Publications by authors named "Carlos Garcia Alonso"

Background: Andalusia is the second largest region in Spain, and it has developed a comprehensive mental health (MH) plan that encourages the consolidation of the balanced care model. However, its geographical and socioeconomic disparity is a great challenge for a community-based MH system. Both the assessment of the implementation of the MH plan and the development of new tools to support decision-making can be considered critical.

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Background: Long-term mental health (MH) policies in Finland aimed at investing in community care and promoting reforms have led to a reduction in the number of psychiatric hospital beds. However, most resources are still allocated to hospital and community residential services due to various social, economic and political factors. Despite previous research focussing on the number and cost of these services, no study has evaluated the emerging patterns of use, their technical performance and the relationship with the workforce structure.

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Introduction: Mental healthcare systems are primarily designed to urban populations. However, the specific characteristics of rural areas require specific strategies, resource allocation, and indicators which fit their local conditions. This planning process requires comparison with other rural areas.

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Introduction: The global health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on mental health (MH). As a response to the pandemic, international agencies and governmental institutions provided an initial response to the population's needs. As the pandemic evolved, the population circumstances changed, and some of these international agencies updated their strategies, recommendations, and guidelines for the populations.

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Objectives: To evaluate the relationship between time since contraceptive implant placement and retrieval outcomes in patients with implant migration into the pulmonary artery.

Study Design: We reviewed all cases of pulmonary artery implant migration referred to the Marie Lannelongue hospital from 2015 through 2020. Using our hospital database, we collected patients' clinical data and removal information to assess the success of therapeutic management according to the delay between implant insertion and removal.

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Decision support systems are appropriate tools for guiding policymaking processes, especially in mental health (MH), where care provision should be delivered in a balanced and integrated way. This study aims to develop an analytical process for (i) assessing the performance of an MH ecosystem and (ii) identifying benchmark and target-for-improvement catchment areas. MH provision (inpatient, day and outpatient types of care) was analysed in the Mental Health Network of Gipuzkoa (Osakidetza, Basque Country, Spain) using a decision support system that integrated data envelopment analysis, Monte Carlo simulation and artificial intelligence.

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Rehabilitation services have a key role in ensuring integrated and comprehensive mental health (MH) care in the community for people suffering from long-term and severe mental disorders. MH-supported accommodation services aim to promote service users' autonomy and independence. Given the complexity associated with MH-supported accommodation services in England, a comparative evaluation of critical performance indicators, including service provision and quality of care, seems to be necessary in designing evidence-informed policies.

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Major efforts worldwide have been made to provide balanced Mental Health (MH) care. Any integrated MH ecosystem includes hospital and community-based care, highlighting the role of outpatient care in reducing relapses and readmissions. This study aimed (i) to identify potential expert-based causal relationships between inpatient and outpatient care variables, (ii) to assess them by using statistical procedures, and finally (iii) to assess the potential impact of a specific policy enhancing the MH care balance on real ecosystem performance.

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Background: Mental health care systems have been dramatically affected by COVID-19. Containment measures have been imposed, with negative consequences on population mental health. Therefore, an increase in both symptomatology and mental disorder incidence is expected.

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Objective: The benefit of aneurysm sac coil embolisation (ASCE) during endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) remains unclear. This prospective randomised two centre study (SCOPE 1: Sac COil embolisation for Prevention of Endoleak) compared the outcomes of standard EVAR in patients with AAA at high risk of type II endoleak (EL with EVAR with ASCE during the period 2014-2019.

Methods: Patients at high risk of type II EL were randomised to standard EVAR (group A) or EVAR with coil ASCE (group B).

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Objective: This article reviews the usability of the Integrated Atlases of Mental Health as a decision support tool for service planning following a health ecosystem research approach.

Method: This study describes the types of atlases and the procedure for their development. Atlases carried out in Spain are presented and their impact in mental health service planning is assessed.

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Effective mental health change in Spain started in 1985 with the Report of the Ministerial Commission for the Psychiatric Reform that recommended integrating psychiatric care into the general health system, providing care in the patient's context and for specific diagnoses. The SESPAS 2002 Report carried out an analysis of this reform and recommended the creation of a permanent ministerial commission, the design of a national map of socio-sanitary mental health services, the creation of a coordination and promotion agency for and carrying out a financial analysis of resource provision and research. Since 2004, the Technical Committee for the Mental Health Strategy boosted the elaboration of a theoretical and normative framework that unfortunately did not lead to a road map for the improvement of the system.

