Effectiveness of Text Messaging as an Adjuvant to Health Advice in Smoking Cessation Programs in Primary Care. A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Introduction: Smoking remains a major risk factor for chronic diseases. Health advice is considered one of the most cost-effective interventions; however, changes produced by counseling tend not to persist over time, it is necessary to implement enforcement mechanisms.

Methods: Randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a combined program that includes health advice and text messaging to mobile phone (SMSalud®).

Platelet-rich plasma in skin ulcer treatment.

Introduction: Chronic vascular ulcers are associated with a high use of resources. Conventional treatment consists of wound cleansing, necrotic tissue debridement, prevention, diagnosis, and, if necessary, treatment of infection and dressing application; although conventional treatment has limited effectiveness with wound healing (around 15-30%).8-11 Platelet-rich plasma, used in various fields of medicine, improves chronic vascular ulcer results, but is more expensive.

[Efficacy of hospital at home (HaH) in the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) with different degrees of severity].

Background And Objective: Different scientific societies propose the use of scales of severity and additional criteria (AC) in order to determine the setting for the treatment of Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP).The objective of this study is to correlate the risk regarding three clinical prediction rules (PSI, CURB-65 and PSCRUXO-80) and AC with the effectiveness of hospital at home (HaH).

Patients And Method: Evaluation of cases of CAP referred from the Emergency Unit to HaH between January 2000 and May 2008.

[Variations in health-related quality of life in critical patients].

Objective: To determine the changes in the health-related quality of life (hRQOL) six months after discharge from the ICU and the conditions associated to them.

Design: A prospective cohort study.

Setting: 14 beds medical-surgical intensive care unit (ICU).

Health-related quality of life as a prognostic factor of survival in critically ill patients.

Objective: To evaluate whether health-related quality of life prior to admission into an intensive care unit (ICU) is a prognostic factor of hospital and 1 year mortality.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Fourteen-bed medical-surgical ICU.