Catheter ablations are traditionally performed under fluoroscopic guidance. Besides other peri-interventional risks, radiation exposure should be considered for its stochastic and deterministic effects on health. These effects are cumulative and lifelong and raise great concerns especially in the younger population. A document of the American College of Cardiology recommends that ...

German physicians are obligated (Para 16e Chemicals Law) to submit essential data on poisonings to the Centre for Documentation and Assessment of Poisonings at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Bundesinstituts für Risikobewertung, BfR). In addition, German poison centres are subjected to compulsory reporting of their findings of general importance ...

Purpose:  (1) To determine whether health resource utilization (HRU) and unmet health care needs differ for individuals with epilepsy compared to the general population or to those with another chronic condition (asthma, diabetes, migraine); and (2) to assess the association among epilepsy status, sociodemographic variables and HRU. Methods:  Data on ...

OBJECTIVE: The aims this study were to assess the impact of epilepsy on the health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) of patients and on patterns of disability and to describe the relationship between disability and HRQoL in adult patients with controlled epilepsy. DESIGN: Disability was measured with the World Health Organization Disability Assessment ...

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to use the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) to describe the functioning of people with epilepsy. The main questions we asked were as follows: what are the difficulties that people with epilepsy face on the body level and in daily activities? What are ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The WHO recognises pesticide poisoning to be the single most important means of suicide globally. Pesticide self-poisoning is a major public health and clinical problem in rural Asia, where it has led to case fatality ratios 20-30 times higher than self-poisoning in the developed world. One approach to ...

Patients with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) are heavy users of emergency and nonemergency health care. We performed a 1-year prospective audit of use of a group of PNES-related health care items in patients with newly diagnosed (mean duration: 7.3months) PNES from PNES onset to diagnosis and from diagnosis to 6months ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Incontinence in people with dementia is one of the factors associated with the decision to move to a care home. Managing incontinence adds to carer burden and has been reported by family carers as more difficult to manage than behavioural symptoms. Active management strategies have been reported to ...

PURPOSE: The objective was to estimate health care costs and productivity losses due to epilepsy in Sweden and to compare these estimates to previously published estimates. METHODS: Register data on health care utilisation, pharmaceutical sales, permanent disability and mortality were used to calculate health care costs and costs that accrue ...

OBJECTIVES:We examined the relationship between self-rated health and incident dementia, and investigated the impact of cognitive complaints, depressive symptoms, and functional status on this relationship. METHODS:Participants of the 3C Study, a prospective cohort study composed of 8,169 community-dwelling persons aged ≥65 years, were asked to rate their health at the ...

In this study by Montlahuc et al.,(1) the authors explore associations between self-rated health and subsequent dementia. Self-perceptions of health status might include insights into thinking and memory function, but more likely, they include a sense of physical health: mobility, freedom from pain, freedom from shortness of breath with exertion, ...

Leprosy is a potentially disabling infectious disease that evolves into emotional issues due to the prejudice that persists about the illness. The endemic has declined substantially with multidrug therapy (MDT) in the 80's; however, new demands associated with the reduction of stigma and the improvement of the affected people's quality ...

Caring for a demented family member has been associated with burden. Studies concerning health self-perception of family caregivers are still scarce. To investigate caregivers perceived health and to look into relationships with patients and caregivers' sociodemographic and clinical data. Dyads of dementia outpatients and family caregivers (n=137) were assessed with ...

Epilepsy and consciousness are intimately related. Epileptic seizures can cause impairment of consciousness, and the study of how this occurs has informed us about the neural mechanisms that underlie normal consciousness. Moreover, loss of consciousness during seizures increases injury risk and worsens health-related quality of life. The present review describes ...

Health promotion practices hold promises for elderly individuals' quality of life. This article shows that such practices can be promoted in specialized day care units for individuals with dementia. Group interviews with 8 groups of staff (comprising 24 staff members) in 3 day care units. Rather than referring directly to ...

Purpose:  Given the high burden of epilepsy on both health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and costs, identification of factors that are predictive of either reduced HRQoL or increased expenditure is central to the better future targeting and optimization of existing and emerging interventions and management strategies for epilepsy. Methods:  Searches ...

