A CHRONIC PAIN PATIENT: MODERN DIAGNOSIS AND CONCEPT OF THERAPY

Ca. 80% der Patienten einer allgemeinmedizinischen Praxis suchen diese wegen ihrer Schmerzen auf. Der Anteil an Patienten mit chronischen Schmerzen liegt im deutschsprachigen Raum bei ca. 20%. Und der Anteil an akuten Schmerzen variiert, abhängig von der fachspezifischen Tätigkeit. So gehören akute Schmerzen zum Alltag eines jeden chirurgisch oder anästhesiologisch tätigen Arztes: Operation = Schmerz. Das gleiche gilt für jede andere invasive Intervention, egal ob beim Zahnarzt, Radiologen, Strahlentherapeuten, Internisten und vielen anderen mehr. Daher gehört die Therapie dieser „Befindlichkeitsstörung“ zu den grundlegendsten Fertigkeiten eines jeden Arztes, egal ob angestellt oder niedergelassen, egal ob Jungarzt oder Routinier, unabhängig von seiner Ausbildung. Und dies gelingt bei ca. 70% der Patienten. Bei den verbleibenden 30% ist die Unzufriedenheit der Patienten mit der angebotenen Schmerztherapie hoch, sowohlApproximately 80 per cent of primary care patients seek their physician’s attention due to pain. A fifth of the population suffers from chronic pain with medium to high intensity, and longer than 3 months. Especially those patients are treated insufficiently when only non-opioids and opioids are applied. Therefore it is necessary to tailor pain therapy by using an interdisciplinary, multimodal treatment regimen. This article presents a holistic concept to chronic pain treatment by using the five columns of pain therapy. Based on the bio-psycho-social approach, pharmaceutical, complimentary (first column), physio- and psychotherapeutic (2nd and 3rd column), social and invasive interventions (4th and 5th column) have to be considered. The 1st column includes the WHO ladder, in chronic pain patients with a large focus on coanalgesics like antidepressants or antiepileptics. Based on the individual history and factors achieved from the bio-psychosocial diagnosis, components of these 5 therapeutic are selected, always in agreement with the patient, and put together to one interdisciplinary therapeutic concep

High-mobility graphene in 2D periodic potentials

This work focuses on hBN-graphene van der Waals heterostructures and their investigation via transport experiments. In this way, we could probe and characterize different commensurability effects stemming from the induced superlattice potential and report their influence on transport properties in graphene. The encapsulation of graphene between hBN significantly increases the bulk carrier mobility of graphene and were able to investigate interaction-driven quantum Hall effects, such as quantum Hall ferromagnetism and the fractional quantum Hall effect. Any further top-down patterning steps do not necessarily degrade the intrinsic quality of the graphene sheet. The high sample quality can be preserved in graphene-based antidot lattices and we successfully probed pronounced commensurability features in antidot arrays. Moreover, we study the interplay between a moiré and an imposed antidot superlattice potential and discuss their influence on magnetotransport measurements. In the end, we discuss a new method for imposing lateral superlattice potentials, employing a local few-layer graphene patterned bottom gate. In this way, we are able to report Weiss oscillations in the weakly modulated unipolar regime and antidot peaks for strong modulation in a bipolar gate configuration

Determinanten des Erfolgs staatlich geförderter Existenzgründungen – eine empirische Untersuchung

Ein Großteil der Neugründungen in Deutschland ist auf staatliche Förderung von Existenzgründern zurückzuführen. Dieser Anteil hat sich nach Einführung des als „Ich-AG“ bekannten Existenzgründungszuschusses Anfang 2003 stark erhöht. Die Erfolgsfaktorenforschung hat diese Form von Gründungen bislang jedoch wenig untersucht. Im Rahmen einer großzahligen Befragung von geförderten Existenzgründern untersucht dieser Beitrag die Erfolgsdeterminanten solcher geförderter Existenzgründungen. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse zeigen, dass der Gewinn aus der Existenzgründung bei älteren Gründern und bei Gründern mit einer langen Phase der Arbeitslosigkeit vor der Gründung seltener beziehungsweise erst später zur Bestreitung des Lebensunterhalts ausreicht. Dies gilt auch für Franchisegründungen und für Gründungen durch Frauen. In Bezug auf Bildungsvariablen, Gründungserfahrung und Teamgründungen im Vergleich zu Einzelgründungen wurde kein Effekt gefunden. Vorhandene Branchenerfahrung wirkt sich hingegen positiv auf den Erfolg der Gründung aus, Gründungs- und Führungserfahrung dagegen nicht. Die Implikationen unserer Ergebnisse für die Entrepreneurship-Forschung sowie für die Entrepreneurship-Praxis werden diskutiert. Herausforderungen aus Sicht der Gründungspolitik werden aufgezeigt.A large number of new ventures in Germany are undertaken due to government aid. With the introduction of the “Ich-AG” or “me-plc” in January 2003, this share has increased strongly. Entrepreneurship research so far has said very little about the success and the determinants of success of these types of start-ups. With this study, we aim to close this gap. We analyze the success and the determinants of success of these new ventures in a large scale survey of founders that have received governmental aid for their start-up. Our results show that the income generated by the venture is less likely to cover the costs of living in particular for elderly founders and for those founders that have experienced a long period of unemployment before they started their venture. This finding is also true for new ventures founded by women as well as for franchise start-ups. As concerns formal education, founder experience, and the fact whether the venture is founded by a team or not no significant effects exist. Industry experience, however, has a significant positive effect on the success of the new venture whereas founding and management experience have no effect. We discuss the implications of our findings from a perspective of entrepreneurship research as well as from a perspective of governmental start-up policy

Ballistic transport in graphene antidot lattices

Graphene samples can have a very high carrier mobility if influences from the substrate and the environment are minimized. Embedding a graphene sheet into a heterostructure with hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) on both sides was shown to be a particularly efficient way of achieving a high bulk mobility. Nanopatterning graphene can add extra damage and drastically reduce sample mobility by edge disorder. Preparing etched graphene nanostructures on top of an hBN substrate instead of SiO2 is no remedy, as transport characteristics are still dominated by edge roughness. Here we show that etching fully encapsulated graphene on the nanoscale is more gentle and the high mobility can be preserved. To this end, we prepared graphene antidot lattices where we observe magnetotransport features stemming from ballistic transport. Due to the short lattice period in our samples we can also explore the boundary between the classical and the quantum transport regime

Determinanten des Erfolgs staatlich geförderter Existenzgründungen – eine empirische Untersuchung

Ein Großteil der Neugründungen in Deutschland ist auf staatliche Förderung von Existenzgründern zurückzuführen. Dieser Anteil hat sich nach Einführung des als „Ich-AG“ bekannten Existenzgründungszuschusses Anfang 2003 stark erhöht. Die Erfolgsfaktorenforschung hat diese Form von Gründungen bislang jedoch wenig untersucht. Im Rahmen einer großzahligen Befragung von geförderten Existenzgründern untersucht dieser Beitrag die Erfolgsdeterminanten solcher geförderter Existenzgründungen. Die Ergebnisse der Analyse zeigen, dass der Gewinn aus der Existenzgründung bei älteren Gründern und bei Gründern mit einer langen Phase der Arbeitslosigkeit vor der Gründung seltener beziehungsweise erst später zur Bestreitung des Lebensunterhalts ausreicht. Dies gilt auch für Franchisegründungen und für Gründungen durch Frauen. In Bezug auf Bildungsvariablen, Gründungserfahrung und Teamgründungen im Vergleich zu Einzelgründungen wurde kein Effekt gefunden. Vorhandene Branchenerfahrung wirkt sich hingegen positiv auf den Erfolg der Gründung aus, Gründungs- und Führungserfahrung dagegen nicht. Die Implikationen unserer Ergebnisse für die Entrepreneurship-Forschung sowie für die Entrepreneurship-Praxis werden diskutiert. Herausforderungen aus Sicht der Gründungspolitik werden aufgezeigt.A large number of new ventures in Germany are undertaken due to government aid. With the introduction of the “Ich-AG” or “me-plc” in January 2003, this share has increased strongly. Entrepreneurship research so far has said very little about the success and the determinants of success of these types of start-ups. With this study, we aim to close this gap. We analyze the success and the determinants of success of these new ventures in a large scale survey of founders that have received governmental aid for their start-up. Our results show that the income generated by the venture is less likely to cover the costs of living in particular for elderly founders and for those founders that have experienced a long period of unemployment before they started their venture. This finding is also true for new ventures founded by women as well as for franchise start-ups. As concerns formal education, founder experience, and the fact whether the venture is founded by a team or not no significant effects exist. Industry experience, however, has a significant positive effect on the success of the new venture whereas founding and management experience have no effect. We discuss the implications of our findings from a perspective of entrepreneurship research as well as from a perspective of governmental start-up policy.Entrepreneurship; Self-employment; Necessity Entreptreneurship; Entrepreneurship Policy; Determinants of Success

Manual Khalifa Therapy Improves Functional and Morphological Outcome of Patients with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Rupture in the Knee: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is a high incidence injury usually treated surgically. According to common knowledge, it does not heal spontaneously, although some claim the opposite. Regeneration therapy by Khalifa was developed for injuries of the musculoskeletal system by using specific pressure to the skin. This randomized, controlled, observer-blinded, multicentre study was performed to validate this assumption. Thirty patients with complete ACL rupture, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) verified, were included. Study examinations (e.g., international knee documentation committee (IKDC) score) were performed at inclusion (t0). Patients were randomized to receive either standardised physiotherapy (ST) or additionally 1 hour of Khalifa therapy at the first session (STK). Twenty-four hours later, study examinations were performed again (t1). Three months later control MRI and follow-up examinations were performed (t2). Initial status was comparable between both groups. There was a highly significant difference of mean IKDC score results at t1 and t2. After 3 months, 47% of the STK patients, but no ST patient, demonstrated an end-to-end homogeneous ACL in MRI. Clinical and physical examinations were significantly different in t1 and t2. ACL healing can be improved with manual therapy. Physical activity can be performed without pain and nearly normal range of motion after one treatment of specific pressure