Assessment of a physical activity program on the medical-hospital costs of a healthcare company.

Background: The protective effect of regular physical activity against risk of development of noncommunicable diseases and reduction of medical-hospital costs are well established in the literature. However, no study investigated the financial impact of workplace physical activity promotion programs in Brazil.

Objective: To investigate the financial impact of a workplace physical activity promotion program on the medical-hospital costs of a private healthcare company.

Improving patient care trajectories: an innovative quasi-experimental research method for health services.

Scores to predict treatment outcomes have earned a well-deserved place in healthcare practice. However, when used to help achieve excellence in the care of a given disease, scores should also take into account organizational and social aspects. This article aims to create scores to obtain key variables and its application in the management of care of a given disease.

Survival analysis of women with breast cancer: competing risk models.

This study aimed to estimate the effects of prognostic factors on breast cancer survival, such as age, staging, and extension of the tumor, using proportional hazards and competing risks models proposed by Cox and Fine-Gray, respectively. This is a retrospective cohort study, based on a population of 524 women, who were diagnosed with breast cancer in the period from 1993 to 1995 and monitored until 2011, residents in the city of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. The cutoff points for the variable of age were defined with Cox simple models.

Delay from fracture to hospital admission: a new risk factor for hip fracture mortality?

Unlabelled: The relationship between surgical timing and hip fracture mortality is unknown in the context of developing countries where large delays to surgery are common. We observed that delay from fracture to hospital admission is associated with decreased survival after a hip fracture.

Introduction: To examine the relationship between the time interval from fracture to surgery as well as its subcomponents (time from fracture to hospital admission and time from admission to surgery) and hip fracture survival.

Hip fracture in the elderly: does counting time from fracture to surgery or from hospital admission to surgery matter when studying in-hospital mortality?

Unlabelled: This study aims to analyze whether the interval from hospital admission to surgery may be used as a surrogate of the actual gap from fracture to surgery when investigating in-hospital hip fracture mortality. After analyzing 3,754 hip fracture admissions, we concluded that those intervals might be used interchangeably without misinterpretation bias.

Introduction: The debate regarding the influence of time to surgery in hip fracture (HF) mortality is one of the most controversial issues in the HF medical literature.

Distinct subsets of hypothalamic genes are modulated by two different thermogenesis-inducing stimuli.

Obesity results from an imbalance between food intake and energy expenditure, two vital functions that are tightly controlled by specialized neurons of the hypothalamus. The complex mechanisms that integrate these two functions are only beginning to be deciphered. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of two thermogenesis-inducing conditions, i.

[Survival in gastric cancer patients in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil].

This study analyzes the survival of gastric cancer patients in the city of Campinas, São Paulo State, Brazil. Data from the Campinas Population-Based Cancer Registry (RCBP) related to gastric cancer cases diagnosed from 1991 to 1994 were analyzed. Observed and relative survival rates were calculated, and to compare rates between different groups and international populations, the relative mortality risk was used.

[Risk factors and predictors of induced abortion: a population-based study].

This study aimed to identify key risk factors and predictors of induced abortion. A cross-sectional population-based study was conducted with a representative sample of 3,002 women 15 to 49 years of age in southern Brazil, randomly assigned to answer questions on induced abortion using either the ballot-box method or the indirect questioning method. Socioeconomic, demographic, and reproductive data were obtained through a pre-coded questionnaire.

[Treatment of diabetic retinopathy: patients' perceptions in Rio Claro (São Paulo State)--Brazil].

Purpose: To collect information and opinions from a group of diabetic patients regarding diabetic retinopathy and its treatment, in order to get reliable information that can help to improve programs and actions to control and prevent this ocular disease.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed. The sample was from 980 diabetic patients seen in a diabetic association.

Non-malignant consequences of decreasing asbestos exposure in the Brazil chrysotile mines and mills.

Aims: To investigate the consequences of improvement in the workplace environment over six decades (1940-96) in asbestos miners and millers from a developing country (Brazil).

Methods: A total of 3634 Brazilian workers with at least one year of exposure completed a respiratory symptoms questionnaire, chest radiography, and a spirometric evaluation. The study population was separated into three groups whose working conditions improved over time: group I (1940-66, n = 180), group II (1967-76, n = 1317), and group III (1977-96, n = 2137).

A study to determine: should conventional amounts of eye muscle surgery for horizontal binocular deviations be changed when oblique muscle weakening procedures are simultaneously performed?

Purpose: To investigate the final surgical outcome in horizontal strabismus correction, measured in primary position of gaze, in two situations: 1. When surgery was performed only on the horizontal rectus muscles; and 2. When inferior or superior oblique muscle weakening procedures were simultaneously performed.

[Estimating the frequency of induced abortion: a comparison of two methods].

Objective: To compare two methods-the "ballot box" method and the "indirect questioning" method-for estimating the frequency of induced abortions in population-based studies.

Methods: A cross-sectional population-based study was conducted with a representative sample of 3 002 women between 15 and 49 years of age living in the city of Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The women were selected through multistage sampling and randomly assigned to answer questions concerning induced abortion with one of the two methods, after they had answered a general questionnaire that collected socioeconomic and demographic information.

