The socioeconomic impact of cancer on patients and their relatives: Organisation of European Cancer Institutes task force consensus recommendations on conceptual framework, taxonomy, and research directions.

Loss of income and out-of-pocket expenditures are important causes of financial hardship in many patients with cancer, even in high-income countries. The far-reaching consequences extend beyond the patients themselves to their relatives, including caregivers and dependents. European research to date has been limited and is hampered by the absence of a coherent theoretical framework and by heterogeneous methods and terminology.

[Surgical treatment of lower jaw pseudoarthrosis as a result of fracture non-treatment following tooth extraction].

Fracture of the lower jaw following tooth extraction is a rare and severe complication, occurring most often in the preangular region following third molar extraction. When left untreated, pseudoarthrosis can occur. Symptoms show a wide variance, including pathologic mobility, pain and infection, as well as sometimes trismus before and following surgical treatment.

[ICPC-2--international classification of primary health care and its application in Croatian health care].

A consensus reached by the medical profession, Croatian Institute of Health Insurance, Croatian Institute of Public Health, and Ministry of Health constitutes a solution to the problem of a data standard required in building an information system for primary health care. This consists of accepting ICPC-2 as a data standard for our Family Medicine, Pediatrics and Women's Health. The classification structure of the International Classification of Primary Care allows, recommends and urges that special codes be established by individual states or local authorities when registering patients' reasons for seeking medical aid or medical procedures.

[Information system in primary health care].

The Croatian Ministry of Health started a health care system computerization project aimed at strengthening the collaboration among health care institutions, expert groups and individual health care providers. A tender for informatic system for Primary Health Care (PHC) general practice, pediatrics and gynecology, a vital prerequisite for project realization, has now been closed. Some important reasons for undertaking the project include rationalization of drug utilization, savings through a reduced use of specialists, consultants and hospitalization, then achievement of better cooperation, work distribution, result linking, data quality improvement (by standardization), and ensuring proper information-based decision making.

[Founding and development of the Croatian Health Information System].

Information systems, either computer or paper based, are the key to business effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare organizations. The rationale of starting a large healthcare informatics project by the Ministry of Health and Welfare may be argued by two needs: (1) the need of medical data transformation into the information required for public health policy decision-making; and (2) measures in the field of health and pharmacoeconomics, i.e.