Welcome to Biomedicine & Prevention

Biomedicine & Prevention is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles as well as review articles in several areas of the life sciences. The journal’s Editorial Board covers several subject areas mainly focusing on prevention and health promotion. Prevention is covered not as an exclusive health competence discipline but in a holistic way, including environmental sciences, engineering, physics, legal implications and legislation.

Local preventive interventions for smoking cessation improvement needed

This preliminary study aims to assess the efficacy and effectiveness of a free territorial service dedicated to smoking cessation in Italy. The medical records of these 86 subjects were then retrospectively reviewed, evaluating personal, clinical, tabaccological, psychological and motivational data to recognize among these possible predictive factors of treatment success. The analysis of these data showed that the female sex is most at risk of not reaching the status of former-smoker (OR 2.945 CI 95% 1.01 - 8.6, p 0.048) and the months of course attendance of the therapeutic course is the only positive predictor (OR 1.512 CI 95% 1.220 – 1.873, p 0.000). With multivariate analysis, gender lost significance while the months of course attendance of the therapeutic course remained significant (OR 1.802 CI 95% 1.199 – 2.706, p 0.005). More than 1 subject out of 4 (28.8%) quitted smoking during the first month. The percentage of subjects who stopped smoking remained elevated till the fourth month (24.2%), then progressively declined to 7.6% at the end of the protocol treatment (twelve months). By intend-to-treat evaluation, success rate reduced to 5.8%.

Anaemia and prolonged length of stay: a retrospective analysis of a 1-year cohort of inpatients.

Anaemia is a very common pathologic condition and is associated with frailty in the elderly and with development of multiple-comorbidities. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of anaemia as an independent factor on inpatients length of stay (LOS) and mortality. Anaemia, particularly chronic anaemia, showed to be a strong independent predictor of prolonged LOS. Due to its chronic nature and its multi-factorial pathogenesis, it needs to be managed with a multi-dimensional approach, with structured paths connecting the hospitals to primary health care professionals at the outpatient level.

Frailty in Emergency Departments: a new challenge? A risk factor and an unsolved health demand marker

Frailty is a majorn concern in Publich Health. Frail elderly in ED represent a huge problem in terms of services organization, quality of life and outcome. Screening frailty in the ED represents one of the most important issue to recognize patients at major risk of adverse outcomes. Indeed, frail elderly in ED have a higher risk of hospitalization and all negative consequences related to it.

Review of upstream Petrochemical Occupational Exposure and Risk Personnel and Ambient Sampling

Aim of the study was to assess the occupational risk due to petroleum facility exposure, by sampling at the Oil and Gas plant in Southern Italy on both personnel and area. For chemicals with no available TLV, an extensive review of scientific literature on the issue was achieved, in order to define international benchmarks, for comparison. Concerning benzene, neither the outdoor area maximum value of 0.072 mg/m3 nor the personal maximum value of 0.22 mg/m3 were over the occupational exposure limit (OEL) at the Oil and Gas center plant. Similarly, the indoor area maximum value of 0.055 mg/m3 was below the OEL. Also the indoor and outdoor maximums for total VOC were below the LEED requirement, and the total VOC outdoor personal maximum was slightly above the LEED requirement. However, since the LEED requirement is for indoor air quality, this recommendation is not directly applicable to the determined total VOC maximum for outdoor personal samples.

The "ease of use" of vaccines: a simulation study of factors impacting the efficiency of the organizational models of vaccination centers.

Since health care institutions are particularly concerned with resource savings, optimizing the efficiency of vaccination point of dispensing is a significant policy priority during epidemics or low-resource settings. In this regard, the decision to adopt proper organizational models and take the ease-of-use of vaccines into account is of paramount importance for resource-saving. Evidence is therefore urgently needed for healthcare decision-makers. In this paper we propose the use a simulation optimization approach. In particular, as a specific case study, we show how it could be possible to obtain up to 17.5% time saving during a meningococcal vaccination session and overall cost-savings (e.g., up to 24M Euros in real world vaccination scenarios).

Pages