[Work, violence and death in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil].

In this epidemiological study, deaths resulting from external causes in 1999 and 2000 among males (age 15-64 years) in Campinas, São Paulo State were analyzed through interviews with their relatives. We attempted to correlate this incidence with individual occupational history, allowing the characterization of these events as work-related injuries. The proportional death rate due to work-related injuries was estimated at 27% in this group.

Kinetics of TNF-alpha and IFN-gamma mRNA expression in islets and spleen of NOD mice.

Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus is caused by autoimmune destruction of pancreatic beta cells. Non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice spontaneously develop diabetes similar to the human disease. Cytokines produced by islet-infiltrating mononuclear cells may be directly cytotoxic and can be involved in islet destruction coordinated by CD4+ and CD8+ cells.

Are routine preoperative medical tests needed with cataract surgery?

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate whether routine medical testing before cataract surgery reduces the rate of complications during the perioperative period in adults.

Methods: The study was carried out in an academic medical center in Brazil, between 10 February 2000 and 10 January 2001. The scheduled cataract operations were randomly assigned to one of two groups: 1) to be preceded by routine testing (the "routine-testing group") or 2) not to be preceded by routine medical testing (the "selective-testing group").

[Treatment abandonment and tuberculosis recurrence: aspects of previous episodes, Brazil, 1993-1994].

Objective: Recurrent patients due to treatment dropout or disease relapse have been congesting health centers and impeding treatment routines and services. The purpose is to study aspects of previous treatment and irregularities concerning the patient, medication and service organization and to evaluate the outcome of retreatment.

Methods: A descriptive study of patient's personal characteristics, previous treatment and retreatment was carried out at Campinas, São Paulo State, in 1993 and 1994.

[Tuberculosis recurrence and its risk factors].

The persistence of tuberculosis bacilli in patients who are cured, thus causing recurrence, is an important issue. This case-control study investigated individual and institutional risk factors for relapse by analyzing independent variables related to the patient, the use of antituberculosis drugs, and the service delivered at health care institutions; 56 cases and 105 controls were interviewed. Recurrence was defined as a new tuberculosis episode after the patient had been successfully treated.

Preventing acute respiratory infections and diarrhoea in child care centres.

This study was designed to explore the physical characteristics and child care practices of child care centres as potential risk factors for respiratory infections and diarrhoea in children 3-35 mo of age. A dynamic cohort averaging 667 children from 40 child care centres in Campinas (Brazil) was followed up for 8 mo. Direct structured observations were made to collect information on the centres' physical structure, child activities and child care practices.

Public awareness and attitudes toward epilepsy in different social segments in Brazil.

Purpose: To assess public awareness and attitudes toward epilepsy in Brazilians of different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Background: Several studies have examined public awareness and attitudes toward epilepsy in various countries but there are no equivalent data for Brazil or South America.

Material And Methods: We have applied the survey proposed by Caveness and Gallup, with some modifications and adaptations to four groups (I-IV) of subjects: I--105 individuals accompanying patients to the Ophthalmologic outpatient clinic of the Hospital das Clínicas of the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP); II--93 students recently admitted to medical and nursing school; III--101 senior non-medical students; and IV--69 senior medical students.

Relative frequency of nosocomial microorganisms at UNICAMP University Hospital from 1987 to 1994.

The frequency of microorganisms identified in nosocomial infections at Unicamp University Hospital from 1987 to 1994 was analysed. The most common microorganism was S. aureus (20.

Characteristics of a pediatric low-vision population.

Background: Assessment of the causes of childhood blindness is important to develop preventive and therapeutic strategies that can reduce the incidence of visual impairment.

Methods: A retrospective survey of the clinical records of 395 consecutive children younger than 14 years of age who were attended by the Low Vision Service of State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) was conducted. Data on the age distribution, the causes of low vision, the types of low vision aids prescribed, the follow up of their use, and improvement in visual acuity were obtained.

[Back pain and nursing].

After a clinic specific evaluation performed by a interdisciplinary group, 68 female workers of the nursing staff from a University Hospital were interviewed to evaluate aspects of the back pain in nursing staff.

[Occupation and hypertension].

Scientific reports on Arterial Blood Hypertension for the period from 1970 to 1989 are reviewed, with special reference to its epidemiological focusing among workers. The knowledge gained and the theoretical and methodological advances associated with it are assessed.

[Diastolic blood pressure associated with accumulated work time among drivers and collectors].

The relationship between diastolic blood pressure and the variables "total cumulative working time" and "age" was examined by regression analysis. The study was carried out among 839 bus drivers and conductors, users of an occupational health center in Campinas, S. Paulo State, Brazil.

Biological monitoring of workers occupationally exposed to carbon disulphide in a rayon plant in Brazil: validity of 2-thiothiazolidine-4-carboxylic acid (TTCA) in urine samples taken in different times, during and after the real exposure period.

Fifteen workers from a rayon plant in Brazil were monitored. Air samples were taken during a mean period of 5.8 hours out of an 8 hour workshift, in three different adsorbing tubes.