Single photon emission computed tomography, invasive coronary angiography and cardiac computed tomography angiography

Introduction: Diagnostic tests that use ionizing radiation play a central role in cardiology and their use has grown in recent years, leading to increasing concerns about their potential stochas-tic effects. The aims of this study were to compare the radiation dose of three diagnostic tests: single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), invasive coronary angiography (ICA) and cardiac computed tomography (cardiac CT) and their evolution over time, and to assess the influence of body mass index on radiation dose. Methods: We assessed consecutive patients included in three prospective registries (SPECT, ICA and cardiac CT) over a period of two years. Radiation dose was converted to mSv and compared between the three registries. Differences over time were evaluated by comparing the first with the fourth semester. Results: A total of 6196 exams were evaluated: 35% SPECT, 53% ICA and 22% cardiac CT. Mean radiation dose was 10.7±1.2 mSv for SPECT, 8.1±6.4 mSv for ICA, and 5.4±3.8 mSv for cardiac CT (p<0.001 for all). With regard to the radiation dose over time, there was a very small reduction in SPECT (10.7 to 10.5 mSv, p=0.004), a significant increase (25%) in ICA (7.0 to 8.8mSv; p<0.001), and a significant reduction (29%) in cardiac CT (6.5 to 4.6 mSv, p<0.001). Obesity was associated with a significantly higher radiation dose in all three exams. Conclusions: Cardiac CT had a lower mean effective radiation dose than invasive coronary angiography, which in turn had a lower mean effective dose than SPECT. There was a significant increase in radiation doses in the ICA registry and a significant decrease in the cardiac CT registry over time.publishersversionpublishe

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Carga da doença atribuível ao tabagismo em Portugal The burden of disease attributable to smoking in Portugal

A Organização Mundial de Saúde (OMS) estimou no seu relatório de 2002 que cerca de 14% da larga da doença nos países mais ricos seja atribuível ao consumo de produtos de tabaco. As doenças mais relacionadas com o consumo de tabaco incluem um conjunto de doenças cardiovasculares, neoplasias e doenças respiratórias. Este artigo estima a carga da doença atribuível ao tabaco em Portugal, tomando como base os dados das estatísticas demográficas e de saúde disponíveis para Portugal em 2005. A conclusão final da analise e que 11,7% das mortes em Portugal se podem atribuir ao consumo de tabaco. Se medirmos a carga da doença através dos anos de vida ajustados por incapacidade - disability adjusted life years (DALY) gerados pela mortalidade, as proporção da carga da doença atribuível ao tabaco e 11,2%. A divisão entre sexos e muito desigual, já que 15,4% da carga da doença masculina e 17,7% das mortes são atribuíveis ao tabaco, mas apenas 4,9% da carga da doença feminina e 5,2% das mortes. Estes números para a mortalidade atribuível são mais elevados do que as estimativas anteriormente disponíveis para Portugal (Peto et al. 2006), as quais apontavam para 14% das mortes masculinas e apenas 0,9% das femininas. O artigo apresenta estimativas sobre a carga da doença redutível, ou seja, as reduções de mortalidade e DALY que ocorreriam se os fumadores abandonassem o tabagismo e passassem a experimentar o risco médio das populações de ex-fumadores, o qual e superior ao dos nunca fumadores mas inferior ao dos fumadores. As estimativas são que a carga da doença medida pelos DALY se reduziria em 5,8% (7,8% dos homens e 2,8% das mulheres) e que as mortes se reduziriam em 5,8% (8,5% homens e 2,9% mulheres). O artigo inclui igualmente estimativas dos DALY perdidos por incapacidade. As doenças relacionadas com o tabagismo geraram 121 643 DALY, dos quais 72 126 (59%) são atribuíveis ao tabagismo e 12 417 (10%) são redutíveis.The World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2002 Annual Report estimated that about 14% of the burden of disease in wealthier countries is attributable to smoking. Smoking related diseases include cardiovascular diseases, cancer and respiratory diseases. This paper presents an estimate of the burden of disease attributable to smoking in Portugal. The estimates are based on the Portuguese demographic and health statistics available for 2005. The most important conclusion of the analysis is that 11.7% of deaths in Portugal are attributable to smoking. If we use disability adjusted life years (DALYs) to measure the burden of disease, we find that 11.2% of death DALYs in Portugal is attributable to smoking. The gender distribution of this amount is very unequal; 15.4% of the male burden of disease and 17.7% of all male deaths can be attributed to smoking, but only 4.9% of the female burden of disease and 5.2% of all female deaths. These estimates are higher than death estimates previously available (Peto et al. 2006); 14% in men and only 0.9% in women. This paper also presents estimates of the burden of reducible disease, that is, the reduction in mortality and DALYs that would occur if all current smokers quit and thus experienced the mean risk of ex-smo kers, which is lower than for current smokers but typically not as low as for never-smokers. Our estimates are that the burden of disease would decrease by 5.8% (7.8% in men and 2.8% in women), and that deaths would decrease by 5.8% as well (with an 8.5% and 2.9% decrease in men and women, respectively). The paper also includes estimates of the burden of disease generated by smoking related disability. Smoking related illnesses generated 121,643 DALYs, 72,126 (59%) of which are attributable to smoking and 12,417 would be reducible if all smokers were to quit

