The impact of home care nursing in puerpera dificulties

BACKGROUND: The birth of the first child forwards the new mother to an individual, family and social reset in order to deal with self-caring and parenting skills. Many women in postpartum period report having to deal often with new doubts and/or problems. OBJECTIVE: Identify the main difficulties reported by mothers during puerperium time. Compare those mentioned difficulties, between control group and study group. METHODS: Quasi-experimental design - Control group and study group with 200 primiparous women (100 women in each group). Participants in the study group were submited to at least two home visits during the postpartum period. RESULTS: Chi-square test revealed statistically significant differences between groups, for participants who did not report difficulties (p=0.021). A larger number of mothers in the experimental group did not mention difficulties (38%), compared to those belonging to the control group (23%). The three main difficulties were found: Understanding child's cry - 53% in the control group and 45% in study group; Child feeding - 29% in the control group and 21% in study group; “Psychological changes” are referred by both groups in thirdly. Chi-square test shows differences between groups in this variable (p=0.037) - Control group 27% and study group 15%. CONCLUSIONS: This investigation demonstrated the relationship between home visit and expressed difficulties: a higher number of participants followed during puerperium did not mention difficulties. For those who mentioned difficulties also the groups show different regarding the difficulty in dealing with the psychological changes. More mothers from control group mentioned this problem

Interictal Spike Quantification in Continuous Spike-Wave of Sleep (CSWS): Clinical Usefulness of a Wearable EEG Device

Continuous spike-wave of sleep (CSWS) syndrome is one of the most common epileptic encephalopathies of childhood. Because the associated cognitive/behavioral disturbances relate more to the amount of spike activity than of seizures, methods of spike quantification gained relevance in diagnosis and monitoring treatment. The conventional methodology for quantification of spike index (SI) relies on repeated full 10-20 long-term ambulatory electroencephalography (aEEG), which is both expensive and poorly tolerated.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fabrication of electrospun scaffolds with cell laden hydrogel for cartilage tissue engineering

Tissue engineering strategies create artificial substitutes for the regeneration of damaged tissues, beginning with the fabrication of scaffolds moving then to cell incorporation onto those scaffolds and subsequent tissue growth in vitro. Cell seeding techniques, unfortunately, are usually ineffective to develop scaffolds with homogenous cell distribution, resulting in non-functional tissue formation [1]. With electrospun scaffolds, cell incorporation becomes even more challenging. Electrospun scaffolds are a very tightly packed layer of fibers with small pores, that makes difficult the migration of cells onto the scaffolds, as well as, the diffusion of nutrients and wastes. To overcome this drawback, the direct incorporation of cells, using electrospraying technique, onto the scaffolds during the electrospinning process has been reported. Cell electrospraying is a jet-based technique that allows the spray of living cells onto the materials by applying an electric charge in a cellular suspension [2]. Several studies have proved that cells can survive and proliferate after electrospraying process [3], [4]. Still, previous work has shown that while uniformly distributed cell-laden scaffolds can be fabricated using this technique, some issues remain. Cell desiccation on top of the fibers due to longer duration of the experiment and inadequate cell environment – low temperature and CO2 concentration – and solvent toxicity are the main limitations for the optimal efficiency of cell electrospray process onto electrospun fibers. In this regard, in this work, the production of electrospun scaffolds was combined with the electrospray of chondrocyte laden hydrogel creating a shield/protection around the cells during and after the electrospray process, preventing its dehydration. For that, a polymeric solution of polycaprolactone (PCL) and gelatin was electrospun alternately with a chondrocyte-laden sodium alginate hydrogel electrospray. Sodium alginate is a natural polymer widely used in biomedical engineering due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability and ability to form hydrogels [5]. The prepared scaffolds were then cultured for 7 days and the respective cell viability assessed. The percentage of viability was calculated as a ratio of the metabolic activity of the electrosprayed chondrocytes and the metabolic activity of chondrocytes that did not underwent any process. The chondrocyte distribution was also evaluated. On the first day of culture, the results showed that the cellular viability was higher than the one previous reported, demonstrating that the alginate hydrogel allowed the cells to survive and helps in its attachment. After 7 days of culture, cells continue alive with considerable viability increasing. It was also shown that it was possible to incorporate cells homogenously distributed by electrospraying process using the chondrocyte laden hydrogel. These results emphasize the potential value that the hydrogels can have on the electrospraying process with the electrospun scaffolds.publishe

