Femoral versus Radial Access in Primary Angioplasty. Analysis of the ACCEPT Registry

Background:The radial access provides a lower risk of bleeding and vascular complications related to the puncture site in comparison to the femoral access. Recent studies have suggested a reduction in mortality associated with the radial access in patients with acute myocardial infarction undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.Objective:To compare the occurrence of adverse cardiovascular ischemic and hemorrhagic events in patients undergoing primary angioplasty according to the type of arterial access route.Methods:From August 2010 to December 2011, 588 patients undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention during acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction were assessed; they were recruited from 47 centers participating in the ACCEPT registry. Patients were grouped and compared according to the arterial access used for the procedure.Results:The mean age was 61.8 years; 75% were males and 24% had diabetes mellitus. There was no difference between groups as regards the procedure success rate, as well as regards the occurrence of death, reinfarction, or stroke at six months of follow-up. Severe bleeding was reported in 1.1% of the sample analyzed, with no statistical difference related to the access used.Conclusions:The femoral and radial accesses are equally safe and effective for the performance of primary percutaneous coronary intervention. The low rate of cardiovascular events and of hemorrhagic complications reflects the quality of the participating centers and the operators expertise with the use of both techniques.

Predictors of Conversion from Radial Into Femoral Access in Cardiac Catheterization

Background: Fewer bleeding complications and early ambulation make radial access a privileged route for cardiac catheterization. However, transradial (TR) approach is not always successful, requiring its conversion into femoral access. Objectives: To evaluate the rate of conversion from radial into femoral access in cardiac catheterization and to identify its predictors. Methods: Prospective dual-center registry, including 7632 consecutive patients undergoing catheterization via the radial access between Jan/2009 and Oct/2012. We evaluated the incidence of conversion into femoral access and its predictors by logistic regression analysis. Results: The patients’ mean age was 66 ± 11 years, and 32% were women. A total of 2969 procedures (38.4%) were percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), and the most used first intention arterial access was the right radial artery (97.6%). Radial access failure rate was 5.8%. Independent predictors of conversion from radial into femoral access were the use of short introducer sheaths (OR 3.047, CI: 2.380-3.902; p < 0.001), PCI (OR 1.729, CI: 1.375-2.173; p < 0.001), female sex (OR 1.569, CI: 1.234-1.996; p < 0.001), multivessel disease (OR 1.457, CI: 1.167-1.819; p = 0.001), body surface area (BSA) ≤ 1.938 (OR 1.448, CI: 1.120-1.871; p = 0.005) and age > 66 years (OR 1.354, CI: 1.088-1.684; p = 0.007). Conclusion: Transradial approach for cardiac catheterization has a high success rate and the need for its conversion into femoral access in this cohort was low. Female sex, older age, smaller BSA, the use of short introducer sheaths, multivessel disease and PCI were independent predictors of conversion into femoral access.

Stehen interpersonale Probleme in Zusammenhang mit pathologischem PC- /Internet-Gebrauch?

[s.c.]

Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation von McDonald’s im Internet

Das Thema Nachhaltigkeit ist schon seit geraumer Zeit in den gesellschaftlichen Fokus gerückt. Große Unternehmen sehen sich zunehmend dem Druck einer kritischen Öffentlichkeit ausgesetzt. Das betrifft besonders Unternehmen, die im ernährungswirtschaftlichen Bereich tätig sind. Fast Food gilt für viele als Inbegriff schlechter Ernährung und unethischer Verhaltensweisen. Vor diesem Hintergrund versuchen immer mehr Unternehmen, ihre Produkte und Produktionsprozesse sowie die Unternehmensführung selbst nachhaltig zu gestalten. Mit dem Instrument der Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation existiert ein Ansatz, diese Entwicklung transparent zu kommunizieren. Dabei nutzen immer mehr Firmen das Internet als Kommunikationskanal. Da die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation allerdings ein noch recht junges Feld der Unternehmenskommunikation darstellt, gibt es quantitativ wie qualitativ große Unterschiede. Vor diesem Hintergrund untersucht diese Arbeit die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation des führenden Fast-Food-Konzerns McDonald’s im Internet. Es wird sich zeigen, dass sich die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation in die Bereiche Produktverantwortung und Unternehmensverantwortung aufteilt. Beide Bereiche orientieren sich mit ihren Inhalten an gesellschaftlichen Ansprüchen. Die Produktverantwortung von McDonald‘s umfasst dabei sowohl persönliche als auch externe Effekte der Lebensmittelproduktion. Die Unternehmensverantwortung schließt die Verantwortung als Arbeitgeber, gesellschaftliches Engagement und Umweltschutz ein. Durch einen Vergleich mit einer Verbraucherstudie, die irreführende Kommunikationsstrategien der Lebensmittelindustrie aufzeigt, wird sich zeigen, dass die Nachhaltigkeitskommunikation auf Produktebene Täuschungspotenziale aufweist. Zudem zeigt sich, dass die drei Nachhaltigkeitsdimensionen nicht integriert dargestellt werden.

