Illness perception in tuberculosis by implementation of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire - a TBNET study.

How patients relate to the experience of their illness has a direct impact over their behavior. We aimed to assess illness perception in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) by means of the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) in correlation with patients' demographic features and clinical TB score. Our observational questionnaire based study included series of consecutive TB patients enrolled in several countries from October 2008 to January 2011 with 167 valid questionnaires analyzed.

Gender differences revealed by the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire in allergic rhinitis.

Background: The increasing prevalence of allergic rhinitis (AR) is reported worldwide. Illness perception (IP) assessment is warranted in current routine clinical practice to assist communication between patients and medical staff, and improve adherence to treatment and disease outcome.

Objective: To investigate a group of patients with AR in terms of their IP by the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ) and to correlate the findings with demographic and clinical features.

[Information group--a solution to increase the efficacy of specialized intervention for smoking cessation].

Since 2007, in Romania, the Ministry of Health implements the national programme for tobacco control which contains also a sub-programme for sustaining smoking cessation through free treatment and counselling. Because the specialised intervention lasts too long (often more than 60 minutes) and the requests for support increased with a high rate, we had to identify methods to increase the efficacity of the intervention and, thus, the efficiency. According to this new situation, since January 2008, all the smokers asking for support to the Center for Smoking Cessation from the National Institute of Pneumology "Marius Nasta" had to participate to an "information group" prior to visit to the doctor or/and psychologist for specialized help.