Bunndaugaard5081
The overall aim of this study, performed in Sweden, was to problematize the contemporary national and transnational discourse on patient centeredness, which during recent decades has become a given, having become established as a dogma in conversations, writing, and thinking about patients and health care. We did that by showing that ideas such as patient centeredness can be seen differently from the way they are depicted in contemporary discourses about health care. In the presented analysis, we drew on Foucault's concepts of governmentality, 'history of the present' and genealogy. This means that we reflected on contemporary conceptions of how phenomena, such as the care seeker, have been constructed within other discourses about health care. Empirically, we used different health policy documents-government reports from three different historical periods. The analysis showed that contemporary narratives about centeredness are neither more, nor less, care seeker-centered than the narratives of yesteryear. Rather, the phenomenon of the care seeker is given different frames and meanings within the framework of different economic and historical discourses about health care. Our analysis raised questions about the contemporary construction of patient centeredness. In a world with such huge economic differences between nations, as well as between citizens within most nations, the contemporary discourse may be limited as it does not problematize structural issues in the same way as previous discourses had done. Perhaps what is needed today are national and international patient-centered or person-centered discourses which also discuss policies and practices that are population- and social group-centered. In the final discussion of the analysis, we identified a new patient-centered discourse, which views the patient as a resource among other resources. The most important limitation of this type of study is that it is only about discourses and policy issues and not about daily practical activities.Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are of significant interest because of their prevalence and environmental persistence. Further, for many PFAS, including fluorinated ethers, such as hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA, or the parent acid of "GenX"), toxicological data are sparse. In general, in vitro testing frequently uses dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as a carrier solvent due to its low toxicity, solubility across vast chemical space, and permeation across biological barriers. For PFAS, laboratory practice has assumed that the materials are stable across a wide range of solvents, pHs, and temperatures. In this study, HFPO-DA stability was evaluated with DMSO and other commonly used solvents to determine each solvent's suitability for use in toxicity assays. The formation of HFPO-DA's degradation product, heptafluoropropyl 1,2,2,2-tetrafluoroethyl ether (Fluoroether E-1), was monitored by headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) over time. These experiments revealed degradation of HFPO-DA to Fluoroether E-1 in DMSO and other aprotic, polar solvents, with half-lives on the order of hours (1 h, 1.25 h, and 5.2 h for DMSO, acetone, and acetonitrile, respectively). This rapid degradation suggests the need for caution when performing or using data from toxicity assessments on HFPO-DA and closely related PFAS compounds.
The goal was to characterize retinal vasculature by quantitative analysis of arteriole-to-venule (A/V) ratio and vessel density in fundus photos taken with the PanOptic iExaminer System.
The PanOptic ophthalmoscope equipped with a smartphone was used to acquire fundus photos centered on the optic nerve head. Two fundus photos of a total of 19 eyes from 10 subjects were imaged. Retinal vessels were analyzed to obtain the A/V ratio. In addition, the vessel tree was extracted using deep learning U-NET, and vessel density was processed by the percentage of pixels within vessels over the entire image.
All images were successfully processed for the A/V ratio and vessel density. There was no significant difference of averaged A/V ratio between the first (0.77 ± 0.09) and second (0.77 ± 0.10) measurements (
= 0.53). There was no significant difference of averaged vessel density (%) between the first (6.11 ± 1.39) and second (6.12 ± 1.40) measurements (
= 0.85).
Quantitative analysis of the retinal vasculature was feasible in fundus photos taken using the PanOptic ophthalmoscope. The device appears to provide sufficient image quality for analyzing A/V ratio and vessel density with the benefit of portability, easy data transferring, and low cost of the device, which could be used for pre-clinical screening of systemic, cerebral and ocular diseases.
Quantitative analysis of the retinal vasculature was feasible in fundus photos taken using the PanOptic ophthalmoscope. The device appears to provide sufficient image quality for analyzing A/V ratio and vessel density with the benefit of portability, easy data transferring, and low cost of the device, which could be used for pre-clinical screening of systemic, cerebral and ocular diseases.A new viral disease named COVID-19 spread rapidly into a pandemic in early 2020. Most countries have active community transmission and imposed measures such as social distancing and travel restrictions to mitigate its effect. see more Many sporting events all over the globe were canceled or postponed. In this article, we briefly discuss some important topics regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and propose a strategy to manage return to play in professional athletes. We searched the PubMed and Google Scholar databases to identify articles published through May 12, 2020, using the following keywords "coronavirus," "COVID-19," "SARS-CoV-2," "athlete," and "return to play." Although athletes have a lower risk of severe disease, preventive measures are still very important for minimizing time away from training, avoiding potential complications, slowing the pandemic spread, and ultimately protecting the health of those with a higher risk of complications and death. Athletes may present with mild disease, but complications such as pulmonary fibrosis and myocardial injuries have to be considered.