Tarnkappe Information – Arzneimittelwerbung im Internet : Eine Analyse der Webseiten gebaermutterhalskrebs.com und tell-someone.de

Die Untersuchung der beiden Webseiten verfolgte das Ziel, festzustellen, ob und inwieweit die beiden Hersteller GlaxoSmithKline und Sanofi Pasteur MSD Marketingstrategien auf ihren Informationsseiten anwenden. Es zeigte sich in beiden Fällen, dass dies in großem Maße stattfindet. Durch Gestaltung und Inhalt sind Rückschlüsse auf den jeweiligen Impfstoff möglich. Dadurch wird deutlich, dass die Seiten keine reine Informationsabsicht verfolgen. Zusammenfassend bleibt festzustellen,dass die Hersteller die ihnen eingeräumten Freiheiten zur Information auch zu Marketingzwecken missbrauchen.Der zugrundeliegende Schutzzweck des Heilmittelwerbegesetzes (HWG) wird hiermit konterkariert.

Access as a motivational device: implications for human resource management

This paper analyzes the employment relationship on the basis of the notion of access. We argue that the degree of access provided by a job is an incentive to activate the employee’s self-actualization needs. We investigate the effect of access on the workers’ performance through an agency model and provide a number of propositions with practical implications for personnel policies. Our results are consistent with the intuition emerged from the real business practice as well as with many of the arguments on the substitutive role between monetary and non-monetary incentives frequently reported in the literature.

Repositorios colectivos de e-información

Desde 1999, el Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya (CESCA) promociona actividades para poner en acceso abierto contenido en internet, contribuyendo al avance de la e-Ciencia en nuestro país. Junto con el Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya (CBUC) se han creado tres repositorios: Tesis Doctorales en Red (TDR), Dipòsit de la Recerca de Catalunya (RECERCAT) y Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert (RACO). En septiembre de 2006, la Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya[6] ha puesto en marcha otro ambicioso repositorio en colaboración con el CESCA, Patrimoni Digital de Catalunya (PADICAT).

Catalan Policies and Experiences on Cooperative Repositories

The Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya (CESCA) together with the Consorci de Biblioteques Universitàries de Catalunya (CBUC) started in 1999 a cooperative repository, named TDR, to file in digital format the full-text of the read thesis at the universities of our country to spread them worldwide in open access preserving the intellectual copyright of the authors. This became operational in 2001 and today it is a service fully consolidated not only among the Catalan universities, but also used by other Spanish universities. Since then, there are four additional cooperative repositories which have been created: RECERCAT, for research papers; RACO, for scientific, cultural and erudite Catalan magazines; PADICAT, for archiving Catalan web sites; and MDC, for Catalan digital collections of pictures, maps, posters, old magazines... These five repositories have some common characteristics: they are open access, that is, they are accessible on the internet for free; they mostly comply with the Open Archive Initiative interoperability protocol for facilitating the efficient dissemination of content; and they have been built in a cooperative manner so that it is easy to adopt common procedures and to share the repository developing and managing costs, it permits more visibility of the indexed documents throughout the search engines, and a better provision for long-term preservation can be made. In this paper we present the common policy established for the Catalan cooperative repositories, we describe the five of them briefly, and we comment on the results obtained of our 6-year experience since the first one became operational.

El impacto de Internet en los medios de comunicación y la industria del deporte.

Atès que la presència de l'esport a Internet cada cop és més recurrent, aquest treball es centra en l'impacte d'Internet en les relacions existents entre alguns dels actors més importants a la indústria de l'esport a Europa: - Organitzacions esportives, que són productors del producte esportiu base; - Mitjans de comunicació, que comuniquen temes esportius; - Organitzacions comercials, que promocionen els seus productes a través de l'esport i els mitjans de comunicació (tot incloent els patrocinadors esportius); - Fans / consumidors del producte base de l' esport. Amb l'anàlisi de l'estructura i continguts d'una mostra de 27 llocs web d'aquestes organitzacions, i després de considerar els conceptes i teories sobre la comunicació a Internet, l'emergència del comerç electrònic i l'e-marketing, i com poden relacionar-se amb la indústria esportiva i la transmissió de missatges esportius, s'estableixen les conclusions sobre quin és l'impacte d'Internet a la indústria esportiva, quan som propers a l'inici de la convergència entre la televisió digital i Internet.

A Retail benchmarking approach to eficient two-way access pricing

We study a retail benchmarking approach to determine access prices for interconnected networks. Instead of considering fixed access charges as in the existing literature, we study access pricing rules that determine the access price that network i pays to network j as a linear function of the marginal costs and the retail prices set by both networks. In the case of competition in linear prices, we show that there is a unique linear rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium, independently of the underlying demand conditions. In the case of competition in two-part tariffs, we consider a class of access pricing rules, similar to the optimal one under linear prices but based on average retail prices. We show that firms choose the variable price equal to the marginal cost under this class of rules. Therefore, the regulator (or the competition authority) can choose one among the rules to pursue additional objectives such as consumer surplus, network covera.

Internet and the Olympic Movement

Paper analysing the increasing importance of Internet in organisations, the evolution of the use of information technology in the Olympic Games and the challenges that Internet can bring to the Olympic Movement. This paper was presented at the 11th IASI World Conference on Sports Information (Lausanne, 25-27 April 2001)

Internet y el movimiento olímpico

Ponencia que analiza la cada vez mayor importancia de Internet en las organizaciones, la evolución en el uso de las tecnologías de la información en los Juegos Olímpicos y los retos que Internet plantea al Movimiento Olímpic. Este texto fue presentado en el 11th IASI World Conference on Sports Information (Lausana, 25-27 abril 2001).