Premature Death as a Normative Concept.

The practical goal of preventing premature death seems uncontroversial. But the term 'premature death' is vague with several, sometimes conflicting definitions. This ambiguity results in several conceptions with which not all will agree.

Can Geographically Targeted Vaccinations Be Ethically Justified? The Case of Norway During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This article discusses the fairness of geographically targeted vaccinations (GTVs). During the initial period of local and global vaccine scarcity, health authorities had to enact priority-setting strategies for mass vaccination campaigns against COVID-19. These strategies have in common that priority setting was based on personal characteristics, such as age, health status or profession.

Severity as a moral qualifier of malady.

The overarching aim of this article is to scrutinize how severity can work as a qualifier for the moral impetus of malady. While there is agreement that malady is of negative value, there is disagreement about precisely how this is so. Nevertheless, alleviating disease, injury, and associated suffering is almost universally considered good.

Attitudes towards priority setting in the norwegian health care system: a general population survey.

Background: In an ideal world, everyone would receive medical resources in accordance with their needs. In reality, resources are often scarce and have an alternative use. Thus, we are forced to prioritize.

The Devils in the DALY: Prevailing Evaluative Assumptions.

In recent years, it has become commonplace among the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study authors to regard the (DALY) primarily as a health metric. During the first phase of the GBD (1990-1996), it was widely acknowledged that the DALY had built-in assumptions. However, from the publication of the 2010 GBD and onwards, two central evaluative practices- and -have been omitted from the DALY model.

Do not despair about severity-yet.

In a recent extended essay, philosopher Daniel Hausman goes a long way towards dismissing severity as a morally relevant attribute in the context of priority setting in healthcare. In this response, we argue that although Hausman certainly points to real problems with how severity is often interpreted and operationalised within the priority setting context, the conclusion that severity does not contain plausible ethical content is too hasty. Rather than abandonment, our proposal is to take severity seriously by carefully mapping the possibly multiple underlying accounts to well-established ethical theories, in a way that is both morally defensible and aligned with the term's colloquial uses.

Severity as a Priority Setting Criterion: Setting a Challenging Research Agenda.

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis.

Patient Acceptance of Half-dose Vs. Half-time Molecular Breast Imaging.

Objective: A number of strategies have been implemented at our institution to allow reductions in the administered dose or imaging time for molecular breast imaging (MBI). In this work, we examine patient opinions of whether dose reduction or time reduction is preferred.

Methods: Sixty female volunteers were randomized to undergo MBI at either half-dose (150 MBq Tc-99m sestamibi; images acquired for 10 minutes per view) or half-time (300 MBq Tc-99m sestamibi; images acquired for 5 minutes per view).

Guidelines for Quality Control Testing of Molecular Breast Imaging Systems.

Molecular breast imaging (MBI) is a nuclear medicine test that uses dedicated γ-cameras designed for imaging of the breast. Despite growing adoption of MBI, there is currently a lack of guidance on appropriate quality control procedures for MBI systems. Tests designed for conventional γ-cameras either do not apply or must be modified for dedicated detectors.

Molecular Breast Imaging: Administered Activity Does Not Require Adjustment Based on Patient Size.

At our institution, molecular breast imaging (MBI) is performed with 300 MBq of Tc-sestamibi for all patients. For some nuclear medicine procedures, administered activity or imaging time is increased for patients of larger size to obtain adequate counts. Our objective was to assess whether uptake of Tc-sestamibi in the breast is influenced by patient size.

The disvalue of death in the global burden of disease.

In the Global Burden of Disease study, disease burden is measured as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). The paramount assumption of the DALY is that it makes sense to aggregate years lived with disability (YLDs) and years of life lost (YLLs). However, this is not smooth sailing.

Resistance to valproic acid as predictor of treatment resistance in genetic generalized epilepsies.

This study aimed at defining clinical predictors of drug resistance in adults with genetic generalized epilepsy (GGE) who were treated with a broad spectrum of antiepileptic drugs. Of a cohort of 137 unselected adult GGE patients with long-term follow up, clinical and demographic data, putative prognostic factors (e.g.

The badness of death and priorities in health.

Background: The state of the world is one with scarce medical resources where longevity is not equally distributed. Given such facts, setting priorities in health entails making difficult yet unavoidable decisions about which lives to save. The business of saving lives works on the assumption that longevity is valuable and that an early death is worse than a late death.