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Background: Conflicting results have been reported regarding sex differences in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), but their potential influence on clinical outcomes after chronic total coronary occlusion (CTO) PCI remains unknown. We aimed to identify sex-related differences in long-term clinical outcomes after CTO PCI.

Methods And Results: All consecutive patients undergoing CTO PCI between 2004 and 2012 were included in a prospective registry.

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Aims: To evaluate safety and efficacy of balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) in a large cohort of patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH).

Methods: From 2014 to 2017, 184 inoperable CTEPH patients underwent 1006 BPA sessions. Safety and efficacy during the first 21 months (initial period) were compared with those of the last 21 months (recent period).

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Evidence-informed strategic planning is a top priority in Mental Health (MH) due to the burden associated with this group of disorders and its societal costs. However, MH systems are highly complex, and decision support tools should follow a systems thinking approach that incorporates expert knowledge. The aim of this paper is to introduce a new Decision Support System (DSS) to improve knowledge on the health ecosystem, resource allocation and management in regional MH planning.

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Mental health services and systems (MHSS) are characterized by their complexity. Causal modelling is a tool for decision-making based on identifying critical variables and their causal relationships. In the last two decades, great efforts have been made to provide integrated and balanced mental health care, but there is no a clear systematization of causal links among MHSS variables.

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The current prevalence of mental disorders demands improved ways of the management and planning of mental health (MH) services. Relative technical efficiency (RTE) is an appropriate and robust indicator to support decision-making in health care, but it has not been applied significantly in MH. This article systematically reviews the empirical background of RTE in MH services following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.

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Mental health services (MHS) have gone through vast changes during the last decades, shifting from hospital to community-based care. Developing the optimal balance and use of resources requires standard comparisons of mental health care systems across countries. This study aimed to compare the structure, personnel resource allocation, and the productivity of the MHS in two benchmark health districts in a Nordic welfare state and a southern European, family-centered country.

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Background: Decision-making in mental health systems should be supported by the evidence-informed knowledge transfer of data. Since mental health systems are inherently complex, involving interactions between its structures, processes and outcomes, decision support systems (DSS) need to be developed using advanced computational methods and visual tools to allow full system analysis, whilst incorporating domain experts in the analysis process. In this study, we use a DSS model developed for interactive data mining and domain expert collaboration in the analysis of complex mental health systems to improve system knowledge and evidence-informed policy planning.

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Background: Previous research identified high/low clusters of prevalence of outpatient-treated depression at municipal level in Catalonia (Spain). This study aims to analyse potential risk factors, both socioeconomic and related to the mental health service planning, which could influence the occurrence of hot/cold spots of depressed outpatients at two geographical levels: municipalities and service catchment areas.

Method: Hot/cold spots were examined in relation to socioeconomic indicators at municipal level, such as population density, unemployment, university education, personal income, and also those related to service planning at catchment area level, such as adequacy of healthcare, urbanicity, accessibility and the availability of mental health community centres.

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Introduction: Mental health care is a critical area to better understand integrated care and to pilot the different components of the integrated care model. However, there is an urgent need for better tools to compare and understand the context of integrated mental health care in Europe.

Method: The REMAST tool (REFINEMENT MApping Services Tool) combines a series of standardised health service research instruments and geographical information systems (GIS) to develop local atlases of mental health care from the perspective of horizontal and vertical integrated care.

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Background And Objective: Mitral valve (MV) repair is the preferred surgical treatment for degenerative mitral regurgitation (MR). However, questions remain about the efficacy of MV repair when performed for MR caused by infective endocarditis (IE), particularly during its active phase. Although several observational studies have suggested the superiority of MV repair over replacement in patients undergoing surgery for IE, many centres are still opting for valve replacement because of its technical feasibility and reproducibility.

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Studies show that the association between socio-economic status (SES) and self-rated health (SRH) varies in different countries, however there are not many country-comparisons that examine this relationship over time. The objective of the present study is to determine the effect of three SES measures on SRH in 29 countries according to findings in European Social Surveys (2002-2008), in order to study how socio-economic inequalities can vary our subjective state of health. In line with previous studies, income inequalities seem to be greater not only in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries, but especially in Eastern European countries.

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Background: Cost of illness (COI) studies are carried out under conditions of uncertainty and with incomplete information. There are concerns regarding their generalisability, accuracy and usability in evidence-informed care.

Aims: A hybrid methodology is used to estimate the regional costs of depression in Catalonia (Spain) following an integrative approach.

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