Therapeutic suggestion helps to cut back on drug intake for mechanically ventilated patients in intensive care unit

Research was conducted on ventilated patients treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) under identical circumstances; patients were divided into two groups (subsequently proved statistically identical as to age and Simplified Acute Physiology Score II [SAPS II]). One group was treated with positive suggestions for 15-20 min a day based on a predetermined scheme, but tailored to the individual patient, while the control group received no auxiliary psychological treatment. Our goal was to test the effects of positive communication in this special clinical situation. In this section of the research, the subsequent data collection was aimed to reveal whether any change in drug need could be demonstrated upon the influence of suggestions as compared to the control group. Owing to the strict recruitment criteria, a relatively small sample (suggestion group n = 15, control group n = 10) was available during the approximately nine-month period of research. As an outcome of suggestions, there was a significant drop in benzodiazepine (p < 0.005), opioid (p < 0.001), and the α2-agonist (p < 0.05) intake. All this justifies the presence of therapeutic suggestions among the therapies used in ICUs. However, repeating the trial on a larger sample of patients would be recommended. © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

The worldwide impact of telemedicine during COVID-19: current evidence and recommendations for the future.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine has emerged worldwide as an indispensable resource to improve the surveillance of patients, curb the spread of disease, facilitate timely identification and management of ill people, but, most importantly, guarantee the continuity of care of frail patients with multiple chronic diseases. Although during COVID-19 telemedicine has thrived, and its adoption has moved forward in many countries, important gaps still remain. Major issues to be addressed to enable large scale implementation of telemedicine include: (1) establishing adequate policies to legislate telemedicine, license healthcare operators, protect patients' privacy, and implement reimbursement plans; (2) creating and disseminating practical guidelines for the routine clinical use of telemedicine in different contexts; (3) increasing in the level of integration of telemedicine with traditional healthcare services; (4) improving healthcare professionals' and patients' awareness of and willingness to use telemedicine; and (5) overcoming inequalities among countries and population subgroups due to technological, infrastructural, and economic barriers. If all these requirements are met in the near future, remote management of patients will become an indispensable resource for the healthcare systems worldwide and will ultimately improve the management of patients and the quality of care

Information systems modelling based on graph-theoretic background

The recent tendency in analysis and design of information systems is that the emphasis is placed on the documents that are ubiquitous around information systems and organizations. The proliferation of computer literacy led to the general use of electronic documents. To understand the anticipated behaviour of information systems and the actual operation of an organization, the analysis of documents plays increasingly an important role. The behaviour of information systems can be interpreted in a framework of Enterprise Architecture and its models that are contained in it. Certain parts and entirety of various types of documents are connected to business processes, tasks, roles, and actors within an organization. The tracking of life cycle of documents and representing the complex relationships are essential at both analysis and operation time. We propose a theoretical framework that makes use of previous results of modelling and well-founded mathematical techniques. The basic idea is that the very flexible mathematical structure, the hypergraph, provides a sound groundwork on which a formal structure can be built up through mapping the essential concept, construction, components, and constituents of information systems. Thus, the representations of models for information systems that mapped onto a hypergraph can be analysed by either using more traditional tools as logic and inference rules or by a set of tools belonging to data science later. The paper describes the mapping of the important concepts onto hypergraphs as documents, processes in cases, their models and some rules for verification and validation; the hypergraph description can be interpreted as a concept hypergraph to be subjected for logical reasoning

The effect of different carbohydrates on the multiplication of Hosta cultivars

The effect of seven concentrations of two carbohydrate sources were compared to determine the best source and the most suitable source and concentration for micropropagation of some Hosta cultivars: H. 'Gold Haze', H. 'Gold Drop' and H. 'Dew Drop'. 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 g/1 sucrose or glucose were added to a MS basic medium supplemented with 3 mg/1 kinetin and 0.1 mg/1 IAA. For 'Gold Haze' 40 g/1 sucrose proved to be the best source and concentration, the proliferation ratio was 15 shoots per explant. Thirty g/1 sucrose concentration was the optimum for 'Gold Drop', the proliferation rate was 14.6 shoots per explant. In 'Dew Drop,' the best results were obtained with 30 g/1 sucrose but 40 g/l sucrose gave good results too. Both cultivars rooted well on these media. On glucose containing media, very low propagation rates were found in all concentrations and all examined cultivars

