The validation of the Hungarian version of the ID-migraine questionnaire

Despite its high prevalence, migraine remains underdiagnosed and undertreated. ID-Migraine is a short, self-administrated questionnaire, originally developed in English by Lipton et al. and later validated in several languages. Our goal was to validate the Hungarian version of the ID-Migraine Questionnaire.Patients visiting two headache specialty services were enrolled. Diagnoses were made by headache specialists according to the ICHD-3beta diagnostic criteria. There were 309 clinically diagnosed migraineurs among the 380 patients. Among the 309 migraineurs, 190 patients had only migraine, and 119 patients had other headache beside migraine, namely: 111 patients had tension type headache, 3 patients had cluster headache, 4 patients had medication overuse headache and one patient had headache associated with sexual activity also. Among the 380 patients, 257 had only a single type headache whereas 123 patients had multiple types of headache. Test-retest reliability of the ID-Migraine Questionnaire was studied in 40 patients.The validity features of the Hungarian version of the ID-Migraine questionnaire were the following: sensitivity 0.95 (95% CI, 0.92-0.97), specificity 0.42 (95% CI, 0.31-0.55), positive predictive value 0.88 (95% CI, 0.84-0.91), negative predictive value 0.65 (95% CI, 0.5-0.78), missclassification error 0.15 (95% CI, 0.12-0.19). The kappa coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.77.The Hungarian version of the ID-Migraine Questionnaire had adequate sensitivity, positive predictive value and misclassification error, but a low specificity and somewhat low negative predictive value

Efficacia di un film attivo per la rimozione di aldeidi da fiocchi d’avena.

Valutazione dell'efficacia di un materiale (active packaging) attivo nella rimozione di esanale, prodotto principale della degradazione ossidativa di cereali a base di avena

Primary headache in Emergency Department: prevalence, clinical features and therapeutical approach.

Headache is one of the most common reported complaints in the general adult population and it accounts for between 1% and 3% of admissions to an Emergency Department (ED). The overwhelming majority of patients who present to an ED with acute primary headache (PH) have migraine and very few of them receive a specific diagnosis and then an appropriate treatment. This is due, in part, to a low likelihood of emergency physicians diagnosing the type of PH, in turn due to lack of knowledge of the IHS criteria, and also the clinical condition of the patients (pain, border type of headache, etc.) In agreement with the literature, another interesting aspect of data emerging from our experience is that few of the ED PH patients are referred to headache clinics for diagnosis and treatment, especially if they present with high levels of disability. This attitude promotes the high–cost phenomenon of repeater patients that have already been admitted to the ED for the same reason in the past. This is statistically important because it involves about 10% of the population with PH

Pin-limited frequency downscaler AHB bridge for ASIC to FPGA communication

Output connections to out-of-chip devices in modern mixed-signal ICs represent a significant design problem due to the limited number of available pins (in not Ball Grid Array package) and to the common need of a frequency reduction, especially into systems that require an external System on Programmable Chip (SoPC). In this paper, an ASIC solution based on bisynchronous FIFO structures for frequency conversion is presented. The proposed bridge involves a custom protocol for the conversion of the transmitted data in low frequency and low width bus. Moreover, it allows managing data transmission with two different priority levels. The module is AHB lite compliant with a number of pins equal to the width of the FIFOs (configurable during implementation phase) and two handshaking signals. Output clock frequency and internal FIFOs dimension are user-defined too

NEUROPROTECTION AND STROKE

The current goal of acute stroke therapy is to restore cerebral perfusion and to protect cerebral tissue before the development of an irreversible damage. This latter is due to the duration and the severity of cerebral ischemia [1]. Recanalization operated by thrombolysis represents the most intuitive and effective treatment of acute cerebral ischemia. Unfortunately, because of the strictly clinical criteria that make thrombolysis feasible, this approach is limited only to few patients, and it is estimated that only about 5% of all acute cerebrovascular patients are suitable for rtPA treatment [2]. The need for new therapeutic strategies appropriate for the majority of acute stroke patients is therefore evident, in order to save as much ischemic brain tissue as possible

Great occipital nerve blockade for cluster headache in the emergency department: case report

A 44-year-old man with a past medical history of episodic cluster headache presented in our ED with complaints of multiple daily cluster headache attacks, with cervico-occipital spreading of pain from May to September 2004. The neurological examination showed no abnormalities as well as brain and spine MRI. Great Occipital Nerve (GON) blockade, with Lidocaine 2% (5 ml) and betamethasone (2 mg), were performed in the right occipital region (ipsilaterally to cluster headache), during attack. GON blockade was effective immediately for the attack and the cluster period resolved after the injection. We suppose that the action of GON blockade may involve the trigemino-cervical complex and we moreover strongly suggest to use GON blockade in emergency departments for cluster headache with cervico-occipital spreading as attack abortive therapy, especially in oxygen and sumatriptan resistant cluster headache attacks, in patients who complaints sumatriptan side-effects or have contraindications to use triptans