Classification of medicines and materials in hospital inventory management: a multi-criteria analysis.

Background: In the hospital environment, to achieve an optimum level of operations and service, it is necessary to develop adequate inventory management system. Stocks can be managed, amongst other ways, through inputs classification, which is generally carried out based on a single criterion, such as monetary value, demand or criticality, which does not fully address the complexity of a hospital's inventory management system. Thus, the present study proposes a multi-criteria decision support model to help classify the stock of medicines and materials, enabling a more effective inventory management system for hospitals.

Model to support intervention prioritization for the control of Aedes aegypti in Brazil: a multi-criteria approach.

Background: Despite continuous strategic investments to mitigate the complexity involving arboviruses control, it is still necessary to further research methods and techniques to achieve in depth knowledge and shorter response times in the application of intervention activities. Consequently, the current work focused its efforts on the development of a multicriteria decision support model for the prioritization of prompt response activities for Aedes aegypti control, based on a case study in the city of Natal/RN.

Method: The research was carried out in three stages: a) preliminary; b) modelling and choice; and c) finalization; the second stage was made possible by the Flexible and Interactive Tradeoff (FITradeoff) method for ranking problematic.

Surgery remember@: an innovation to reduce surgical cancellations.

The use of mobile phones has dramatically increased all over the world. Such revolution in the communication amongst individuals has a great impact in patient care, supporting their self-management and promoting shared responsibility with health services. Given that improved communication facilitates compliance with scheduled procedures and reduces surgical cancellations, the current work aims to develop a communication tool named Surgery Remember@ to mitigate surgical suspensions due to patient absenteeism.

Priority setting in the Brazilian emergency medical service: a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA).

Background: Despite the proven value of multicriteria decision analysis in the health field, there is a lack of studies focused on prioritising victims in the Emergency Medical Service, EMS. With this, and knowing that the decision maker needs a direction on which choice may be the most appropriate, based on different and often conflicting criteria. The current work developed a new model for prioritizing victims of SAMU/192, based on the multicriteria decision methodology, taking into account the scarcity of resources.

Metaheuristics in the decentralization of SAMU bases using simulation in northeastern Brazil.

Background And Objective: The growth of the urban population exerts considerable pressure on municipalities' public managers to focus their attention on providing emergency medical care that meets the growing demand for emergency pre-hospital medical care. Currently, there are a significant number of traffic accidents and other serious occurrences, such as heart attacks, drownings, epidemics, fires and disasters (floods, landslides, earthquakes) that demand a prompt and seamless response from pre-hospital medical care. As a result of such scenario, the present article endeavours to apply a dual-coverage mathematical model (DSM-Double Standard Model) to define the optimal location of the Emergency Medical Service (SAMU) decentralized dispatch bases in Natal/RN and conduct a simulation study to evaluate the displacement of ambulances between such bases.

Ergonomics and telework: A systematic review.

Background: Telework has been widely studied by public and private organizations; however, in ergonomics, studies that focused on this topic are still sporadic.

Objective: Thus, this article endeavours to systematize the qualified scientific research related to ergonomics and teleworking to determine the main benefits and disadvantages and to identify the main issues addressed by authors.

Methods: A thorough research was conducted in the Scopus/Embase and Web of Science databases for this review.

Multi-criteria analysis in the health area: selection of the most appropriate triage system for the emergency care units in natal.

Background: Multiobjective decision-making processes present a high degree of complexity in their solution, and tools such as multicriteria decision analysis appear as a way to facilitate the decision-makers' solution and ensure that the decision is made cohesively and efficiently. In the public health sector, decisions are even more delicate because they work not only with the direct influence of human needs, but also with limited financial resources. An important point for the emergency care units is the triage system, which consists of a pre-evaluation of the patients, classifying them according to the degree of life risk.

Response time in the emergency services. Systematic review.

The growth of the urban population raises concern about municipal public managers in the sense of providing emergency medical services (EMS) that are aligned with the needs of prehospital emergency medical care demanded by the population. The literature review aims at presenting the response time of emergency medical services in several parts of the world and discussing some factors that interfere in the result of this indicator such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product) percentage spent on health and life expectancy of countries. The study will also show that in some of the consulted articles, authors suggest to EMS recommendations for decreasing the response time using simulations, heuristics and metaheuristics.

Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) in health care: a systematic review of the main characteristics and methodological steps.

Background: The health area is one of the most affected systems on the perspective of decision-making with multiobjectives, thus becoming prone to errors in the final solution, however, multicriteria decision analysis (MDCA) appears as an aid tool for this process decision-making. Therefore,the present study aims to analyze and synthesize articles found in the literature, involing MCDA in health care, evaluating general issues and methodological aspects, structuring them in a single work.

Methods: Surveys in the bibliographic databases SCOPUS and PUBMED indicated 1852 documents on the subject, however after a careful verificatios, 66 studies were selected to be analyzed completely.

Prevalence of alterations in chest computerized tomography in patients with head and neck cancer.

Objective: to assess the prevalence of abnormalities found by computed tomography (CT) of the chest in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Methods: we retrospectively analyzed chest CT exams of 209 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. The CT findings were stratified as inflammatory / infectious, parenchymal, nodular uncharacteristic and nodular metastatic/tumoral.

Assessment of carotid artery invasion by lymph node metastasis from squamous cell carcinoma of aero-digestive tract.

Unlabelled: Carotid involvement by metastatic lymph nodes changes the approach in head and neck tumors.

Aim: To evaluate interobserver agreement by CT scan analysis regarding the involvement of the carotid artery by metastatic lymph nodes from squamous cell carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive tract and its relation to resection criteria.

Materials And Methods: retrospective study of 99 CT images of patients with SCC were evaluated.

The importance of pre-epiglottis space invasion in the treatment planning of larynx and hypopharynx cancer.

Unlabelled: The involvement of pre-epiglottis space can change the indication for partial laryngeal resection.

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate inter-observer and intra-observer agreement by means of computed tomography analysis regarding the involvement of the pre-epiglottis space (PES) from carcinoma of the upper aerodigestive tract and its relation with therapeutic planning.

Materials And Methods: Retrospective study of ninety-five computed tomography exams of patients with squamous cell carcinoma, from 1990 to 2004, were selected and evaluated; 87 were males and eight females, with ages ranging from 32 to 73 years.

Value of computed tomography for evaluating the subglottis in laryngeal and hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.

Context And Objective: Subglottic involvement in squamous cell carcinoma is a determining factor for contraindicating conservative partial surgery. The subglottis is easily identified by axial computed tomography sections. The present study aimed to evaluate the occurrence of false-negative and false-positive results, and the overall accuracy of staging by computed tomography, in order to detect the involvement of the subglottic laryngeal compartment, in cases of laryngeal and hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.