Rhetorical Analysis Between Two Lab Reports

For two lab reports, I chose to do a rhetorical analysis on are based on the topic of bacterial meningitis in children both within China and The Netherlands. The two studies I chose to show how the two countries are combating these bacteria in two different approaches and provide how each way will aid in curing the patient in total throughout the process. In the first lab report based in the Netherlands, they control the dosage of antibiotics given to children aged from 1-60 months and based upon the severity of the respiratory infections. The second lab report is based in China, they provide a dosage of a drug named dexamethasone and they show the way this drug should be given to children as it will help overcome bacterial meningitis in the long run.

The Title of the first lab report is “Evaluation of a clinical decision rule to guide

antibiotic prescription in children with suspected lower respiratory tract infection in The Netherlands: A stepped-wedge cluster randomized trial.” And the second lab report is

“Meta-analysis of adjunctive dexamethasone to improve the clinical outcome of bacterial meningitis in children.” One title is lengthier than the other providing more details of the lab report from the beginning and the second title is straight to the point of the purpose of the experiment.

The abstract of the first one shows the adjustments that were used based on the age and how dire the need for antibiotics needed for the individuals including the percentages of the drug and the age groups. They provided some of the experimental factors that can may their experiment go in different directions such as age, sex, duration of virus in the body, weather season, and many other factors. They give a brief look into trial 1 and trial 2 and the complications they endured such as in trial 1 a person was moved to intensive care during the experiment. They provided where you can find certain information, and they spoke briefly about using </bold> holders in case a person wanted to skip past certain parts of the experiment. The second abstract is simpler compared to the other. They use the abstract to give a background on therapies used to treat bacterial meningitis and provide a minimum of the results such as how the children given dexamethasone had effects on their neuro systems, but nothing changed in the mortality rate. Although the abstract was short, it was still informative about the experiment conducted and gave a brief result summary.

The introduction in the first lab report states why respiratory tract infections are the main cause of children having to take antibiotics. They state the reason why they are conducting this experiment such as to find a solution to attacking and putting the infection to a halt to prevent children from entering the emergency department. They state the age group used for the study and where they were picked from either they were from references from pediatrics, or they were already admitted to the hospital. The lab report states where the results of the experiment could of went wary because of missing data. After including a brief background, they provide the author’s summary to further provide more information about Respiratory tract infections such as bacterial meningitis and state antibiotics are pointless to give because they do not target the virus that is attacking the children’s body and because of that reason they deem it to be unnecessary treatment. The second lab report provides a brief background of what was being used at that duration of time and introduces the idea of using dexamethasone to see if it will be more useful to use during the beginning stages of the infection entering the body and hopefully receive better outcomes of results but does state the use of this drug is extremely arguable. They provide the status of the infection has a higher mortality and morbidity rate within children and can cause neurological issues down the line for them. The authors explain what the purpose of the drug is and how the drug is used in random clinical trials, but the results of the studies are unclear and vague. Both reports give a lot of information about the infection and why they are performing this experiment. No major details were left out, and the results and methods were left to be thoroughly discussed throughout the reports.

The methods in the first lab report in the methods section thoroughly explain the number of people used and how many groups or clusters the word they used and used participants with lower rates of infections. The methods were then broken into subcategories such as interventions, missing data, outcomes, sample size, and primary and secondary analyses. In these categories, they explain the possible and actual outcomes of how the drug was distributed among the children and what effects of having randomized clusters from the hospital helped or harmed the experiment. The methods of the second lab report are much shorter because this lab report is shorter compared to the first report, but it also has subcategories such as inclusion and exclusion criteria that speak on missing data as well as the primary study focus of the children with bacterial meningitis and how they were treated. Other subcategories were literature research, quality assessment, statistical analyses, and data selection that explains the crucial contributors to the experiments such as the authors and trials that were conducted for the experiment. The two lab reports were distinctive in the methods that were used however the first lab report was more informative and more feedback as to where the failures and overcomes of the experiment take place. So, of course, the second one is straight to the point but it’s too vague and that may be a result of much data missing from the lab missing. 

The first lab report results include data tables of the sub-categories included in the methods which are excellent for explaining the whole lab report and they give numerous different variations of the experiment such as the seasons, the age groups, the genders, their level of emergency, and the participants individual lab reports such as their temperature and which infections are present for them to be brought to the hospital for. The data tables in the other categories break down the antibiotics given and where the strategies failure occurred and under the tables, they explain where adjustments of improvement would work. The results in the second lab report didn’t have any tables of how the drug was distributed or any tables at all. The results are also split into subcategories and in these sections, they explain the number of children that were a part of the experiment and some participants who experienced hearing loss after being given dexamethasone and there were reported neurological problems in other cases. So, the second lab report should’ve had some data tables to show display the experiment visually like the authors of the first lab report did, but I guess since mortality was involved or spoken on briefly, they decided to keep those results confidential. 

The discussion of the first lab report explains which candidates benefitted from the experiment and where the experiment could’ve been improved in certain regions. They established it was a good outcome with using general hospitals for their trial as they were able to monitor more and get efficient results. The second lab report discussion compares the drug and the use of antibiotics. They explain using dexamethasone didn’t decrease death rates but does cause hearing and neuro losses to the patients. They explain the use of this drug can aid with mortality rates, but the drug has major side effects with long-term effects. Both discussions explain the experiment from to bottom and explain why they experimented, to begin with, and provided a lot of particulars. 

The first lab report doesn’t have a conclusion and the second lab report’s conclusion is one sentence. The references for both reports were included and provided all names and what their jobs were in the experiment. The first lab report added a section of supporting information and abbreviations. The second lab report provided a glossary and highlights of the lab report including where the funding came from.

References

Wang, Y., Liu, X., Wang, Y., Liu, Q., Kong, C., & Xu, G. (2018). Meta-analysis of adjunctive dexamethasone to improve clinical outcome of bacterial meningitis in children. Child’s Nervous System, 34(2), 217–223. https://doi-org.hostos.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.1007/s00381-017-3667-8

van de Maat, J. S., Peeters, D., Nieboer, D., van Wermeskerken, A.-M., Smit, F. J., Noordzij, J. G., Tramper-Stranders, G., Driessen, G. J. A., Obihara, C. C., Punt, J., van der Lei, J., Polinder, S., Moll, H. A., & Oostenbrink, R. (2020). Evaluation of a clinical decision rule to guide antibiotic prescription in children with suspected lower respiratory tract infection in The Netherlands: A stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial. PLoS Medicine, 17(1), 1–19.  https://doi-org.hostos.ezproxy.cuny.edu/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003034