Telemedicine During COVID-19 Pandemic: Lesson Learned from the Lazio Region Infectious Diseases and Emergency Department Network.

Telemedicine and teleconsultation can be powerful and useful tools for patients to hamper the physical barriers to access to health care services during COVID-19 pandemic. We describe the teleconsultation (TC) model in the Lazio Region. It uses a hub-and-spoke network system on geographic regional basis using a web based digital platform, termed ADVICE with the aim to connect regional Emergency Departments (EDs) and Infectious Diseases (ID) acute and critical care settings for patients with acute ID syndrome.

COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test as Screening Strategy at Points of Entry: Experience in Lazio Region, Central Italy, August-October 2020.

COVID-19 pandemic is a dramatic health, social and economic global challenge. There is urgent need to maximize testing capacity. Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) represent good candidates for point-of-care and mass surveillance testing to rapidly identify SARS-CoV-2-infected people, counterbalancing lower sensitivity vs.

[Access to the Emergency Department in the time of COVID-19: an analysis of the first three months in the Lazio Region (Central Italy)].

Objectives: to evaluate the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic on the access to the emergency services of the Lazio Region (Central Italy) for time-dependent pathologies, for suspected SARS-CoV-2 symptoms, and for potentially inappropriate conditions.

Design: observational study.

Setting And Participants: accesses to the emergency departments (EDs) of Lazio Region hospitals in the first three months of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Nose-pharyngeal swabs as a screening test for SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with scheduled elective surgery: the experience of the Hygiene Service of the Local Health Authority Roma 1.

The COVID-19 (COrona Virus Disease 2019), due to the SARS-COV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2) has been an unprecedented global challenge for the healthcare systems (1).

Emotional intelligence, empathy and alexithymia: a cross-sectional survey on emotional competence in a group of nursing students.

Background: Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize and manage one's own and others' emotions, empathy is the ability to understand how others feel, whereas alexithymia represents the difficulty in feeling and verbally expressing emotions.  Emotional competences are important requirements for positive outcomes in nursing profession.

The Aim Of The Study: To analyze EI, empathy and alexithymia in nursing students.

A preliminary study of Patient Dignity Inventory validation among patients hospitalized in an acute psychiatric ward.

Purpose: To investigate the perception of dignity among patients hospitalized in a psychiatric setting using the Patient Dignity Inventory (PDI), which had been first validated in oncologic field among terminally ill patients.

Patients And Methods: After having modified two items, we administered the Italian version of PDI to all patients hospitalized in a public psychiatric ward (Service of Psychiatric Diagnosis and Treatment of a northern Italian town), who provided their consent and completed it at discharge, from October 21, 2015 to May 31, 2016. We excluded minors and patients with moderate/severe dementia, with poor knowledge of Italian language, who completed PDI in previous hospitalizations and/or were hospitalized for <72 hours.

Costs of Parkinson's disease and antiparkinsonian pharmacotherapy: an Italian cohort study.

Objective: Antiparkinsonian pharmacotherapy is costly and the determinants of drug costs in Parkinson's disease (PD) have been poorly investigated. The objective of this study was to investigate the costs of PD and antiparkinsonian drugs in an Italian cohort of patients and identify cost-driving factors of drug therapy.

Methods: Seventy outpatients with idiopathic PD were recruited in the Department of Neurology, Napoli University, Italy.

Kinetic Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook model for fast reactive mixtures and its hydrodynamic limit.

A recently proposed consistent Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook-type approach for reversible bimolecular chemical reactions, well suited to deal with collision dominated gas mixtures in which mechanical and chemical relaxation times are of the same order of magnitude (fast reactions), is discussed. The model recovers essential features of the chemical process such as mass action law at equilibrium and reactive H theorem. The hydrodynamic limit, at both Euler and Navier-Stokes levels, is derived by a Chapman-Enskog procedure, in terms of the relevant hydrodynamic variables, and compared to the corresponding limits holding in the nonreactive and in the slowly reactive cases.

A healthy nutrition programme with child 'Cub Scouts'.

