[Incidence and risk factors for accidental falls among general practice elderly patients in Latina, Central Italy].

Background: falls incidence in home resident elderly people varies from 30% to 40%. Falls induce loss of self-sufficiency and increase mortality and morbidity.

Objectives: to evaluate falls incidence and risk factors in a group of general practice elderly patients.

Pressure ulcer risk in long-term units: prevalence and associated factors.

Aim: This paper is a report of a study to assess pressure ulcer prevalence in a group of long-term units and to describe the main factors associated both with risk for and presence of a pressure ulcer.

Background: Despite being potentially preventable, pressure ulcers are highly frequent among institutionalized patients and are associated with increased morbidity and mortality.

Method: A cross-sectional study was carried out, involving 571 patients from 10 long-term units in Rome, Italy.

[Epidemiology of HIV infection in Italy].

AIDS surveillance systems, which have provided for many years useful information on HIV epidemic dynamics, are no longer useful for estimating the evolution of the HIV epidemic due to the effect of anti-retroviral treatments that have strongly improved survival of HIV-infected persons. To obtain reliable data on the HIV epidemic, some Italian provinces and regions (Lazio, Veneto, Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Trento, Modena) have set up local surveillance systems of the new HIV diagnoses. Aggregated data collected by these systems since 1988, show that the rapid spread of the infection in the eighties has been followed by a progressive decrease in the number of new diagnoses during the nineties; in more recent years this trend has levelled-off.