Are there differences in acute phase inflammation markers regarding the type of heart failure?

This study aimed to determine if there are differences in inflammatory markers in the acute phase between systolic heart failure and heart failure with preserved systolic function. One hundred and thirty-one patients with acute heart failure were recruited consecutively. At admission, plasma fibrinogen, C-reactive protein, sialic acid, von Willebrand factor, vascular endothelial growth factor, interleukin-6 and NTproBNP were all evaluated. If the ejection fraction was 45% or over patients were included in the HF-PSF group; the remaining patients were included in the SHF group. The HF-PSF patients were older (72±10 vs 63±12 years, P<0.001), presented a higher rate of atrial fibrillation (56.1 vs 21.3%, P<0.001), and had a lower rate of hemoglobin (12.2±2 vs 13.3±2.1 g/dL, P<0.01). No significant differences were observed in the inflammation markers analyzed among SHF and HF-PSF groups. In the acute phase of heart failure there is a marked elevation of inflammatory markers but there are no differences in the inflammatory markers analyzed between the two different types of heart failure

Expert perspectives on GIS use in Spanish geographic education

The emergence of new technological tools for territorial analysis, such as cloud-based GIS, or GIS viewers, compels us to closely examine its usefulness in geographic education. Specifically, it raises the professors and teachers’ questions: what to teach? how to teach? and what will students learn? This research responds to these three questions by interviewing Spanish experts who know how to use these tools to teach geography at university and secondary school levels. The Delphi technique was applied to achieve this, which established consensus and led to the following results from experts’ own experience: (1) that GIS help to understand territory in an experiential and non-memoristic way and (2) they enable the development of spatial thinking. This paper concludes that changes in methodologies and integrate technical knowledge into teacher training are needed