. The position data of the tracker were obtained through detection of the sensors on the tracker by the VR system. The reliability and validity of these sway parameters to measure postural stability were evaluated. Twenty healthy adults had their postural sway measured with this system and a force platform system under four stance conditions, with wide- or narrow-stance and eyes open or closed. The path data from both systems were computed to obtain the following parameters: the mean distance and the mean velocity in the medial-lateral and anterior-posterior directions and the 95% confidence ellipse area. The reliability of the Vive-based sway measures was tested with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). The convergent validity was tested against the center of pressure (COP) parameters from the force platform system. Finally, the discriminative validity was tested for the above four conditions. The results indicated that the Vive-based sway parameters had moderate to high reliability (ICCs: 0.56∼0.90) across four conditions and correlated moderately to very highly with the COP parameters (r=0.420∼0.959). Bland-Altman plotting showed generally good agreement, with negative offset for the Vive-based sway parameters. The sway parameters obtained by the Vive-based system also discriminated well among the tasks. In conclusion, the results support this system as a simple and easy-to-use tool to evaluate postural stability with acceptable reliability and validity.

A photorealistic scene in a head mount display (HMD) is considered high fidelity and associated with postural stability similar to that in the real world, but the effects of visual background under different standing conditions have not been examined. Thirty-four healthy adults performed four standing (standardized, narrow, tandem and one-leg) tasks in three scenes with an HMD, while viewing one of three scenes: a real room (real scene, RS), a photorealistic scene (VrS) and a blank scene (BS). The effects of the visual scenes and standing tasks on sway parameters were analyzed. Romberg quotients (RQs) of the sway parameters were compared between RS and VrS with reference to BS to compare visual contribution to posture stability. Sway parameters were similar during all three scenes during the standardized and narrow standing tasks, but higher in VrS and BS conditions than in the RS condition during the tandem and one-leg standing tasks. The effects of visual scenes on postural stability showed a significant interaction with the standing tasks. The BS/VsR and BS/RS ratios were close to 1.0 for the standardized and narrow standing tasks, and the magnitude of increase was lower for BS/VsR than BS/RS during the tandem and one-leg standing tasks, indicating different levels of visual dependence. The effects of virtual scenes on postural stability were task-dependent. Adjusting the amount of visual stimuli and choosing tasks with higher postural demands may result in synergic effects, but the influence of visual environments should be examined with consideration of visual targeting.

Background: Pain, a critical symptom prevalent in various diseases and syndromes, has garnered increased attention in recent scientific literature. Bibliometric analyses can offer valuable multi-disciplinary insights into pain. This bibliometric analysis focused on journals with “pain” in their titles. Methods: Using the Master Journal List in the Web of Science (WoS) database (up to December 31, 2024), we searched all the journals indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) or Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) with “pain” in their titles. For further analyses, we extracted data about the journals including publisher, country, language, frequency, SCIE/SSCI categories, journal impact factor, and citation. Results: We identified 19 journals with “pain” in their titles. All the included journals were indexed in SCIE, with Pain Management Nursing also indexed in SSCI. More than half of the journals were published in the United States of America or the United Kingdom, and all were in English. Regarding the SCIE categories, 13 journals were listed in “clinical neurology,” 8 in “anesthesiology,” and 5 in “neurosciences.” From 2018 to 2022, either Pain or Journal of Headache and Pain maintained the highest impact factor. Furthermore, Pain held the record for the most citable articles and reviews and the most total citations in 2022. Conclusion: This study is the first bibliometric analysis of journals, rather than articles, in the field of pain. Pain is the most recognized journal in the field, with the highest number of citations and the highest average impact factor. In the future, bibliometric studies should explore other relevant journals without the word “pain” in their titles, in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the scientific literature on pain studies.