34 research outputs found
The maritime medicine as a free elective course for medical students at the Medical University - Varna
From the countries in Southeast Europe, only in Bulgaria, at the Medical University - Varna (MU-Varna) there is a training in the discipline "Maritime Medicine". The course is revealed by the Academic Board of the MU-Varna on 26 March 2007 at the initiative of assoc. prof. Hristo Bozov, MD, PhD, and with the support of Prof. Anelia Klisarova, MD, PhD, DSc - Rector of MU-Varna. For a short period of three years a team of doctors and other professionals succeeded in meeting the public need for the creation and development of this new medical discipline. The course includes 24 lectures and 6 practical classes. Speakers and instructors are lecturers from the Medical university -Varna, the Naval hospital - Varna to the Military Medical Academy (MMA - Varna), the Naval Academy - Varna (NA-Varna), the Naval Forces, the Naval Base - Varna and the Bulgarian Red Cross - Varna (BRC). It is held with great interest by students and ends with a 2-days rowing march to Tsonevo dam, together with the marina "Varna - S.T." and the medical university club "Sky and tourism". The new course will be conducted during the summer semester of the academic year 2010-2011 and the expecting volunteers have been are already enrolled
Nonabelian density functional theory
Given a vector space of microscopic quantum observables, density functional
theory is formulated on its dual space. A generalized Hohenberg-Kohn theorem
and the existence of the universal energy functional in the dual space are
proven. In this context ordinary density functional theory corresponds to the
space of one-body multiplication operators. When the operators close under
commutation to form a Lie algebra, the energy functional defines a Hamiltonian
dynamical system on the coadjoint orbits in the algebra's dual space. The
enhanced density functional theory provides a new method for deriving the group
theoretic Hamiltonian on the coadjoint orbits from the exact microscopic
Hamiltonian.Comment: 1 .eps figur
Efficacy and Safety of Platelet-Rich Plasma Injections for the Treatment of Female Sexual Dysfunction and Stress Urinary Incontinence: A Systematic Review
Introduction: There is no clear evidence in the literature that platelet-rich plasma (PRP)
injections improve female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and female stress urinary incontinence (SUI).
Objectives: A systematic review was performed to study the efficacy and safety of PRP injections
in women with the above pathologies, as well as to explore the optimal dosing, frequency and area
of injections, and duration of treatment. Methods: A systematic search on PubMed, Embase and
the Cochrane Library database was performed, as well as sources of grey literature from the date
of database or source creation to January 2023. After title/abstract and full-text screening, clinical
studies on humans evaluating the efficacy of PRP in gynecological disorders using standardized
tools were included. Risk of bias was undertaken with RoB-2 for randomized-controlled trials (RCT)
and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for observational studies. Results: Four prospective and
one retrospective study explored FSD, while six prospective and one RCT evaluated female SUI. A
total of 327 women with a mean age of 51 ± 12 years were included. For FSD, PRP significantly
improved the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), the Vaginal Health Index (VHI) and the Female
Sexual Distress score (FSDS). For SUI, PRP led to a significant improvement in the International
Consultation on Incontinence QuestionnaireâShort Form (ICIQ-SF) and the Urogenital Distress
Inventory (UDI-6). The identified RCT reported a significantly higher mean score of ICIQ-SF (p < 0.05)
and UDI-6 (p < 0.01) in the midurethral sling group compared to the PRP injections group. Regarding
the risk of bias, the RCT was characterized by high risk, whereas the observational studies were of
moderate risk. The protocol for PRP injections for FSD is the injection of 2 mL of PRP into the distal
anterior vaginal wall once a month for 3 months. For female SUI, 5â6 mL of PRP should be injected
into the periurethral area once a month for 3 months. Conclusions: Despite the promising initial
results of PRP injections, the level of current evidence is low due to methodological issues in the
available studies. It becomes clear that there is an emerging need for high-quality research examining
PRP injections for the treatment of FSD and female SUI
Quantitative oculomotor assessment in hereditary ataxia: discriminatory power, correlation with severity measures, and recommended parameters for specific genotypes
