Post-COVID health policy responses to healthcare workforce capacities: A comparative analysis of health system resilience in six European countries.

A cross countries in Europe, health policy is seeking to adapt to the post-pandemic 'permacrisis', where high demands on the healthcare workforce and shortages continue and combine with climate change, and war. The success of these efforts depends on the capacities of the healthcare workforce. This study aims to compare health policy responses to strengthen the capacities of the healthcare workforce and to explore the underpinning dynamics between health systems, policy actors and health policies.

Comparing Health Workforce Policy during a Major Global Health Crisis: A Critical Conceptual Debate and International Empirical Investigation.

Background: The health workforce is central to healthcare systems and population health, but marginal in comparative health policy. This study aims to highlight the crucial relevance of the health workforce and contribute comparative evidence to help improve the protection of healthcare workers and prevention of inequalities during a major public health crisis.

Methods: Our integrated governance framework considers system, sector, organizational and socio-cultural dimensions of health workforce policy.

Health system resilience and health workforce capacities: Comparing health system responses during the COVID-19 pandemic in six European countries.

Background: The health workforce is a key component of any health system and the present crisis offers a unique opportunity to better understand its specific contribution to health system resilience. The literature acknowledges the importance of the health workforce, but there is little systematic knowledge about how the health workforce matters across different countries.

Aims: We aim to analyse the adaptive, absorptive and transformative capacities of the health workforce during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe (January-May/June 2020), and to assess how health systems prerequisites influence these capacities.

Interregional Patient Mobility in the Italian NHS: A Case of Badly-Managed Decentralization Comment on "Regional Incentives and Patient Cross-Border Mobility: Evidence From the Italian Experience".

The article by Brenna and Spandonaro on interregional mobility for acute hospital care in Italy raises important issues concerning social and territorial equity in a healthcare system. Based on Regions and private providers' strategic behavior, the hypothesis adopted to explain patient cross-border mobility (CBM), demonstrated by statistical analysis, may be further explored using qualitative methods. In order to reduce CBM, the central government needs to play a more active role in coordination, even in a highly decentralized National Health Service (NHS).

Conservative treatment of breast ductal carcinoma in situ: results of an Italian multi-institutional retrospective study.

Background: The incidence of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) has increased markedly in recent decades. In the past, mastectomy was the primary treatment for patients with DCIS, but as with invasive cancer, breast-conserving surgery followed by radiation therapy (RT) has become the standard approach. We present the final results of a multi-institutional retrospective study of an Italian Radiation Oncology Group for the study of conservative treatment of DCIS, characterized by a very long period of accrual, from February 1985 to March 2000, and a median follow-up longer than 11 years.

Clinically-staged T3N0 rectal cancer: is preoperative chemoradiotherapy the optimal treatment?

Background: Preoperative chemoradiotherapy has been widely adopted as the standard of care for stage II-III rectal cancers. However, patients with T3N0 lesions had been shown to have a better prognosis than other categories of locally advanced tumor. Thus, neoadjuvant chemoradiation is likely to be overtreatment in this subgroup of patients.

32P brachytherapy in the treatment of complex Cypher in-stent restenosis.

Treatment of in-stent restenosis after implantation of a drug-eluting stent is a critical issue. We provide the first report of the use of intravascular radiation therapy for this purpose in a 73-year-old diabetic patient stented for small-vessel bifurcation; treatment of Cypher diffuse in-stent restenosis with (32)P brachytherapy proved successful at clinical and angiographic follow-up at 7 months. This finding should encourage systematic studies on the safety and efficacy of IRT in this problematic setting.

Long-term clinical and angiographic outcome of patients with occlusive in-stent restenosis treated with (32P) beta-brachytherapy.

The objective of this study was to determine the safety and efficacy of (32)P beta-brachytherapy in totally occlusive in-stent restenosis (ISR). Patients with occlusive ISR were generally excluded from the randomized clinical trials on intracoronary brachytherapy (utilizing either gamma- or beta-sources) that have shown reductions in restenosis rate and need for revascularization procedures. We analyzed short- and long-term effects of (32)P beta-brachytherapy (20 Gy) in 27 patients (28 lesions) with occlusive ISR and 84 (99 lesions) patients with nonocclusive high-risk ISR.

Predictors of 32P beta brachytherapy failure in patients with high-risk in-stent restenosis.

Background: The effectiveness of coronary radiation therapy for the treatment of in-stent restenosis (ISR) has been established in several randomized clinical trials. The efficacy of this treatment in the general population is less well established.

Methods And Materials: We report our experience in 118 consecutive patients with nonselected high-risk ISR who had undergone successful percutaneous coronary intervention and brachytherapy with (32)P beta-irradiation and who were prospectively enrolled in a quantitative angiographic and clinical follow-up protocol at 7 months after the index procedure.

Protection of Mucuna pruriens seeds against Echis carinatus venom is exerted through a multiform glycoprotein whose oligosaccharide chains are functional in this role.

In a previous paper we demonstrated that extracts of Mucuna pruriens seeds (MPE) protect mice against Echis carinatus venom (EV) by an immunological mechanism. In this paper we demonstrate that the MPE immunogen generating the antibody that cross-reacts with the venom proteins is a multiform glycoprotein (gpMuc) whose immunogenic properties mainly reside in its glycan-chains. The glycoprotein was purified from the protein extract of M.

Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of the bone: treatment and analysis of prognostic factors for Stage I and Stage II.

Purpose: Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphomas of the bone (PLB) are very rare diseases accounting for 3%-5% of primary bone tumors. The best treatment for PLB has not been found yet. We report on the experience of the Radiation Oncology Department of Bologna University, Italy, relative to the diagnosis and treatment of this disease.

[Intracoronary beta-radiotherapy in high-risk in-stent restenosis. Prospective results of a single center registry].

Background: The aim of the study was to evaluate, on single center prospective data, long-term angiographic and clinical results of intracoronary beta (32P) brachytherapy in "real world" patients with high-risk in-stent restenosis lesions.

Methods: Sixty-nine consecutive patients (77 lesions) with high-risk in-stent restenosis (mean lesion length 30.3 +/- 16.

Beta brachytherapy of an old degenerated saphenous vein graft with occlusive in-stent restenosis.

We report a case of obstructive in-stent restenosis in a diffusely diseased saphenous vein graft complicated by a non-ST-elevation myocardial infarction. With tirofiban infusion, the extensively occluded saphenous bypass was reperfused, establishing a TIMI flow 3, and then entirely irradiated with a beta source (32P) without any complication. At 7 months the patient was asymptomatic and the control angiogram did not reveal any restenosis.

Proteins from Mucuna pruriens and enzymes from Echis carinatus venom: characterization and cross-reactions.

Mucuna pruriens seeds have been widely used against snakebite in traditional medicine. The antivenin property of a water extract of seeds was assessed in vivo in mice. The serum of mice treated with extract was tested for its immunological properties.