Wuest's (1998, 2001) caregiving theory was tested with 282 women self-identified as caregivers of family members with dementia to examine how quality of past relationship within caregiving dyads and sense of obligation to care affected their health outcomes and health promotion over 9 months, using latent growth curve analysis. The ...

This study was performed to analyze sociocultural beliefs about epilepsy among Guaraní communities in Bolivia. People with epilepsy, their family members, the general population, and local health care personnel were interviewed about the meaning of and beliefs, feelings, and practices concerning epilepsy. Epilepsy is called mano-mano, a term that means ...

IAGG, WHO, and SFGG organized a international workshop on Health promotion programs on prevention of late on-set dementia. Thirty world specialists coming from Europe, North America, Asia, South America, Africa and Australia, shared their experience on methods and results of large epidemiological interventions to reduce incidents of dementia or delay ...

Objective: The primary aim of this study is to examine the prevalence of and antecedents to missing incidents among community-dwelling persons with dementia. Methods: This prospective study used mailed surveys and telephone interviews. Results: The prevalence of having any incident was 0.46/year; the overall prevalence for missing incidents in this ...

Aim:  This study assessed whether adolescents' socioeconomic background, health and health behaviours are associated with later risk of poisoning hospitalisation. Methods:  A prospective cohort of 54,169 Finns aged 14 to 18 years was followed for an average of 10.6 years. The end-point of the study was poisoning hospitalisation, death or ...

Functional integration can be viewed successful if general health system (GHS) delivers services to the satisfaction of leprosy patients. The study elicits responses from 307 leprosy cured persons of 3 blocks and one town covering a population of about 3,50,000 in district Bargarh, Orissa. 229 (74.6%) MB and 78 (25.4%) ...

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) has been described as "one of the most disabling and burdensome health conditions worldwide" and is responsible for approximately 70% of dementia in the elderly. Based on the current prevalence of AD, an aging world population and the associated projected health care requirements, it is estimated that ...

Low adherence to multidrug therapy against leprosy (MDT) is still an important obstacle of disease control, and may lead to remaining sources of infection, incomplete cure, irreversible complications, and multidrug resistance. We performed a population-based study in 78 municipalities in Tocantins State, central Brazil, and applied structured questionnaires on leprosy-affected ...

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), global warming has the potential to dramatically disrupt some of life's essential requirements for health, water, air and food. Understanding how Australians perceive the risk of global warming is essential for climate change policy and planning. The aim of this study was to ...

Over the last decade, health care has experienced continuous, capricious, and ever-accelerating change. In response, the American Academy of Pediatrics convened the Vision of Pediatrics (VOP) 2020 Task Force in 2008. This task force was charged with identifying forces that affect child and adolescent health and the implications for the ...

Global climate change will have multiple effects on human health. Vulnerable populations-children, the elderly, and the poor-will be disproportionately affected. We reviewed projected impacts of climate change on children's health, the pathways involved in these effects, and prevention strategies. We assessed primary studies, review articles, and organizational reports. Climate change ...

Mass media campaigns are widely used to expose high proportions of large populations to messages through routine uses of existing media, such as television, radio, and newspapers. Exposure to such messages is, therefore, generally passive. Such campaigns are frequently competing with factors, such as pervasive product marketing, powerful social norms, ...

Climate change is expected to have large impacts on health at low latitudes where droughts and malnutrition, diarrhea, and malaria are projected to increase. The main objective of this study was to indicate a method to assess a range of plausible health impacts of climate change while handling uncertainties in ...

Health organizations have a new cause after helping push through the reform law: climate change. They see it as a public health issue since rising temperatures can create health hazards. "Any action that interferes with or dilutes EPA's efforts will have a very negative effect on our public health," says ...

Climate change will impact human health in various ways as the ecology of our planet changes. Environmental changes such as increased heat waves, sea-level rise, and increased drought around the globe will aggravate already-existing health problems, increase the onset of new health problems, and, in some cases, cause premature death. ...

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are increasingly used to evaluate the efficacy of new treatments and the progression of chronic diseases. The Cystic Fibrosis Questionnaire-Revised (CFQ-R) is a disease-specific, PRO measure of health-related quality of life (HRQOL). We evaluated associations between changes in health status over time and HRQOL in a national ...

