Eficacia, Coste-efectividad y efectos sobre la calidad de vida de la suplementación nutricional.

This article summarizes the main results and conclusions presented in the Symposium "Nutritional supplementation: evidences and experiences" that took place in the XXIIIrd SENPE Congress (2008). Protein energy malnutrition, that can affect 30-50% of hospitalized patients, increases both time of hospitalization and costs of medical care of this kind of patients. There is a lot of scientific evidences demonstrating that the use of nutritional supplementation improves nutritional status or prevents malnutrition in those patients who do not meet their nutritional needs with a conventional diet or an adapted one with no replacing intake from normal food. This is strengthened by the results that demonstrate the rol of nutritional supplements improving nutritional and functional parameters. Current bibliographic reviews focused on certain clinical frameworks (i.g. geriatrics, oncology), prove that nutritional supplements reduce complications related to pathology and to nutritional status, and also reduce length of hospitalization and mortality. More studies regarding to efficacy of oral nutritional supplements are needed. These studies should be carried out with a period of follow-up longer than the current published studies have. As well as effective, nutritional supplements become a save therapeutic intervention with no important adverse events that, according to bibliography, improve patient's functionality and quality of life. It is worth mentioning that nutritional supplements can be effective on certain kind of patients, for instance, malnourished elderly or elderly in risk of malnourishment, and hospitalized surgical patients. Scientific literature refers that it is necessary to carry out more studies, with an accurate methodology, which assess the effect of nutritional supplements on quality of life and its cost-effectiveness on malnourished patients regarding specific clinical situations. That would allow physicians to make clinical decisions based on evidences and cost analysis.

Andalusian Health Repository: Promoting the scientific health output among professionals and providing citizens with quality health information

The Andalusian Public Health System (Sistema Sanitario Público de Andalucía -SSPA) Repository is the open environment where all the scientific output generated by the SSPA professionals, resulting from their medical care, research and administrative activities, is comprehensively collected and managed. This repository possesses special features which determined its development: the SSPA organization and its purpose as a health institution, the specific sets of documents that it generates and the stakeholders involved in it. The repository uses DSpace 1.6.2, to which several changes were implemented in order to achieve the SSPA initial goals and requirements. The main changes were: the addition of specific qualifiers to the Metadata Dublin Core scheme, the modification of the submission form, the integration of the MeSH Thesaurus as controlled vocabulary and the optimization of the advanced search tool. Another key point during the setting up of the repository was the initial batch ingest of the documents.

Derivaciones en los centros de salud de Andalucía según el sexo de profesionales y pacientes: un análisis de género.

BACKGROUND It has been identified differences of medical care practice in primary care related to physician's sex. Simultaneously, there are gender inequalities in the assignment of health resources. Both aspects give rise to an increasing growing interest in the management and provision of health services. OBJECTIVES To examine the differences in the referral practice made by female and male primary care physicians working in health centers in Andalusia, to consider whether there are disparities in referrals received by men and women, and to examine the interaction between patient's sex and physician's sex. METHODS Observational, cross-sectional, and multicenter study. POPULATION 4 health districts in Andalucía and their physicians. SAMPLE 382 physicians. MEASUREMENTS referral rate per visit (RV), referral rate per patient quota (RQ), patient's sex, physician: sex, age, postgraduate family medicine specialty, size of the patient quota by sex, mean number of patients/day by sex, mean age of the patient quota by sex, and proportion of men in the quota. Health center: urban / rural, size of the team, enrolled population, and postgraduate family medicine specialty's accreditation. SOURCES databases of health districts. PERIOD OF STUDY 2010. ANALYSIS Bivariate and multivariate multilevel analysis of the referral rate per visit with mixed Poisson model. RESULTS In 2010 382 physicians made 129,161 referrals to specialized care. The RQ was 23.47 and the RV was 4.92. The RQ in women and men was 27.23 and 19.78 for women physicians, being 27.37 and 19.51 for male physicians. The RV in women and men was 4.92 and 5.48 for women physicians, being 4.54 and 4.93 for male physicians. CONCLUSION There are no differences in referral according to physician's sex. However, there are signs that might indicate the existence of gender inequality, and women patient received less referrals. There are no physician-patient's sex interaction.

¿Son aplicables los criterios analíticos generales para definir el hipotiroidismo en personas con síndrome de down?

Title: Are suitable general clinic criteria for defining hypothyroidism in people with Down syndrome? Studies on the prevalence of thyroid disorders in people with Down syndrome (DS) show a wide dispersion of results. However, most of these studies agree in indicating a greater frequency than in the general population. The cause of these differences may depend on the method of sample selection. In this work we studied a healthy population of adolescents with DS of the Association of Málaga, selected randomly and regardless of the medical care. Mean TSH distribution, used here as a tool to define the biochemical thyroid function of the studied DS population, was two standard deviation higher than the mean for the general population. These data show that in terms of TSH the DS population is a distinct population with respect to the general population. This clearly indicates that it would be necessary to identify and define new criteria to establish what is normal, subclinical hypothyroidism, borderline or pathological, and to propose new treatment guide.