Characterizing bedside oculomotor deficits is a critical factor in defining the clinical presentation of hereditary ataxias. Quantitative assessments are increasingly available and have significant advantages, including comparability over time, reduced examiner dependency, and sensitivity to subtle changes. To delineate the potential of quantitative oculomotor assessments as digital-motor outcome measures for clinical trials in ataxia, we searched MEDLINE for articles reporting on quantitative eye movement recordings in genetically confirmed or suspected hereditary ataxias, asking which paradigms are most promising for capturing disease progression and treatment response. Eighty-nine manuscripts identified reported on 1541 patients, including spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA2, nâ=â421), SCA3 (nâ=â268), SCA6 (nâ=â117), other SCAs (nâ=â97), Friedreich ataxia (FRDA, nâ=â178), Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC, nâ=â57), and ataxia-telangiectasia (nâ=â85) as largest cohorts. Whereas most studies reported discriminatory power of oculomotor assessments in diagnostics, few explored their value for monitoring genotype-specific disease progression (nâ=â2; SCA2) or treatment response (nâ=â8; SCA2, FRDA, NPC, ataxia-telangiectasia, episodic-ataxia 4). Oculomotor parameters correlated with disease severity measures including clinical scores (nâ=â18 studies (SARA: nâ=â9)), chronological measures (e.g., age, disease duration, time-to-symptom onset; nâ=â17), genetic stratification (nâ=â9), and imaging measures of atrophy (nâ=â5). Recurrent correlations across many ataxias (SCA2/3/17, FRDA, NPC) suggest saccadic eye movements as potentially generic quantitative oculomotor outcome. Recommendation of other paradigms was limited by the scarcity of cross-validating correlations, except saccadic intrusions (FRDA), pursuit eye movements (SCA17), and quantitative head-impulse testing (SCA3/6). This work aids in understanding the current knowledge of quantitative oculomotor parameters in hereditary ataxias, and identifies gaps for validation as potential trial outcome measures in specific ataxia genotypes
Proceedings of the second "international Traveling Workshop on Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST'14)
The implicit objective of the biennial "international - Traveling Workshop on
Interactions between Sparse models and Technology" (iTWIST) is to foster
collaboration between international scientific teams by disseminating ideas
through both specific oral/poster presentations and free discussions. For its
second edition, the iTWIST workshop took place in the medieval and picturesque
town of Namur in Belgium, from Wednesday August 27th till Friday August 29th,
2014. The workshop was conveniently located in "The Arsenal" building within
walking distance of both hotels and town center. iTWIST'14 has gathered about
70 international participants and has featured 9 invited talks, 10 oral
presentations, and 14 posters on the following themes, all related to the
theory, application and generalization of the "sparsity paradigm":
Sparsity-driven data sensing and processing; Union of low dimensional
subspaces; Beyond linear and convex inverse problem; Matrix/manifold/graph
sensing/processing; Blind inverse problems and dictionary learning; Sparsity
and computational neuroscience; Information theory, geometry and randomness;
Complexity/accuracy tradeoffs in numerical methods; Sparsity? What's next?;
Sparse machine learning and inference.Comment: 69 pages, 24 extended abstracts, iTWIST'14 website:
http://sites.google.com/site/itwist1
Survey of BCG vaccination policy in Europe: 1994-96.
A retrospective survey, based on a standardized questionnaire sent to qualified public health experts in tuberculosis in 50 European countries, was carried out to evaluate the following: concordance between national vaccination programmes and WHO recommendations on BCG vaccination for prevention of tuberculosis; relation between BCG vaccination and revaccination policy and the tuberculosis epidemiological situation; and differences in BCG vaccination policy between Western and Central-Eastern European countries. The results obtained (from 41 (82%) of the 50 countries) revealed that BCG vaccination programmes met WHO recommendations in 44% of European countries. Mass primary vaccination and general revaccination were extremely common in countries where the prevalence of tuberculosis was high. A highly significant difference was found between Western and Central-Eastern European countries in terms of their adhesion to WHO recommendations. Within Central-Eastern Europe no difference was found between countries that had or had not been part of the former Soviet Union. The implementation of WHO recommendations into national tuberculosis programmes must be intensified, based on the available body of evidence. Preventive methods whose cost-effectiveness has not been properly established should be discouraged