Instability of the non-activated rotational thromboelastometry assay (NATEM) in citrate stored blood.

Introduction: The non-activated rotational thromboelastometric assay (NATEM) is increasingly used as sensitive test for the evaluation of the endogenous activation of haemostasis. The reproducibility of the test results in citrate stored blood has never been investigated.

Materials And Methods: The NATEM assay was performed in citrated blood samples stored for 0, 45 and 90minutes using ROTEM® (TEM International, Munich, Germany).

Preventive healthcare surveillance can detect emerging behavioural problems that are related to later school dropouts.

Aim: School dropout is a multidimensional problem with negative consequences for socio-economic status. Most interventions to reduce school dropout have been implemented in education rather than in preventive healthcare. Our goal was to determine whether measurements used in preventive healthcare surveillance enabled us to detect internalising and externalising problems in relation to later school dropouts.

Supervision in social health insurance: a four country study.

This article presents the results of an international comparative study of a widely neglected element in social health insurance: supervision upon the sickness funds as implementing agents of social health insurance. The following countries were included: Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. A comparative analysis of the institutional structure of supervision revealed many differences.