Development of a computer-aided design software for the quantitative evaluation of aesthetic damage

Concerns associated with the assessment of aesthetic damage or injury raise critical difficulties, such as the scarcity of methodology and standardization that may result in fundamental precepts to establish impartial forms of compensation and aiming the total reparation of bodily injury. The complexity of the aesthetic damage evaluation is associated with the confluence of legal and technical perspectives and expert subjectivity while conducting examination and writing a report. Experts face additional difficulties associated with the objectivity while assessing aesthetic damage, independently on its location or expert skills, due to complex details observed in these lesions. Another situation in the clinical area, doctors (mainly plastic surgeons) and dentists could show the improvement or not, of the aesthetic condition to the patients. In health related areas, the use of information technology has contributed to increase the number of appropriate diagnoses, besides promoting quality, efficiency and satisfaction to health care providers. In order to make this assessment more objective, a technological tool was developed to aid experts in the evaluation of aesthetic damage and report elaboration. The objective was to develop computer-aided design software for aesthetic damage quantification/evaluation that is accessible via internet to be applied as a complementary report on body aesthetic damage. The software uses as a parameter the AIPE method, translated transculturally from Spanish to Portuguese and English. The present study allowed the construction of open access auxiliary software for the evaluation of corporal aesthetic damage. Its use is facilitated by intuitive and interactive filling, and the text may be customized by the user. It transforms the report into PDF and saves all evaluations already done in its own file. Information is encrypted for added security and confidentiality

RICORS2040 : The need for collaborative research in chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a silent and poorly known killer. The current concept of CKD is relatively young and uptake by the public, physicians and health authorities is not widespread. Physicians still confuse CKD with chronic kidney insufficiency or failure. For the wider public and health authorities, CKD evokes kidney replacement therapy (KRT). In Spain, the prevalence of KRT is 0.13%. Thus health authorities may consider CKD a non-issue: very few persons eventually need KRT and, for those in whom kidneys fail, the problem is 'solved' by dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, KRT is the tip of the iceberg in the burden of CKD. The main burden of CKD is accelerated ageing and premature death. The cut-off points for kidney function and kidney damage indexes that define CKD also mark an increased risk for all-cause premature death. CKD is the most prevalent risk factor for lethal coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the factor that most increases the risk of death in COVID-19, after old age. Men and women undergoing KRT still have an annual mortality that is 10- to 100-fold higher than similar-age peers, and life expectancy is shortened by ~40 years for young persons on dialysis and by 15 years for young persons with a functioning kidney graft. CKD is expected to become the fifth greatest global cause of death by 2040 and the second greatest cause of death in Spain before the end of the century, a time when one in four Spaniards will have CKD. However, by 2022, CKD will become the only top-15 global predicted cause of death that is not supported by a dedicated well-funded Centres for Biomedical Research (CIBER) network structure in Spain. Realizing the underestimation of the CKD burden of disease by health authorities, the Decade of the Kidney initiative for 2020-2030 was launched by the American Association of Kidney Patients and the European Kidney Health Alliance. Leading Spanish kidney researchers grouped in the kidney collaborative research network Red de Investigación Renal have now applied for the Redes de Investigación Cooperativa Orientadas a Resultados en Salud (RICORS) call for collaborative research in Spain with the support of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, Federación Nacional de Asociaciones para la Lucha Contra las Enfermedades del Riñón and ONT: RICORS2040 aims to prevent the dire predictions for the global 2040 burden of CKD from becoming true