The effect of different carbohydrates on the multiplication of Hosta cultivars

The effect of seven concentrations of two carbohydrate sources were compared to determine the best source and the most suitable source and concentration for micropropagation of some Hosta cultivars: H. 'Gold Haze', H. 'Gold Drop' and H. 'Dew Drop'. 0, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 g/1 sucrose or glucose were added to a MS basic medium supplemented with 3 mg/1 kinetin and 0.1 mg/1 IAA. For 'Gold Haze' 40 g/1 sucrose proved to be the best source and concentration, the proliferation ratio was 15 shoots per explant. Thirty g/1 sucrose concentration was the optimum for 'Gold Drop', the proliferation rate was 14.6 shoots per explant. In 'Dew Drop,' the best results were obtained with 30 g/1 sucrose but 40 g/l sucrose gave good results too. Both cultivars rooted well on these media. On glucose containing media, very low propagation rates were found in all concentrations and all examined cultivars

May Measurement Month 2019: an analysis of blood pressure screening results from Hungary

Cardiovascular diseases are not only the leading causes of mortality in Hungary but also the mortality rate is twice as high as the European Union average, so screening programmes identifying subjects with elevated blood pressure (BP) are of utmost importance. May Measurement Month (MMM) is an annual global initiative that began in 2017 aimed at raising awareness of high BP. Hungary joined the 3rd campaign of MMM in 2019 and an overview of the results are presented in this paper. An opportunistic cross-sectional survey of participants aged ≥18 years was carried out in May 2019. Hypertension was defined as systolic BP ≥140 mmHg and diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg or treatment for hypertension, statistical analysis followed the standard MMM protocol. In Hungary, 55 sites were set up in primary and secondary care facilities, in pharmacies, and in malls across all regions, in both cities and villages. Out of 2766 individuals screened, 1286 participants (46.5%) had hypertension. Out of 1869 participants not on antihypertensive medication, 389 (20.8%) had elevated BP. In the case of treated individuals (n = 897), 420 (46.8%) had uncontrolled hypertension. Almost every 2nd subject of the screened cohort had hypertension (treated and controlled, treated and uncontrolled, or untreated). In the untreated cohort, every 5th subject had elevated BP, whilst among patients on antihypertensive medication, every second had uncontrolled BP. By identifying almost one-third of the whole screened cohort with the possibility of newly diagnosed or uncontrolled hypertension, our results confirm the importance of BP screening campaigns

Tight Approximation Algorithm for Connectivity Augmentation Problems

The S-connectivity λ S G(u, v) of (u, v) in a graph G is the maximum number of uv-paths that no two of them have an edge or a node in S − {u, v} in common. The corresponding Connectivity Augmentation (CA) problem is: given a graph G0 = (V, E0), S ⊆ V, and requirements r(u, v) on V ×V, find a minimum size set F of new edges (any edge is allowed) so that λ S G0+F (u, v) ≥ r(u, v) for all u, v ∈ V. Extensively studied particular choices of S are the edge-CA (when S = ∅) and the node-CA (when S = V). A. Frank gave a polynomial algorithm for undirected edge-CA and observed that the directed case even with rooted {0, 1}-requirements is at least as hard as the Set-Cover problem (in rooted requirements there is s ∈ V − S so that if r(u, v)&gt; 0 then: u = s for directed graphs, and u = s or v = s for undirected graphs). Both directed and undirected node-CA have approximation threshold Ω(2 log1−ε n). The only polylogarithmic approximation ratio known for CA was for rooted requirements – O(log n · log rmax) = O(log 2 n), where rmax = maxu,v∈V r(u, v). No nontrivial approximation algorithms were known for directed CA even for r(u, v) ∈ {0, 1}, nor for undirected CA with S arbitrary. We give an approximation algorithm for the general case that matches the known approximation thresholds. For both directed and undirected CA with arbitrary requirements our approximation ratio is: O(log n) for S � = V arbitrary, and O(rmax · log n) for S = V