Cervical cerclage for prevention of preterm birth: review of 13 cases

O parto pré-termo é o principal responsável pela morbilidade e mortalidade perinatal em países industrializados. Entre as diferentes causas, destaca-se um conjunto de situações caracterizado pela dilatação indolor do colo uterino com prolapso das membranas no canal cervical (funnelling), que ocorre mais frequentemente durante o segundo trimestre da gestação, dando origem a abortos tardios ou partos pré-termo muito precoces e, consequentemente, situações clínicas com um prognóstico perinatal muito reservado

Challenges for prevention and promotion in the 21st century

© 2018 Matos and Ramiro; This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Prevention is now considered as a way to spread curiosity and commitment and has to do with the creation of communities where it is believed that "good things happen" and that people are part of them. Promoting people positive development, that is, promoting competence, motivation, opportunities and positive expectations is now considered the best prevention strategy, making prevention and promotion two sides of the same coin. Consequently, the approaches based on positive aspects are preferred and considered more effective in various contexts. In the field of health, this positive focus was represented in the "Model of Assets in health" which includes the mapping of resources of each community, both individually and collectively. It also aimed at the increasingly progressive participation of populations. Some aspects of the trajectory of knowledge in recent decades and their impact on interventions in Psychology, Public Health and Public Policies will be highlighted.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Risks and comorbid factors of frequent headaches during childhood and adolescence

Copyright: © 2017 Paiva T, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background: The prevalence of headache during adolescence is very high. In most studies, the prevalence of headache is higher in females. The objective of the present study was to evaluate statistically significant associations between high headache frequency and multiple variables obtained in a National Survey. Methods: The included variables were demographic and socioeconomic; other health complaints; sleep characteristics and complaints; current adolescents´ habits concerning multimedia/electronic tools and nutrition variables; risk behaviors; social support and school satisfaction with the final purpose of building a risk association model for adolescents´ frequent headaches by means of a logistic regression. This survey is a component of the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study. The Portuguese HBSC survey included 3476 pupils (53.8 % girls) in the 8th (45.9%) and 10th grades (54.1%) with a mean age was 14.9 years (SD=1.26). Results: The prevalence of high-frequency headaches was 22.2% and their major comorbidities were other health complaints with special reference to abdominal pain and dizziness and psychopathological symptoms, namely sadness, irritability, nervousness and low energy. Furthermore, they had lower family support, lower academic success, unfair treatment, loneliness and nobody to share or to worry about their problems and lower quality of life; e-media and excessive mobile phone use, tobacco and alcohol use, and some violent behaviors were also associated with the presence of frequent headaches. Conclusion: In spite of these significant associations, the logistic regression model explaining 38% of the variance included mostly other health complaints.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Psychological and social factors that influence quality of life : gender, age and professional status differences

Coryright © 2017 David Publishing Company All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International LicenseQuality of life is influenced by psychological and social factors. Quality of life in the ageing process is a complex and multidimensional process, also influenced by gender, age and professional status. The data were collected on a national level. The sample was composed by1,330 people, 62.2% of which were female with ages ranging between 55 and 75 years old. 34.4% of the sample mentioned having a chronic condition, 48.2% of which had diabetes. Three regression models were created in order to understand the quality of life in ageing population in a biopsychosocial perspective. Results showed that quality of life in ageing population is influenced by psychological factors (purpose of life and stress management skills) and by social factors (family and friends social support). Gender, age, and professional status can also influence quality of life. Our study allowed us to conclude that quality of life is influenced by physical, psychological, and social health. The psychological factors presented a more systematic and strong influence in quality of life on the ageing population.This work was supported by Minerva Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Worries, mental and emotional health difficulties of portuguese university students

Copyright © Society for Science and Education, United KingdomThe aim of this study was to reach an in-depth understanding on how Portuguese university students feel towards life in general, which are their worries, how often they feel worried, and how intense their worries are. Moreover, it was intended to identify the kind of psychosocial variables involved, strategies they use as well as which are the sources of their well-being. A total of 2991 university students, participated in the quantitative study and in the qualitative study, there were 50 participants between 18 and 35 years old. A significant minority of students got worried frequently, allowing their worries to interfere significantly in their lives. Gender and age differences were found. Having worries demonstrated to be relevant and negatively associated with young people’s perception of well-being, self-regulation and resilience; showing that the mental health of the Portuguese university students is at risk, mainly when their social emotional skills are underdeveloped.Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (Grants: Marta Reis-SFRH/BPD/110905/2015)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Considering Intra-individual Genetic Heterogeneity to Understand Biodiversity

In this chapter, I am concerned with the concept of Intra-individual Genetic Hetereogeneity (IGH) and its potential influence on biodiversity estimates. Definitions of biological individuality are often indirectly dependent on genetic sampling -and vice versa. Genetic sampling typically focuses on a particular locus or set of loci, found in the the mitochondrial, chloroplast or nuclear genome. If ecological function or evolutionary individuality can be defined on the level of multiple divergent genomes, as I shall argue is the case in IGH, our current genetic sampling strategies and analytic approaches may miss out on relevant biodiversity. Now that more and more examples of IGH are available, it is becoming possible to investigate the positive and negative effects of IGH on the functioning and evolution of multicellular individuals more systematically. I consider some examples and argue that studying diversity through the lens of IGH facilitates thinking not in terms of units, but in terms of interactions between biological entities. This, in turn, enables a fresh take on the ecological and evolutionary significance of biological diversity

Perception of quantity and quality of sleep and their association with health related quality of life and life satisfaction during adolescence

Copyright: © 2017 Matos MG. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Objectives: This study aims to analyse differences between sleep duration and sleep quality and their association with health related quality of life and life satisfaction during adolescence. Methods: The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey is based on a self-completed questionnaire. The participants in the present study were 3631 students (53.1% were girls) in the 8th and 10th grades at school; the mean age was 14.8 years (range 13-18). Results: The present results add to previous ones that both the duration and the perceived quality of sleep have impact upon the perception of quality of life and the perception of life satisfaction. Conclusions: These results are substantially important for sleep hygiene and for recommendations for adolescents, parents, health and education professionals and public policies. It is now widely recommended that adolescents must sleep at least 8 hours per night, what this study allow to recommend is that the perception of quality of that sleep is equally important, and this leads to another set of recommendations to increase sleep quality, that include not exercising or practising sports in the evenings, avoiding conflicts at home in the evenings, no going to bed worried, no having caffeine and other energetic drinks in the evening, not abusing screen time after dinner or in bed. These recommendations are important to assure sleep duration and perceived quality and therefore the perception of wellness and life satisfaction, having an additional impact on health and on school achievement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio