Health Students’ Attitudes towards Disability

Background: Individuals with disabilities remain one of the most socially excluded segments of the population, constantly fighting for equal rights and social inclusion. Disability is not an easy subject for health professionals to deal with, in part because it crosses many professional and cultural boundaries.Objective: The aim of this research is to analyze and understand the various attitudes toward people with disabilities, amongst the final year medical, midwifery and nursing students and to compare the three health departments on their students’ attitudes.Methods: A questionnaire-based electronic survey was directed to all medical, midwifery and nursing students registered at two big universities in Athens, Greece (n=190). The time frame was decided to encompass a month window (from 2nd May to 2nd June 2021).Results: The Nursing students in the study showed overall a better attitude towards disabled people. Our research mainly indicates the fact that in general, there is need to prioritize training in both theoretical and practical fields through alterations in all three university departments’ curricula.Conclusions: Undergraduates Health Students (of Nursing, Midwifery and Medicine) generally present a lack of awareness, familiarity and experience towards disabled people. Numerous reasons seemed to influence health professional’s attitudes to people with a disability including their age, gender, nationality, education, years of experience, general knowledge regarding a disability and the level and nature of their training. This research clearly illustrates the importance of improving how universities’ undergraduate curricula address disabilities in an effort to inspire upcoming health professionals

Chlamydial Infection

Chlamydial infection is one of the most common sexually transmitted infections worldwide, showing no decreasing trends in the incidence the last years. As a result, it presents a major burden of disease that impacts negatively people’s sexual and reproductive health and may result in adverse perinatal outcomes. The aim of the chapter is to offer today’s practitioners trustworthy guidance on the latest data in chlamydial infection. Thorough, up-to-date content on the epidemiology, pathophysiology, risk factors, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, prognosis and outcomes of infected infants, is presented. Data in children and adolescents that differ from infants, are also discussed. The chapter is organized consistently in order to help readers find information quickly and easily and thus, provide direct, optimal and evidence-based care to every pediatric patient

PHOENI2X -- A European Cyber Resilience Framework With Artificial-Intelligence-Assisted Orchestration, Automation and Response Capabilities for Business Continuity and Recovery, Incident Response, and Information Exchange

As digital technologies become more pervasive in society and the economy, cybersecurity incidents become more frequent and impactful. According to the NIS and NIS2 Directives, EU Member States and their Operators of Essential Services must establish a minimum baseline set of cybersecurity capabilities and engage in cross-border coordination and cooperation. However, this is only a small step towards European cyber resilience. In this landscape, preparedness, shared situational awareness, and coordinated incident response are essential for effective cyber crisis management and resilience. Motivated by the above, this paper presents PHOENI2X, an EU-funded project aiming to design, develop, and deliver a Cyber Resilience Framework providing Artificial-Intelligence-assisted orchestration, automation and response capabilities for business continuity and recovery, incident response, and information exchange, tailored to the needs of Operators of Essential Services and the EU Member State authorities entrusted with cybersecurity

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Application program surveillance of infections in preterm neonates unit

This research studies the nosocomial infections during hospitalization in the neonatal intensive care unit and the risk factors in this environment. More specifically, the main objective of the study is to create a manual of infection control (with guidelines) focused on the problems encountered in the provision of health care units in preterm neonates. The specific aims of the study were the surveillance of nosocomial infections, which held the record of infections and their risk factors, record the use of antibiotics, explore the knowledge of nursing staff, on the prevention of infections in neonatal ICUs, making intervention to employees of the unit based on the results of monitoring, recurrence surveillance of infections and to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The study was conducted in the neonatal intensive care units, of two public hospitals, “Agia Sofia” Children’s Hospital and “Helena Venizelos” Maternity Hospital. The sample of newborns consisted of all neonates that were admitted to the units, during the period of record, total of 474 neonates. The data collection was performed using capture cards infections and antibiotics, questionnaires and lists daily monitoring (checklist). The intervention took place from amphitheater. It was based on the results of the inventory and the methods of prevention of nosocomial infections. Protocols were administered to all attendees, to use, and there were copies in the main compartment of the unit. Statistical analysis of data was performed using the statistical package SPSS. The Scientific Research Committee of each hospital approved the protocol of the survey. The findings of this study indicate that 13.9% (66 of 474 neonates) developed nosocomial infection and colonization is at 7.2%. The most common NI was sepsis (40.9%). Followed by primary bacteremia (34.9%) and upper respiratory infection (13.7%). Microbes detected at significantly higher rates were CoNS, Candida and Klebsiella, at rates of 8.0%, 5.1% and 4.6% respectively. 51.5% of neonates were administered antibiotics empirically. The majority of newborns were either cured (45.5%) or improved (51.5%) and 3.2% of them died. The rates of nosocomial infection were significantly higher in neonates hospitalized in the open unit (24.7%) compared to the closed NICU (8.8%, p<0.001), and to neonates who entered the unit because of prematurity (19.3%, p=0.004). The duration of antibiotic use (antibiotic days) and the duration of hospitalization (patient days), were significantly higher when there was nosocomial infection (p <0,001). The weight of neonates at birth and during the introduction to the unit was significantly lower when there was hospital acquired infection (p <0,001 +). Additionally, the gestational age was significantly lower in infants who presented nosocomial infection (p <0,001). Still, the duration of: intravenous line (p <0,001), Levin (p <0,001), UAC (p = 0,005), CVC (p = 0,012), incubator (p = 0.007) of N-CPAP (p = 0,017) and Hood (p <0,001) were significantly higher when nosocomial infection was present.In more than half of neonates Ampicillin was administered at a rate of 55.7% with a mean 7.3 days (± 4,0 days). Besides, almost half of neonates were administered Gentamycine (50,4%) with a mean 6.6 days (± 3,4 days). The most frequently administered antibiotics, were beta - lactam (49.08%, 631.9 days/1000 patients days and 1077.72/ 1000 antibiotics days) and followed, in order of frequency, glycopeptides (21.35%, 275 days/1000 patients days and 469/ antibiotics days). We also observed that the majority used double figure (60.54%, 319.3 days per 1,000 patients days and 544.55 per 1,000 antibiotics days) and triple regimen (27.43%, 144.7 days per 1,000 patients days and 246 73 per 1,000 antibiotics days) in NICU’s study, while monotherapy was administered only in 5.57% (29.4 days per 1000 patients days and 50.12 per 1000 antibiotics days) of hospitalized neonates.In addition to the assessment of knowledge, attitude and behavior of the nursing staff (NS) involved 50 employees from NS. The majority in both hospitals were women (96.3% and 100%), working in circular timetable (77.8% and 87.0%) and their experience in NICU was up to 5 years (70.4% and 60.9% ). Also, the percentages of participants who knew if there was an Infections Committee in the hospital (88.9% and 100%) and participated in it (14.8% and 39.1%), did not differ significantly between the two hospitals. Finally, as the main obstacle to the implementation of the policy of hospital infection control in both hospitals, is the lack of commission rates (74.1% and 65.2%), while the second main obstacle is the time for participants of the " Agia Sofia" Children’s Hospital (59.3%) and the lack of communication about infection control policies for the participants of "Elena Venizelou" Maternity Hospital (39.1%). A correlation was found to score significantly higher knowledge, among participants who had up to 5 years job experience in the NICU, compared with participants who had more than 5 years jobexperience (p = 0,032). Specifically, participants who had more than 5 years job experience in this section, had a 4.53 points lower score of knowledge, less knowledge, compared with participants who had up to 5 years job experience. The score of attitude was significantly higher, more positive attitude, among participants that were working with fixed shift schedule, compared to participants who worked with circular. Specifically, participants who worked in circular timetable had by 8.82 points lower rating in staging, less positive attitude, compared to participants who worked according to fixed timetable.Finally, in an overall assessment, we conclude that this intervention did not affect any of the risk factors for the occurrence of ΝΙ, since the proportions of each variable (even when showing a statistically significant difference in each recording separately) remain unchanged when compared to each other (before and after the intervention). More detailed comparison of the two recordings have not demonstrated a statistically significant difference in any of the risk factors for nosocomial infection, with the exception of perhaps, marginally displayed statistically significant difference, in patient days. However, it appears that the intervention contributed effectively to improve knowledge, attitudes and practices of nursing staff, as reflected through the questionnaires, but it does not seem to contribute to the reduction of NI and improve the use of antibiotics.With this study we hope that you will understand more fully the complex and dynamic relationship that develops between nosocomial infections and the individual characteristics of neonatal risk factors in NICU NI, as well as the external factors (knowledge, attitudes and behavior of health professionals to prevention of NI).Η έρευνα αυτή μελετά τις νοσοκομειακές λοιμώξεις κατά την διάρκεια νοσηλείας των νεογνών στη μονάδα εντατικής θεραπείας καθώς και τους παράγοντες κινδύνου εμφάνισης τους σε αυτό το περιβάλλον. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, ο βασικός σκοπός της μελέτης είναι να δημιουργηθεί ένας οδηγός ελέγχου λοιμώξεων εστιασμένος στα προβλήματα που αντιμετωπίζονται κατά την παροχή φροντίδας υγείας στις μονάδες προώρων νεογνών. Οι επιμέρους σκοποί της μελέτης ήταν η επιτήρηση των νοσοκομειακών λοιμώξεων (ΝΛ), η οποία πραγματοποιήθηκε με την καταγραφή των λοιμώξεων και των παραγόντων κινδύνου εμφάνισής τους, την καταγραφή της χρήσης των αντιβιοτικών, τη διερεύνηση των γνώσεων του νοσηλευτικού προσωπικού σχετικά με την πρόληψη των λοιμώξεων στη ΜΕΘ νεογνών την πραγματοποίηση παρέμβασης στους εργαζόμενους της μονάδας βασισμένη στα αποτελέσματα της επιτήρησης, την επανάληψη της επιτήρησης των λοιμώξεων και την αξιολόγηση της αποτελεσματικότητας της παρέμβασης. Η μελέτη πραγματοποιήθηκε στις ΜΕΘ νεογνών, 2 δημόσιων νοσοκομείων, το Γ.Ν. Παίδων «Αγία Σοφία» και το Γ.Ν.-Μαιευτήριο «Έλενα Βενιζέλου». Το δείγμα των νεογνών αποτέλεσαν όλα τα νεογνά που νοσηλεύτηκαν στις μονάδες κατά το χρονικό διάστημα της καταγραφής, συνολικά 474 νεογνά. Η συλλογή των δεδομένων έγινε με την χρήση κάρτας καταγραφής λοιμώξεων και αντιβιοτικών, ερωτηματολογίων και λιστών καθημερινής παρακολούθησης. Η παρέμβαση πραγματοποιήθηκε από αμφιθεάτρου. Βασίστηκε στα αποτελέσματα της καταγραφής και στις μεθόδους πρόληψης των νοσοκομειακών λοιμώξεων. Χρησιμοποιήθηκα πρωτόκολλα, τα οποία χορηγήθηκαν σε όλους τους παραβρισκόμενους, ενώ υπήρχαν αντίτυπα και στον κυρίως χώρο της μονάδας. Η στατιστική ανάλυση των δεδομένων έγινε με τη χρήση του στατιστικού πακέτου SPSS. Η Επιστημονική Επιτροπή Έρευνα του κάθε νοσοκομείου ενέκρινε το πρωτόκολλο διεξαγωγής της έρευνας. Τα ευρήματα της παρούσας μελέτης υποδεικνύουν ότι το 13,9% (66 από 474 νεογνά) ανέπτυξαν νοσοκομειακή λοίμωξη, ενώ ο αποικισμός ανέρχεται στο 7,2%. Η συχνότερη ΝΛ ήταν η σηψαιμία (40,9%). Ακολουθεί η πρωτοπαθής μικροβιαιμία (34,9%) και η λοίμωξη του ανώτερου αναπνευστικού (13,7%). Τα μικρόβια που εντοπίστηκαν σε σημαντικά υψηλότερα ποσοστά ήταν τα CoNS, Candida και Klebsiella σε ποσοστά 8,0%, 5,1% και 4,6% αντίστοιχα. Στο 51,5% των νεογνών χορηγήθηκε αντιβίωση εμπειρικά. Η πλειοψηφία των νεογνών είτε θεραπεύτηκε (45,5%) είτε βελτιώθηκε (51,5%) ενώ το 3,2% κατέληξε. Τα ποσοστά νοσοκομειακής λοίμωξης ήταν σημαντικά υψηλότερα στα νεογνά που νοσηλεύονταν σε ανοιχτή μονάδα (24,7%) σε σχέση με την κλειστή ΜΕΝΝ (8,8%, p<0,001), καθώς και στα νεογνά που μπήκαν στη μονάδα επειδή ήταν πρόωρα (19,3%, p=0,004). Η διάρκεια χορήγησης αντιβιοτικού και η διάρκεια νοσηλείας ήταν σημαντικά μεγαλύτερες όταν υπήρχε νοσοκομειακή λοίμωξη (p<0,001). Το βάρος των νεογνών κατά τη γέννηση και κατά την εισαγωγή στη μονάδα ήταν σημαντικά μικρότερο όταν υπήρχε νοσοκομειακή λοίμωξη (p<0,001+). Επίσης, η ηλικία κύησης ήταν σημαντικά μικρότερη στα νεογνά που παρουσιάστηκε νοσοκομειακή λοίμωξη (p<0,001). Ακόμα, η διάρκεια παραμονής της ενδοφλέβιας παροχής (p<0,001), του Levin (p<0,001), του καθετήρα ομφαλικής αρτηρίας (p=0,005), των ΚΦΚ συνολικά (p=0,012), της μηχανικής υποστήριξης αναπνοής (διασωλήνωσης) (p=0,007), του N-CPAP (p=0,017) και του Hood (p<0,001) ήταν σημαντικά μεγαλύτερες όταν υπήρχε νοσοκομειακή λοίμωξη.Στα περισσότερα από τα μισά νεογνά χορηγήθηκε Ampicillin σε ποσοστό 55,7% με μέση διάρκεια λήψης τις 7,3 ημέρες (±4,0 ημέρες). Επίσης, σχεδόν στα μισά νεογνά χορηγήθηκε Gentamycine (50,4%) με μέση διάρκεια λήψης τις 6,6 ημέρες (±3,4 ημέρες). Τα συχνότερα χορηγούμενα αντιβιοτικά τις Β – Λακτάμες (49,08%, 631,9 ημέρες/1000 ημέρες νοσηλείας και 1077,72 ανά 1000 ημέρες αντιβιοτικών) και δεύτερα σε σειρά συχνότητας τα γλυκοπεπτίδια (21,35%, 275 ημέρες/1000ημέρες νοσηλείας και 469 ανά 1000 ημέρες αντιβιοτικών). Επίσης παρατηρείται ότι κατά πλειοψηφία χρησιμοποιείται διπλό (60,54%, 319,3 ημέρες ανά 1000 ημέρες νοσηλείας και 544,55 ανά 1000 ημέρες αντιβιοτικών) και τριπλό σχήμα (27,43%, 144,7 ημέρες ανά 1000 ημέρες νοσηλείας και 246,73 ανά 1000 ημέρες αντιβιοτικών) στις ΜΕΝΝ της μελέτης, ενώ μονοθεραπεία χορηγείται μόνο στο 5,57% (29,4 ημέρες ανά 1000 ημέρες νοσηλείας και 50,12 ανά 1000 ημέρες αντιβιοτικών) των νοσηλευομένων νεογνών.Επιπλέον στην αξιολόγηση της γνώσης, στάσης και συμπεριφοράς του νοσηλευτικού προσωπικού (ΝΠ) συμμετείχαν 50 εργαζόμενοι από το ΝΠ. Η πλειοψηφία και στα δύο νοσοκομεία ήταν γυναίκες (96,3% και 100%), εργάζονταν σε κυκλικό ωράριο (77,8% και 87,0%) και προϋπηρεσία στη ΜΕΝΝ έως 5 χρόνια (70,4% και 60,9%). Επίσης, τα ποσοστά των συμμετεχόντων που γνώριζαν αν υπάρχει επιτροπή λοιμώξεων στο νοσοκομείο τους (88,9% και 100%) και συμμετείχαν σε αυτή (14,8% και 39,1%) δεν διέφεραν σημαντικά μεταξύ των δύο νοσοκομείων. Τέλος, σαν κυριότερο εμπόδιο για την εφαρμογή της πολιτικής τουνοσοκομείου για τον έλεγχο των λοιμώξεων και στα δύο νοσοκομεία αναφέρεται η έλλειψη προμηθειών με ποσοστά (74,1% και 65,2%), ενώ το δεύτερο κυριότερο εμπόδιο είναι ο χρόνος για τους συμμετέχοντες από το «Γ.Ν. Παίδων - Αγία Σοφία» (59,3%) και η έλλειψη επικοινωνίας για τις πολιτικές ελέγχου λοιμώξεων για τους συμμετέχοντες από το «Γ.Ν.- Μαιευτήριο- Έλενα Βενιζέλου» (39,1%).Από τη συσχέτιση βρέθηκε ότι σημαντικά υψηλότερη βαθμολογία γνώσεων, δηλαδή περισσότερες γνώσεις, είχαν οι συμμετέχοντες που είχαν το πολύ 5 χρόνια προϋπηρεσία στη ΜΕΝΝ σε σύγκριση με τους συμμετέχοντες που είχαν πάνω από 5 χρόνια προϋπηρεσία (p=0,032). Συγκεκριμένα, οι συμμετέχοντες που είχαν πάνω από 5 χρόνια προϋπηρεσία στο παρόν τμήμα είχαν κατά 4,53 μονάδες χαμηλότερη βαθμολογία γνώσεων, δηλαδή λιγότερες γνώσεις, σε σύγκριση με τους συμμετέχοντες που είχαν το πολύ 5 χρόνια προϋπηρεσία. Από τη βαθμολογία της στάσης βρέθηκε σημαντικά υψηλότερη, δηλαδή πιο θετική στάση, είχαν οι συμμετέχοντες που εργάζονταν με σταθερό ωράριο σε σύγκριση με τους συμμετέχοντες που εργάζονταν με κυκλικό. Συγκεκριμένα, οι συμμετέχοντες που εργάζονταν σε κυκλικό ωράριο είχαν κατά 8,82 μονάδες χαμηλότερη βαθμολογία στάσης, δηλαδή λιγότερο θετική στάση, σε σύγκριση με τους συμμετέχοντες που εργάζονταν σε σταθερό ωράριο.Τέλος, αξιολογώντας συνολικά την παρέμβαση συμπεραίνουμε ότι αυτή δεν επηρέασε κανέναν από τους παράγοντες κινδύνου για την εμφάνιση ΝΛ, αφού οι αναλογίες της εκάστοτε μεταβλητής (ακόμα και όταν εμφανίζουν στατιστικά σημαντική διαφορά σε κάθε καταγραφή χωριστά) παραμένουν αναλλοίωτες όταν συγκριθούν μεταξύ τους (πριν και μετά την παρέμβαση). Πιο αναλυτικά από την σύγκριση των δύο καταγραφών δεν αποδείχθηκε να υπάρχει στατιστικά σημαντική διαφορά σε κανέναν από τους παράγοντες κινδύνου για εμφάνιση νοσοκομειακής λοίμωξης, με μοναδική εξαίρεση ίσως την οριακά εμφανιζόμενη στατιστικά σημαντική διαφορά στις ημέρες νοσηλείας. Εντούτοις διαφαίνεται ότι η παρέμβαση συνέβαλλε αποτελεσματικά στην βελτίωση των γνώσεων, στάσεων και ορθών πρακτικών των εργαζομένων, όπως αυτές αποτυπώνονται μέσα από τα ερωτηματολόγια, παρόλα αυτά δεν φαίνεται να έχει συμβάλλει στην μείωση των ΝΛ και στην βελτίωση της κατανάλωσης των αντιβιοτικών.Με την μελέτη αυτή ελπίζουμε ότι θα κατανοήσουμε πληρέστερα την πολύπλοκη και δυναμική σχέση που αναπτύσσεται μεταξύ των νοσοκομειακών λοιμώξεων και των ατομικών χαρακτηριστικών των νεογνών, των παραγόντων κινδύνου εμφάνισης ΝΛ στη ΜΕΝΝ, καθώς και των εξωτερικών παραγόντων (γνώσεων, στάσεις και συμπεριφορά επαγγελματιών υγείας για την πρόληψη των ΝΛ)

Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Breastfeeding is considered to be the cornerstone of child health. In Europe however, overall breastfeeding rates remain low. The present study aimed at estimating the frequency of breastfeeding in Greece during the COVID-19 pandemic period and comparing findings with the latest national study in order to identify a potential impact of the pandemic. Additionally, possible correlations of socio-cultural and demographic characteristics with breastfeeding indicators were investigated. This prospective cohort study included 847 women from five tertiary maternity hospitals, between January and December 2020. Data were collected by a structured questionnaire via interview during hospitalization and via telephone in the first, third and sixth month postpartum. Results showed that all breastfeeding indicators improved over the last three years. Full breastfeeding reached 7.2%, contrary to 0.78% of the latest national study at six months postpartum. Employment, marital status, educational level, mode of delivery, type of maternity hospital, body mass index before pregnancy, previous breastfeeding experience of the mother and infant’s birth weight correlated significantly with breastfeeding indicators at different time periods. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have favorably influenced breastfeeding initiation and duration in Greece due to lockdowns, home confinement and teleworking

Investigation of Healthcare Professionals’ Knowledge of Evidence-Based Clinical Practices for Preterm Neonatal Skin Care—A Pilot Study

Neonatal skin care practices are considered crucial for a neonate’s survival and are closely related to healthcare professionals’ (HPs) knowledge and skills in delivering scientifically valid neonatal care interventions. In this descriptive cross-sectional pilot study, conducted in 2022, we aimed to assess HPs’ basic theoretical knowledge of neonatal vernix caseosa, skin microbiota, and bathing as well as knowledge regarding evidence-based clinical practices (referred to as “clinical knowledge”) for preterm neonatal skin care. Eligible participants were neonatologists, pediatricians, obstetricians, midwives and nurses working in the Greek setting. The research instrument was an online questionnaire designed by the research team. Finally, 123 HPs took part in the study. The theoretical, clinical and total knowledge scores were all significantly associated with age, healthcare profession and the sources used for education. Participants’ theoretical and clinical knowledge scores were compared and found not to differ significantly (p = 0.566). A significant and positive correlation was found between theoretical and clinical knowledge scores. Thus, it is concluded that HPs should be updated with the latest evidence-based knowledge and clinical guidelines in order to provide neonatal skin care with high-quality standards

High-Speed, High-Performance DQPSK Optical Links with Reduced Complexity VDFE Equalizers

Optical transmission technologies optimized for optical network segments sensitive to power consumption and cost, comprise modulation formats with direct detection technologies. Specifically, non-return to zero differential quaternary phase shift keying (NRZ-DQPSK) in deployed fiber plants, combined with high-performance, low-complexity electronic equalizers to compensate residual impairments at the receiver end, can be proved as a viable solution for high-performance, high-capacity optical links. Joint processing of the constructive and the destructive signals at the single-ended DQPSK receiver provides improved performance compared to the balanced configuration, however, at the expense of higher hardware requirements, a fact that may not be neglected especially in the case of high-speed optical links. To overcome this bottleneck, the use of partially joint constructive/destructive DQPSK equalization is investigated in this paper. Symbol-by-symbol equalization is performed by means of Volterra decision feedback-type equalizers, driven by a reduced subset of signals selected from the constructive and the destructive ports of the optical detectors. The proposed approach offers a low-complexity alternative for electronic equalization, without sacrificing much of the performance compared to the fully-deployed counterpart. The efficiency of the proposed equalizers is demonstrated by means of computer simulation in a typical optical transmission scenario