Publications by authors named "Giammarchi C"

Background: eHealth Literacy (eHL) is a set of competencies and skills encompassing the knowledge, comfort and perceived ability to identify, evaluate and apply electronic health information to health problems. Given its role in the appropriate use of health technologies, ensuring equitable access to health information and improving patient outcomes, this study aims to systematically retrieve, qualitatively and quantitative pool and critically appraise available experimental evidence on the effectiveness of eHL interventions across different population groups.

Methods: Following the PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review in PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Library and ClinicalTrials.

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Article Synopsis
  • Current debates exist over which elderly patients with SCAF should receive anticoagulation therapy, given the potential benefits and risks associated with commonly prescribed medications like Edoxaban or Apixaban.
  • The review suggests improvements to risk assessment for patients with SCAF by adding factors like chronic kidney disease, obesity, and frailty to existing scoring systems, highlighting the need for future research on personalized treatment strategies.
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Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, reduced access to care services and fear of infection prompted families to increase home care for their older relatives with long-term care needs. This had negative effects on both members of the caring dyad, impacting their quality of life (QoL) and mental well-being. This study investigated the factors that influenced the mental well-being and QoL of 239 dyads, before and after the first pandemic wave in Italy.

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Background: Health literacy has a strong influence on individual health outcomes and the sustainability of healthcare systems. Healthcare professionals often overestimate patients' health literacy levels and lack adequate competencies to address limited health literacy effectively. Therefore, promoting understanding through effective health communication between professionals and citizens is becoming increasingly important.

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The use of radiomics and artificial intelligence applied for the diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer's disease has developed in recent years. However, this approach is not yet completely applicable in clinical practice. The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic analysis of the studies that have included the use of radiomics from different imaging techniques and artificial intelligence for the diagnosis and monitoring of Alzheimer's disease in order to improve the clinical outcomes and quality of life of older patients.

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(1) Background: Parkinson's Disease (PD) is one of the most common causes of disability among older individuals. The advanced stages of PD are usually characterized by postural instability and, as a consequence, falls. Those are among the main factors that determine the quality of life, as well as the morbidity and mortality of a person with PD.

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Skills, knowledge, and awareness of digital and technological tools are essential to improve the state of well-being and health of older adults and also to mitigate the condition of social isolation in the aging process. For this reason, it is necessary to implement a social learning of electronic/digital tools for health of older people to support the achievement of eHealth and digital competences. The paper reports the results of an Italian innovative eHealth training for the European project ACCESS.

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Patient-centred care is tailored to the needs of patients and is necessary for better health outcomes, especially for individuals with limited health literacy (LHL). However, its implementation remains challenging. The key to effectively address patient-centred care is to include perspectives of patients with LHL within the curricula of (future) healthcare providers (HCP).

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Many professionals have limited knowledge of how to address health literacy; they need a wider range of health literacy competencies to enhance empowerment and person-centred prevention. We evaluated whether: (1) a comprehensive health literacy training increased self-rated competencies of health professionals to address health literacy related problems and support the development of people's autonomy and self-management abilities after training and 6-12 weeks later, (2) professionals were satisfied with the training, (3) outcomes differed for the three participating European countries. Health professionals (N = 106) participated in a multicentre pre-post intervention study in Italy, the Netherlands and Northern Ireland.

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Women who inject drugs (WWID) are an especially vulnerable group of drug users. This study determined the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity and intimate partrner violence (IPV), and factors associated with psychiatric comorbidity among WWID recruited from drug treatment services (67%) and harm reduction services in five European regions in Austria, Catalonia, Italy, Poland, and Scotland. Psychiatric comorbidity was assessed among 226 WWID using the Dual Diagnosis Screening Instrument.

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Objective: Skills to address different health literacy problems are lacking among health professionals. We sought to develop and pilot test a comprehensive health literacy communication training for various health professionals in Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands.

Methods: Thirty health professionals participated in the study.

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Background: Critical health literacy enables older adults to make informed health decisions and take actions for the health and wellbeing of themselves and their community, within their own social and cultural context. A community-based approach has the potential to improve the critical health literacy of older adults and their communities. However, it is not clear how such initiatives consider critical health literacy.

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Among lifestyle factors, nutrition is one of the most important determinants of health, and represents a pivotal element of cancer risk. Nonetheless, epidemiological evidences of the relationship between several cancers and specific foods and nutrients is still inadequate, and solid conclusions are missing. Indeed, caloric restriction without malnutrition is associated to cancer prevention.

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Twenty-five subjects with no pelvic floor dysfunctions at defecography were examined with direct coronal CT scans of the pelvis at rest and on straining. Three compartments with different characteristics were delimited by two planes-the anterior one being tangent to the ischiatic foramen and the posterior one to the ischial tuberosities. At rest, the average length of the levator ani muscle and the surface of the supralevator space were significantly lower posteriorly than in the other two compartments (48.

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