This commentary describes the development of the Health Nutrition programme carried out by University of Cagliari with 19 Italian scout groups. In total 353 children between the ages of 6 and 10 participated in the programme. The objectives were to develop children's knowledge on the Mediterranean diet through games.

TrkA receptors delay C6-2B glioma cell growth in rat striatum.

Nerve growth factor (NGF) acts as an anti-mitogenic factor in C6-2B glioma cells stably expressing TrkA (C6trk+). To study the effect of TrkA on cell growth in vivo, we grafted mock and C6trk+ cells into the striatum of ACI nude rats. Thy 1.

Toward the development of strategies to prevent ischemic neuronal injury. In vitro studies.

Cerebellar granule cells in culture, which are extremely vulnerable to excitotoxin glutamate or N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA), were used to study mechanisms of neuronal cell death and protection. Paradoxically, pretreatment of these cells with subtoxic concentrations of NMDA markedly blocked the neurotoxicity resulting from subsequent exposure to glutamate or NMDA. The NMDA-mediated neuroprotection can be antagonized by pretreatment of these cells with protein synthesis inhibitors, suggesting an involvement of protein(s) with neuroprotectant properties, most likely neurotrophic factors.

Biological activity of interleukin-10 in the central nervous system.

Cytokines play a crucial role as mediators of inflammation. Astrocytes and microglia are the two major glial cells involved in the central nervous system immune responses. In this study we examined the effects of interleukin-10 (IL-10), one of the naturally occurring inhibitory cytokines, on different types of glial cells in culture such as rat astrocytes, hamster microglia and C6-2B glioma cells.

Glucocorticoids differentially increase nerve growth factor and basic fibroblast growth factor expression in the rat brain.

Adrenocorticotropin hormone (ACTH) and adrenal steroids may influence trophic processes operative in neuronal plasticity. Because nerve growth factor (NGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) participate in neuronal trophism, we have investigated whether adrenal steroids induce the expression of these two trophic factors in the rat brain. The systemic administration of dexamethasone (DEX) elicited a rapid (within 3 hr) and sustained accumulation of bFGF and NGF mRNA in the cerebral cortex and hippocampus.

[A cancer marker study in patients with neoplastic pathology of the neck and head area].

Specific markers able to detect either the presence of tumours or to identify the histological type of tumour are not currently available. Previous work yields an inconsistent picture of actual effectiveness of oncological markers, we therefore carried out a study on the cancer patients in our clinic. The present paper considered five markers (CEA, SCC, ca 19-9, TPA and Ferritin) and tested their effectiveness in diagnosing and following patients with head and neck neoplasias.

[Comparison of acceptance tests of 5 linear electron accelerators for radiotherapy].

The acceptance tests of five electron linear accelerators have been analyzed to compare their completeness, the standards specified by the manufacturers and the measured deviations. Involved tests were relative to geometrical and mechanical parameters, photon and electron beam characteristics, dose monitoring systems, treatment table and safety systems. The comparison of acceptance tests has shown a significant nonuniformity, also due to the absence of a specific legislation; anyway, the measured deviations generally appeared to be within internationally recommended values.

[Is there a role for immunology in the prevention of malignant tumors of the head and neck?].

The possibility of applying immunological methods to head and neck tumors prevention is discussed. The biological significance of tests evaluating the natural killer activity is reviewed. The IgA serum level in patients at risk for head and neck malignancy is proposed as a screening test.

[Radiological study of the thorax. Evaluation of efficacy-efficiency of a large-field image intensifier in mass screening].

Chest X-ray is the most frequent examination in radiology and accounts for a considerable portion of total population radiation exposure, mostly in screening programs. The ideal radiographic system is the one providing the best image quality together with the lowest dose to the patient, at a low cost. In this paper the authors analyze the potentials of a new chest X-ray examination unit equipped with a large-screen image intensifier (TS 57-Siemens).

[The factor of magnification in mammography].

The last generation of mammographic equipment allows mammography to be performed with direct magnification techniques, thanks to such technical features as microfocus, high focus-film distance, high-power generators. The authors compared the diagnostic yield of two different equipment sets, with 1.4x and 2x magnification respectively, and verified the utility of magnification radiography.