Early CPAP prevents evolution of acute lung injury in patients with hematologic malignancy.

Purpose: Although chemotherapy and transplantation improve outcome of patients with hematological malignancy, complications of these therapies are responsible for a 20-50% mortality rate that increases when respiratory symptoms evolve into acute lung injury (ALI). The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of early continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) delivered in the ward to prevent occurrence of ALI requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission for mechanical ventilation.

Methods: Patients with hematological malignancy presenting in the hematological ward with early changes in respiratory variables were randomized to receive oxygen (N = 20) or oxygen plus CPAP (N = 20).

Intra- and interlaboratory performance of antibiotic disk-diffusion-susceptibility testing of bacterial control strains of relevance for monitoring aquaculture environments.

In the course of an international research project on hazard analysis of antimicrobial resistance in SE Asian aquaculture environments, 2 European Union and 3 SE Asian laboratories attempted to harmonize a procedure for antimicrobial agent susceptibility testing based on disk diffusion (DD). For this purpose, a selected panel of 10 bacterial control strains of relevance for monitoring warm-water aquaculture environments was sent by the central laboratory to the other participating laboratories. In each laboratory, 10 independently replicated DD determinations of each control strain to 6 antibiotics were performed using Iso-Sensitest Agar (ISA) according to a standard operating procedure (SOP); in total, this study thus yielded 300 data sets for all 5 laboratories.

The impact of the introduction of Euro and other legislation changes on EU funded prototype for social and health care: the experience of EPIC in Savona.

We present the knowledge organisation of a database which aims to collect information for the optimisation of the social and heath care delivery in a limited territory within the guidelines set up by a EU funded project EPIC. The local implementation reflects the specificity of the social and health care delivery in the validation site: Savona. The paper discusses the features of the new rules which make compulsory an update of the first version of the software.

Breath Multi Analysis: a database to collect data on gastric related non invasive analysis.

The diagnosis of dyspepsia is very difficult because the symptoms are clinically aspecific and the gastric emptying time tests are of complex interpretation. An integrated and automated analysis of clinical and instrumental data may improve the diagnostic process. We present a system to collect data on dyspeptic patients from different sources which have been set up to assist the clinician in the diagnosis of dyspepsia.

Knowledge engineering for a database between botany and art.

We present the knowledge organisation of a database, which aims to collect information for the project "Plants in European Masterpieces". This project is financed by the European Union within the Culture 2000 program. The project is aimed to link art with plants within the frame of a common European history and to make it accessible to a wide public.