[The role of the public health personnel in the Prevention Department (in the Hygiene Services and Public Health Care and Hygiene of Food and Nutrition): proposal for the future of public health care].

A global and local discussion on Public Health relevance is taking place, including the future role and organization of its services. Noteworthy becomes the role played by Public Health Specialists. This work presents the results of a workshop, carried out following the Guilbert methodology, whose aim was to define Public Health Doctors functions and their related activities.

Management of tracheal intubation in the respiratory intensive care unit by pulmonary physicians.

Background: Expert management of tracheal intubation has become fundamental to the routine practice of pulmonary physicians who work in respiratory intensive care units (ICUs). In Italy, tracheal intubation is not included as part of the training in respiratory medicine, and pulmonary physicians are usually dissuaded from managing intubations.

Methods: We prospectively studied the intubation success rate in 46 consecutive respiratory ICU patients who required either emergency or urgent intubation, conducted by 3 intubation-trained pulmonary physicians in our respiratory ICU.

Response to influenza vaccine in people with non-protective HI antibody titers.

The purpose of the study was to determine which factors correlate directly with response to vaccination in such a group of subjects with non-protective HI antibody titers before vaccination. Two vaccines were used, a subunit virus vaccine adjuvanted with MF59 and a split virus vaccine. The analysis indicated that immunization with vaccine adjuvanted with MF59 was an independent variable for immune response against A/H3N2 (OR: 3.

Mechanical insufflation-exsufflation improves outcomes for neuromuscular disease patients with respiratory tract infections.

Objectives: The efficacy of mechanical insufflation-exsufflation, in addition to standard chest physical treatments, was investigated as a first-line intervention for patients with neuromuscular diseases with respiratory tract infections and airway mucous encumbrance.

Design: The short-term outcomes of 11 consecutive neuromuscular disease patients with respiratory tract infections and tracheobronchial mucous encumbrance who were administered mechanical insufflation-exsufflation and conventional chest physical treatments in an intensive care unit were compared with the outcomes of 16 historical matched controls who had received chest physical treatments alone. Treatment failure was defined as the need for cricothyroid "minitracheostomy" or endotracheal intubation, despite treatment.