The Potential Modulatory Effects of Exercise on Skeletal Muscle Redox Status in Chronic Kidney Disease

Funding Information: SM is supported by a Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology (FCT) doctoral grant (SFRH/BD/07740/2020). The Research Center in Sports Sciences, Health Sciences and Human Development is funded by FCT (UID/04045/2020). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a global health burden with high mortality and health costs. CKD patients exhibit lower cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, strongly associated with morbidity/mortality, which is exacerbated when they reach the need for renal replacement therapies (RRT). Muscle wasting in CKD has been associated with an inflammatory/oxidative status affecting the resident cells’ microenvironment, decreasing repair capacity and leading to atrophy. Exercise may help counteracting such effects; however, the molecular mechanisms remain uncertain. Thus, trying to pinpoint and understand these mechanisms is of particular interest. This review will start with a general background about myogenesis, followed by an overview of the impact of redox imbalance as a mechanism of muscle wasting in CKD, with focus on the modulatory effect of exercise on the skeletal muscle microenvironment.publishersversionpublishe

Noncompaction Cardiomyopathy. A Review of Eight Cases

A miocardiopatia não compactada isolada é uma doença geneticamente determinada cuja patogénese parece envolver uma paragem no desenvolvimento do endomiocárdio. Morfologicamente caracteriza-se pela presença de trabeculações proeminentes separadas por profundos recessos preenchidos por fluxo e como tal por Doppler a cor no estudo ecocardiográfico. No sentido de melhor caracterizar esta entidade recentemente descrita, de prognóstico pouco esclarecido, fazemos uma revisão dos casos diagnosticados no nosso hospital, descrevendo as características clínicas, electrocardiográficas e ecocardiográficas, bem como a terapêutica instituída e seguimento clínico. A propósito da revisão dos casos, é feita uma exposição e discussão da literatura mais relevante relativamente a etiopatogenia, clínica, critérios de diagnóstico, terapêutica e prognóstico

Lanthanide-based complexes as efficient physiological temperature sensors

A new molecular thermometric sensor based on the terbium(III) complex [C2mim][Tb(fod)4] (C2mim – 1-methyl-3-ethylimidazolium, fod− - tetrakis-6,6,7,7,8,8,8-heptafluoro-2,2-dimethyl-3,5-octanedionate), doped with 0.015% of its europium(III) analogue (1, [C2mim][Tb(fod)4]0.99985:[C2mim][Eu(fod)4]0.00015), was prepared and its thermochromic behaviour evaluated from ambient temperature up to 75 °C, including in the physiological range (35–45 °C). It was found that the intensity ratio of the 5D4→7F5 (TbIII) and 5D0→7F2 (EuIII) transitions is correlated with temperature having three different linear regimes. Visual colorimetry allowed the evaluation of the temperature in different ranges from green at ambient temperature, to yellow and finally red at higher temperatures. The TbIII complex emission intensity is extremely sensitive to small temperature variations, particularly between 25 and 35 °C, were it reaches only 40% of the initial intensity. Confinement of the dopped TbIII tetrakis-complex in the organic polymeric matrix poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) induced higher thermal stability in 1, together with a strong temperature dependence of the most intense emissive transition of the TbIII complexes. The photoluminescence quantum yield of polymer-lanthanide hybrid materials increased significantly compared with that of 1. Under 366 nm irradiation, the hybrid material presents a green colour at 25 °C that evolves to yellow at 30 °C and to a white tone at 35 °C.publishe