Search Results (4)

Fractional tissue oxygen extraction (FTOE) by means of cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides information about oxygen uptake in the brain. Experimental animal data suggest that sedative agents decrease cerebral oxygen demand. The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between the cerebral FTOE and the use of pre and intraoperative sedative agents in infants aged 1–90 days. Cerebral NIRS was continuously applied during open major non-cardiac surgery in 46 infants. The main outcomes were the mean intraoperative FTOE and the percentage (%) of time of intraoperative hyperoxia_FTOE relative to the total duration of anesthesia. Hyperoxia_FTOE was defined as FTOE ≤ 0.1. Cumulative doses of sedative agents (benzodiazepines and morphine), given up to 24 h preoperatively, correlated with the mean intraoperative FTOE (Spearman’s rho = −0.298, p = 0.0440) and were predictive for the % of time of intraoperative hyperoxia_FTOE (β (95% CI) 47.12 (7.32; 86.92)) when adjusted for the patients’ age, type of surgery, preoperative hemoglobin, intraoperative sevoflurane and fentanyl dose, mean intraoperative arterial blood pressure, and end-tidal CO₂ by multivariate 0.75 quantile regression. There was no association with 0.5 quantile regression. We observed the suggestive positive association of decreased fractional cerebral tissue oxygen extraction and the use of sedative agents in neonates and infants undergoing surgery. Full article

Background and Objective. Scientific evidence indicates that patient safety and access to health care is linked to the well-being of health professionals. The self-assessed health status has been widely used as a health measure in different surveys. The aim of this study was to examine and determine the factors related to the self-assessed health status of health professionals.
Material and Methods. The cross-sectional questionnaire surveys of nurses and physicians were carried out in randomly selected hospitals. A total of 1025 health professionals (739 nurses and 286 physicians) from 3 hospitals of different size located in 1 geographical region of Lithuania participated in the survey. The response rate among the nurses and the physicians was 89.2% and 52.5%, respectively. The overall response rate was 74.7%. The data on self-assessed health, demographic factors, anthropometric data, blood pressure, cholesterol level in blood, personal history of diseases, smoking, and alcohol consumption were gathered with the help of the questionnaire.
Results. About two-thirds (64.1%) of the health professionals reported good or quite good health, and only 1.5% of the respondents reported quite poor or poor health. Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that the SAH status of health professionals was dependent on age (odds ratio [OR], 1.03; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02–1.05 [Model 1]; OR, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.02–1.06 [Model 2]), diseases (OR, 7.32; 95%, 5.18–10.35), heart diseases (OR, 12.09; 95% CI, 2.9–50.35), hypertension (OR, 2.53; 95% CI, 1.55–4.14), cancer (OR, 6.19; 95% CI, 1.27–30.13), gastrointestinal (OR, 3.54; 95% CI, 1.59–7.86) and musculoskeletal diseases (OR, 3.21; 95% CI, 1.71–6.02), smoking (OR, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.28–3.45 [Model 1]; OR, 2.00; 95% CI, 1.26–3.16 [Model 2]), and occupation (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.04–2.07 [ Model 1]; OR, 1.54; 95% CI, 1.11–2.16 [Model 2]).
Conclusions. Diseases are the main predictors of self-assessed health in health professionals. Advancing age and smoking also contribute to poorer self-assessed health. Full article

This review summarizes the results of studies on the effects of environment on breast cancer risk. As known risk factors such as reproductive life, inheritance, and socioeconomic status are estimated to explain only about half of the breast cancer cases, it has been thought that environmental factors could also be related to the risk of this disease. It is known that ionizing radiation is an environmental risk factor increasing the risk of breast cancer. The data of experimental studies show that some organochlorines could be associated with breast cancer risk although the data from epidemiological studies are not consistent due to the difficulties to assess exposure and other risk factors. Recent experimental studies show that cadmium is an environmental factor that mimics the effects of estradiol in estrogen-responsive breast cancer cell lines while solar radiation possibly decreases the risk due to protective effect of vitamin D. The data on the effect of electromagnetic fields are not consistent. Although evidence about the effect of environmental factors on the risk of breast cancer is not convincing, some of these factors together with inheritance, reproductive life, and age at exposure could be associated with an increased risk of the disease. Full article

Cadmium is a known human lung carcinogen, although some studies indicate a link between cadmium exposure and human breast cancer. The objective of this study was to assess cadmium concentration in breast tissue samples of patients with breast cancer and benign breast tumor.
Material and methods. The concentration of cadmium was determined in breast tissue samples of 21 breast cancer and 19 benign tumor patients. Two samples of breast tissue from each patient, i.e. tumor and normal tissue close to tumor, were taken for the analysis. Cadmium was determined by atomic absorption spectrometry (Perkin-Elmer, Zeeman 3030).
Results. In patients with breast cancer, the mean cadmium concentration was 33.1 ng/g (95% CI, 21.9– 44.4) in malignant breast tissue and 10.4 ng/g (95% CI, 5.6–15.2) in normal breast tissue (P=0.002). In patients with benign tumor, the corresponding values were 17.5 ng/g (95% CI, 8.4–26.5) and 11.8 ng/g (95% CI, 5.1– 18.5) (P=0.3144). There was a statistically significant difference in cadmium concentration between malignant and benign breast tissues (P=0.009).
Conclusion. The data obtained show that cadmium concentration is significantly higher in malignant breast tissue as compared with normal breast tissue of the same women or benign breast tissue. Further studies are necessary to determine the association between cadmium concentration in malignant breast tissue and estrogen receptor level, and smoking. Full article