Cardiac disease and stroke: Practical implications for personalised care in cardiac-stroke patients. A state of the art review supported by the Association of Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions.

Cardiac and stroke conditions often coexist because of common risk factors. The occurrence of stroke may have significant consequences for patients with cardiac conditions and their caregivers and poses a major burden on their lives. Although both cardiac and stroke conditions are highly prevalent, primary stroke prevention in cardiac patients is crucial to avert disabling limitations or even mortality.

Talking about childhood music: A twin study.

To what extent do childhood experiences of music practice influence thinking about music later in life? In this contribution, 27-54-year-old monozygotic twins discordant with regard to piano playing in life were interviewed about music experiences during childhood and adult years. Recordings of heart rate variability were performed continuously during the interviews which were done separately with playing and nonplaying cotwins. Random factors had determined whether the twin chose to play or not.

End of Life Care for Patients Dying of Stroke: A Comparative Registry Study of Stroke and Cancer.

Background: Although stroke is a significant public health challenge and the need for palliative care has been emphasized for these patients, there is limited data on end-of-life care for patients dying from stroke.

Objective: To study the end-of-life care during the last week of life for patients who had died of stroke in terms of registered symptom, symptom management, and communication, in comparison with patients who had died of cancer.

Design: This study is a retrospective, comparative registry study.

Ethical dilemmas around the dying patient with stroke: a qualitative interview study with team members on stroke units in Sweden.

In Sweden, individuals affected by severe stroke are treated in specialized stroke units. In these units, patients are attended by a multiprofessional team with a focus on care in the acute phase of stroke, rehabilitation phase, and palliative phase. Caring for patients with such a large variety in condition and symptoms might be an extra challenge for the team.

Connecting to create: expertise in musical improvisation is associated with increased functional connectivity between premotor and prefrontal areas.

Musicians have been used extensively to study neural correlates of long-term practice, but no studies have investigated the specific effects of training musical creativity. Here, we used human functional MRI to measure brain activity during improvisation in a sample of 39 professional pianists with varying backgrounds in classical and jazz piano playing. We found total hours of improvisation experience to be negatively associated with activity in frontoparietal executive cortical areas.

Nurses' conceptions of facilitative strategies of weaning patients from mechanical ventilation--a phenomenographic study.

Background: Mechanical ventilator withdrawal can amount up to 40% of total ventilator time. Being on a mechanical ventilator is associated with risk of anxiety, post-traumatic stress syndrome, nosocomial pneumonia and premature mortality.

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to describe different conceptions of nurses' facilitating decision-making strategies regarding weaning patients from mechanical ventilations cared for in intensive care unit (ICU).