The burden of disease and the cost of illness attributable to alcohol drinking : results of a national study

Copyright © 2010 by the Research Society on AlcoholismBackground and Aims: The World Health Organization estimated that 3.2% of the burden of disease around the world is attributable to the consumption of alcohol. The aim of this study is to estimate the burden of disease attributable to alcohol consumption in Portugal. Methods: Burden and costs of diseases attributable to alcohol drinking were estimated based on demographic and health statistics available for 2005, using the Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) lost generated by death or disability. Results: In Portugal, 3.8% of deaths are attributable to alcohol (4,059 of 107,839). After measuring the DALY generated by mortality data, the proportion of disease attributable to alcohol was 5.0%, with men having 5.6% of deaths and 6.2% of disease burden, while female figures were, respectively, 1.8 and 2.4%. Considering the sum of death and disability DALYs, liver dis-eases represented the main source of the burden attributable to alcohol with 31.5% of total DALYs, followed by traffic accidents (28.2%) and several types of cancer (19.2%). As for the cost of illness incurred by the health system, our results indicate that €95.1 millions are attributable to alcohol-related disease admissions (liver diseases, cancer, traffic accidents, and external causes) while the ambulatory costs of alcohol-related diseases were estimated in €95.9 million,totaling €191.0 million direct costs, representing 0.13% of Gross Domestic Product and 1.25% of total national health expenditures. An alternative analysis was carried out using higher consumption levels so as to replicate aggregate alcohol consumption statistics. In this case, DALYs lost increased by 11.7% and health costs by 23%. Conclusion: Our results confirm that alcohol is an important health risk factor in Portugal and a heavy economic burden for the health system, with hepatic diseases ranking first as a source of burden of disease attributable to alcohol.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dissertações de Mestrado

Resumos de algumas das Dissertações defendiadas na Universidade Lusófona, na área das Ciências da Educação (2005

Mathematics and Computer Science :Proceedings of Annual Workshop on Mathematics and Computer Science, March 25, 2014, JOSAI UNIVERSITY

View difference is an important issue to deal with for robust cross-view gait recognition, and a view transformation model (VTM) is a popular approach for improving the accuracy degradation caused by the view difference. In this paper, we focus on the VTM with a matrix factorization process and describe our solution for cross-view gait recognition using the VTM. To evaluate the efficiency of our solutions, we performed experiments against publicly available large population dataset. We also report the resultsMathematics and Computer Science : Proceedings of Annual Workshop on Mathematics and Computer Science, held at Josai University on March 25 in 2014 / edited by Masatoshi IIDA, Manabu INUMA, Kiyoko NISHIZAW

Homenagem Casa dos Estudantes do Império - 50 Anos | Testemunhos, Vivências, Documentos

Os textos incluídos nesta obra são transcrições das intervenções feitas pelos participantes nas diversas sessões da homenagem à Casa dos Estudantes do Império, realizadas entre 2014 e 2015. Estas intervenções foram gravadas através de meios audiovisuais e posteriormente editadas para efeitos de publicação. A presente edição segue a grafia do Acordo Ortográfico, exceto nos casos em que os autores quiseram manter a antiga grafia.CML – Câmara Municipal de Lisboa; Camões – Instituto da Cooperação e da Língua; Fundação Calouste Gulbenkianinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio