Bulgarian country report

pp. 253-25

SPAs and wellness - a new philosophy for harmony in life

The article reveals the development of spa therapy through the years and centuries and its revival by receiving renewed attention from many medical specialties and health tourists. According to their character spas nowadays reflect the progress of science and culture of mankind. The accent is on the contemporary understanding of spa which is based on health promotion and prevention of illnesses. The idea for health prophylaxis has reached a higher level which serves as a base for thefoundations of wellness conception. The idea of this conception is aspiration for achieving complete prosperity of the human personality by synergy of all aspects of health - physical, mental, intellectual, emotional and social

Professional And Personal Competence Of Healthcare Specialists And Inclination For Training

The management of the professional and personal competence of health professionals is one of the main tasks of modern management. A training strategy has been developed, based on empirical assessment of the needs of the target group of healthcare professionals in the Clinic of Pediatric Diseases, Dr. Georgi Stranski University Hospital, Pleven. The aim of the study is to outline the overall picture of professional and personal competence among working nurses to point out possible and necessary areas of professional competence that can be improved through training and to build a training program on this basis. The statistical processing of the data from the study was done with SPSS 16.0 and Excel, performing demographical statistics, percent ratio, average values of the individual factors, and correlation analysis. In the developed training program, in the first place there are topics related to learning communication skills, ability to work with aggressive parents, and skills to talk with parents. Pedagogical skills and competences, and abilities to use information technologies are third among all planned topics, followed by courses on coping strategies for dealing with stress and decision-making skills

Principles of rehabilitation for patients with COVID-19 in the intensive care unit based on the 'Leuven Protocol'

Respiratory rehabilitation for patients with COVID-19 pneumonia in the intensive care unit is an extremely responsible and highly specialized process. Intensive treatment is not included in basic physical therapy training or curricula, and there is a notable absence of additional training opportunities in intensive care medicine for physiotherapists. According to research data, patients who undergo rehabilitation regain their independence more quickly, leading to a potential reduction in their stay in the intensive care unit. The rehabilitation program tailored for intensive care unit patients, known as the 'Leuven Protocol' (Belgium), is meticulously designed and user-friendly. This article aims to provide the necessary information about the therapeutic benefits of the experience gained by German specialists who implemented a COVID-19 rehabilitation program based on the 'Leuven Protocol' in the intensive care unit

The role of traction therapy in the treatment of pain syndrome and the psycho-emotional state of the patients with lumbar disc disease

INTRODUCTION: Traction therapy as a method for treatment of the spinal diseases has been known to mankind since Hippocrates. Its abilities to target the main symptoms in patients with lumbar disc disease are still an object of discussion.AIM: To analyze the effect of intermittent traction therapy in targeting pain syndrome and the psycho-emotional state of the patients with lumbar disc disease.MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 122 patients suffering from lumbar disc disease were exam­ined and 100 of them corresponded to the criteria and took part in the research. The control group (CG) in­cluded 50 patients, treated with basic therapy low-frequency electromagnetic field (LFMF) and interferen­tial therapy - bipolar technique (BPI). The experimental group (EG) included 50 patients treated with ba­sic therapy and intermittent traction therapy. To track the effects of the treatment, we used an evaluation of the static and dynamic pain, an evaluation of the psycho-emotional state through the WAM (well-being, activity, mood) test, done before, right after and at the end of the treatment as well as 1 and 3 months after the treatment.RESULTS: Both methodologies have a pain-reducing effect and help the improvement of the psycho-emo­tional state of the patients. The results have a high statistical importance (p<0.001) for both groups when it comes to reduction of the pain syndrome and the indicators of the psycho-functional testing. When compar­ing EG and CG the difference is also statistically significant (p<0.001) with the EG being superior.CONCLUSION: Traction therapy, conducted following all rules of the good medical practice is well toler­ated by the patients suffering from lumbar disc disease and contributes to the improvement of their psycho-emotional state

Dynamics of fixed-volume pinned film -- dealing with a non-self-adjoint thin film problem

The use of thin liquid films has expanded beyond lubrication and coatings, and into applications in actuators and adaptive optical elements. In contrast to their predecessors, whose dynamics can be typically captured by modelling infinite or periodic films, these applications are characterized by a finite amount of liquid in an impermeable domain. The global mass conservation constraint, together with common boundary conditions (e.g., pinning) create quantitatively and qualitatively different dynamics than those of infinite films. Mathematically, this manifests itself as a non-self-adjoint problem. This work presents a combined theoretical and experimental study for this problem. We provide a time-dependent closed-form analytical solution for the linearized non-self-adjoint system that arises from these boundary conditions. We highlight that, in contrast to self-adjoint problems, here special care should be given to deriving the adjoint problem to reconstruct the solution based on the eigenfunctions properly. We compare these solutions with those obtained for permeable and periodic boundary conditions, representing common models for self-adjoint thin-film problems. We show that while the initial dynamics are nearly identical, the boundary conditions eventually affect the film deformation as well as its response time. To experimentally illustrate the dynamics and to validate the theoretical model, we fabricated an experimental setup that subjects a thin liquid film to a prescribed normal force distribution through dielectrophoresis, and used high-frame-rate digital holography to measure the film deformation in real-time. The experiments agree well with the model and confirm that confined films exhibit different behaviour which could not be predicted by existing models.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Coupling of volume of fluid and level set methods in condensing heat transfer simulations

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this record Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a rapidly developing new technology which allows the manufacture of arbitrarily complex geometries, and which is likely to transform heat exchanger design. To drive this transformation we need to develop computer modelling techniques to model fluid flow, heat exchange and phase change in arbitrarily complex domains, such as can be manufactured using AM. The present work aims to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for heat transfer and phase change, robust enough to model compact AM heat exchangers for automotive fuel cell application. The hydrodynamics of the two-phase flow is captured via the Volume Of Fluid (VOF) approach, coupled with a Level Set method in order to capture the sharp interface between liquid and vapour in laminar film condensation. The Stefan problem is used to show the improvement of the interface tracking with LS-VOF against VOF approach. The resulting complete condensation model is applied for the first time for a complex AM geometry and validated against experimental data

Modelling of Powder Removal for Additive Manufacture Postprocessing

This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this recordData Availability Statement: No data for public archival are reported in this study. This study does not report any data of this kind.A critical challenge underpinning the adoption of Additive Manufacture (AM) as a technology is the postprocessing of manufactured components. For Powder Bed Fusion (PBF), this can involve the removal of powder from the interior of the component, often by vibrating the component to fluidise the powder to encourage drainage. In this paper, we develop and validate a computational model of the flow of metal powder suitable for predicting powder removal from such AM components. The model is a continuum Eulerian multiphase model of the powder including models for the granular temperature; the effect of vibration can be included through appropriate wall boundaries for this granular temperature. We validate the individual sub-models appropriate for AM metal powders by comparison with in-house and literature experimental results, and then apply the full model to a more complex geometry typical of an AM Heat Exchanger. The model is shown to provide valuable and accurate results at a fraction of the computational cost of a particle-based model.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)Innovate U

Our experience with using Deep Oscillation in early rehabilitation of patients with arthoplasty of the knee joint

Ставното ендопротезиране е сред най-разпространените съвременни операции в ортопедията и травматологията. Физиотерапията и рехабилитацията са финалната фаза на ендопротезирането и са от изключителна важност както за темповете, така и за степента на функционалното възстановяване. Дълбоките осцилации (DEEP OSCILLATION) са патентована терапевтична процедура, използваща резониращи вибрации на тъканите с минимален външен механичен ефект и доказано обезболяващо, антифибротично, противооточно и противовъзпалително действие.Целта на настоящото проучване е да се проследи ефектът от комплексното приложение на дълбоките осцилации и кинезитерапията върху редуцирането на отока, намаляване на болковата симптоматика и възстановяване обема на движение при пациенти след алопластика на колянна става. Проучването е проведено върху 50 пациенти, от които 21 мъже и 30 жени, разпределени в 2 групи по 25 човека, на случаен принцип - експериментална група (ЕГ) и контролна група (КГ), всичките след алопластика на колянна става.Получените резултати доказаха, че дълбоките осцилации са ефективен метод за отстраняване на отока, потискане на болката и възпалението и увеличаване на обема на движение при ранната рехабилитация на пациенти след алопластика на колянната става. Комбинираното приложение на дълбоки осцилации и кинезитерапия дава по-добри резултати по отношение на сроковете и степента на възстановяване на функцията на колянната става след ендопротезиране.Arthroplasty is the most frequent amongst the interventions in orthopаedics and traumatology. Physiotherapy and rehabilitation are the final stage of arthroplasty with great importance concerning the rate and stage of functional recovery. Deep Oscillations is a patent therapeutic treatment which uses tissue vibrations with minimal external mechanical effect and is with proven pain relief and fibrinolytic effect, reducing oedema and inflammation. The aim of this study is to follow the effect of the complex application of Deep Oscillations and kinesitherapy on the recovery of patients with total knee arthroplasty.The study included 50 patients (21 men and 30 women) divided into 2 groups - experimental (EG) and control group (CG) all with total knee arthroplasty and proved that Deep Oscillations is an effective method for reducing inflammation, oedema and pain and increasing the range of motion in the early rehabilitation after knee joint replacement. Combined application with appropriate exercises has better results concerning the rate and stage of functional recovery