Creating a Culture of Health in Planning and Implementing Innovative Strategies Addressing Non-communicable Chronic Diseases.

Ongoing demographic changes are challenging health systems worldwide especially in relation to increasing longevity and the resultant rise of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). To meet these challenges, a paradigm shift to a more proactive approach to health promotion, and maintenance is needed. This new paradigm focuses on creating and implementing an ecological model of Culture of Health.

2015-2018 Regional Prevention Plan of Lombardy (Northern Italy) and sedentary prevention: a cross-sectional strategy to develop evidence-based programmes.

Cross-sector, life-course, and setting approaches are identified in the 2015-2018 Regional Prevention Plan (PRP) of Lombardy Region (Northern Italy) as valuable strategies to ensure the efficacy and sustainable prevention of the non-communicable disease (NCDs). The involvement of non-health sectors in health promotion activities represents a suitable strategy to affect on social, economic, and political determinants and to change environmental factors that could cause NCDs. A dialogue among communities, urban planning, and prevention know-how is a prerequisite to develop a system of policies suitable to promote healthy lifestyle in general and, specifically, active lifestyles.

[Inguinal hernioplasty: current trends].

The Authors report their experience in the surgical management of 282 inguinal hernias classified according to Gilbert's classification. The different techniques used were compared analysing the results obtained in 104 patients operated with the Bassini hernioplasty, while in 120 cases the Lichteinstein tension-free repair and in 58 cases the Shouldice hernioplasty were performed. In the patients operated according to the Lichteinstein tension-free technique an Autosuture mesh was used.

[The current controversies over video laparoscopic cholecystectomy as the treatment of choice for cholelithiasis].

Recently, the widespread use of laparoscopic cholecystectomy allowed to reach several goals such as a minimal invasive approach, a minimal operative trauma, the absence of aesthetic or functional damage of the abdominal wall, and a quick return to full activities. On the other hand, as all innovations, laparoscopic cholecystectomy is matter of debate and a number of controversies have recently appeared in the Scientific Literature. On the basis of their experience and through a critical review of the Literature, the Authors have therefore analyzed possible solutions to such controversies.

[Ambulatory treatment of postphlebitic ulcers of lower limbs. Physiopathological bases and clinical results].

Venous ulceration is a troublesome and disabling complication, representing one of the most difficult problems to be treated by the vascular surgeon. Venous insufficiency is a widespread condition, the prevalence of venous ulceration being 0.5 - 1 per cent in European populations.