Researchers can rely either on retrospectively reported or on prospectively measured health changes to identify and quantify recent changes in respondents' health status. The two methods typically do not provide the same answers. We compare the validity of prospective versus retrospective measures of health changes by investigating their predictive power ...

A major health care corporation shares the lessons behind its transformational change.

New Zealand has evolved a just, sensible and balanced system for addressing adverse medical events. This article considers potential changes to enhance justice for health consumers after an adverse event. Patient motivations for claiming are described. Changes to the complaints regime are considered with the aim of opening up access ...

Historical accounts of famines in Ethiopia go as far back as the 9th century, however, evidence on its impact on health only started to emerge from the 15th century onwards. Unfortunately, famine has been endemic in Ethiopia in the last few decades. The 1973 famine is reported to have claimed ...

This study addresses changes in health which were consequential to the Neolithic transition in the southern Levant, judged on the basis of the study of specific and nonspecific stress indicators, trauma, and degenerative joint disease in 200 Natufian (hunter-gatherer) skeletons (10,500-8300 BC) and 205 Neolithic (agricultural) skeletons (8300-5500 BC) from ...

Preparing health practitioners to respond to the rising burden of disease from climate change is emerging as a priority in health workforce policy and planning. However, this issue is hardly represented in the medical education research. The rapidly evolving wide range of direct and indirect consequences of climate change will ...

To identify agreement levels between conventional longitudinal evaluation of change (post-pre) and patient-perceived change (post-then test) in health-related quality of life. A prospective cohort investigation with two assessment points (baseline and six-month follow-up) was implemented. Community rehabilitation setting. Frail older adults accessing community-based rehabilitation services. Nil as part of this ...

The Department of Defense is publishing this final rule to implement the requirements enacted by Congress in Section 732 of the Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 which changes the limit of the Government's share of providing certain benefits under the Extended Care Health Option (ECHO) ...

The social organisation of work, management styles and social relationships in the workplace all matter for health. It is now well recognised that people who have control over their work have better health and that stress in the workplace increases the level of disease. In the context of organisational change, ...

This paper examines the most influential naturalist theory of health, Christopher Boorse's 'biostatistical theory' (BST). I argue that the BST is an unsuitable candidate for the rôle that Boorse has cast it to play, namely, to underpin medicine with a theoretical, value-free science of health and disease. Following the literature, ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine changes in the pattern of use of standard general practice consultations, and the degree to which any changes are offset by the use of special Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items. DESIGN, PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Population-based retrospective analysis of age- and sex-standardised Medicare claims data (1994-2009) on the ...

Declines in sea-ice habitats have resulted in declining stature, productivity, and survival of polar bears in some regions. With continuing sea-ice declines, negative population effects are projected to expand throughout the polar bear's range. Precise causes of diminished polar bear life history performance are unknown, however, climate and sea-ice condition ...

This article presents results of research undertaken to identify factors that affect the vulnerability of rural Mongolian herders to climate change. Findings suggest that models of market development instituted since 1990 have failed to recognize and support key elements of the pastoralist adaptive strategy. A retreating state presence has led ...

Immigration to a new country constitutes a major life change and challenge that can directly and indirectly affect the health of individuals and families. A systematic review was conducted to identify post-migration changes and understand their impact on immigrants' marital relationships in Canada. Using Noblit and Hare's meta-ethnography steps and ...

We explored the association between changes in local health department (LHD) resource levels with changes in health outcomes via a retrospective cohort study. We measured changes in expenditures and staffing reported by LHDs on the 1997 and 2005 National Association of County and City Health Officials surveys and assessed changes ...

Anthropologically induced climate change, caused by an increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is an emerging threat to human health. Consequences of climate change may affect the prevalence of various diseases and environmental and social maladies that affect population health. In this article, we reviewed the literature on ...

Climate change has been described as the biggest global health threat of the 21(st) century. World population is projected to reach 9.1 billion by 2050, with most of this growth in developing countries. While the principal cause of climate change is high consumption in the developed countries, its impact will ...

Response shift theory suggests that improvements in health lead patients to change their internal standards and re-assess former health states as worse than initially rated when using retrospective ratings via the then-test. The predictions of response shift theory can be illustrated using prospect theory, whereby a change in current health ...