Transiente Globale Amnesie versus Transiente Ischämische Attacke – Klinik und Schlaganfallrisiko

Transient global amnesia versus transient ischaemic attack: clinical presentation and cerebral vascular accident risk Transient global amnesia is an acute, benign, isolated and temporarily limited disturbance of memory, that can occur repeatedly but shows no increased risk of cardiovascular events or stroke in particular. Therefore, patients with the typical clinical presentation and a normal brain magnetic resonance-scan require neither further diagnostic nor therapeutic interventions. Since the differential diagnosis of transient global amnesia is wide, and transient ischaemic attacks can present similarly, a careful clinical evaluation and neuroimaging is recommended. In any case of doubt further diagnostic steps according to stroke workup should be initiated. In contrast, a transient ischaemic attack represents a neurological emergency where clinical and diagnostic evaluation must be introduced fast. The rapid establishment of therapeutic and secondary preventive measures decreases the clearly elevated stroke risk and prevents disability.

Spielwiesen des Globalen

Die neue theaterwissenschaftliche Reihe »itw : im dialog – Forschungen zum Gegenwartstheater« widmet sich den Ästhetiken, Themen und Tendenzen aktuellen Theaterschaffens. Band 2 reflektiert sowohl die ästhetischen und kulturpolitischen als auch die sozialen und gesellschaftlichen Dimensionen der Produktion und Zirkulation von zeitgenössischem Theater. Besonderes Interesse kommt den Theaterfestivals und Gastspielhäusern als den ›klassischen‹ Spielwiesen des Globalen zu, ebenso wie dem durch sie erzeugten Spannungsfeld zwischen dem Globalen und dem Lokalen. Inwiefern haben diese Spielwiesen Rückwirkungen auf das lokale Theaterschaffen? Welchen Grenzen, Regeln, Mechanismen des Marktes sind Spielwiesen des Globalen ausgesetzt und welchen – möglicherweise – spielerischen Umgang finden sie damit? Mit Beiträgen u.a. von Barbara Gronau, Friedemann Kreuder, Miriam Drewes, Ulf Otto und Gesprächen mit Christophe Meierhans, Martin Schick (Schick/Gremaud/Pavillon), Max-Philip Aschenbrenner (Asian Arts Theatre), Alexander Devriendt (Ontroerend Goed), Tom Struyf und Geert De Vleesschauwer sowie Cristina Galbiati (TricksterP, Novazzano).

Hirnschlagrisiko nach transient ischämischer Attacke (TIA)

Eine transiente ischämische Attacke (TIA) kann Vorbote eines drohenden Hirnschlags sein und sollte rasch abgeklärt werden. In einer Studie hat das BIHAM untersucht, ob das Risiko eines Hirnschlags nach TIA unter Haus- und Spitalärzten richtig eingeschätzt wird und wie bezüglich weiterer Abklärungen vorgegangen wird. Eine Studie von Hausärzten über Hausärzte – Was lief dabei gut, was weniger?

Evidenzbasierte klinische Untersuchung

Auf grosses Interesse an der SwissFamilyDocs Conference 2015 stiess der interaktive Workshop über evidenzbasierte klinische Untersuchung. Die Autoren diskutierten mit dem erfahrenen und engagierten Publikum die Wertigkeit verschiedener klinischer Untersuchungen anhand von Fallvignetten.

Evidence for Emergency Vaccination Having Played a Crucial Role to Control the 1965/66 Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreak in Switzerland.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is a highly contagious disease that caused several large outbreaks in Europe in the last century. The last important outbreak in Switzerland took place in 1965/66 and affected more than 900 premises and more than 50,000 animals were slaughtered. Large-scale emergency vaccination of the cattle and pig population has been applied to control the epidemic. In recent years, many studies have used infectious disease models to assess the impact of different disease control measures, including models developed for diseases exotic for the specific region of interest. Often, the absence of real outbreak data makes a validation of such models impossible. This study aimed to evaluate whether a spatial, stochastic simulation model (the Davis Animal Disease Simulation model) can predict the course of a Swiss FMD epidemic based on the available historic input data on population structure, contact rates, epidemiology of the virus, and quality of the vaccine. In addition, the potential outcome of the 1965/66 FMD epidemic without application of vaccination was investigated. Comparing the model outcomes to reality, only the largest 10% of the simulated outbreaks approximated the number of animals being culled. However, the simulation model highly overestimated the number of culled premises. While the outbreak duration could not be well reproduced by the model compared to the 1965/66 epidemic, it was able to accurately estimate the size of the area infected. Without application of vaccination, the model predicted a much higher mean number of culled animals than with vaccination, demonstrating that vaccination was likely crucial in disease control for the Swiss FMD outbreak in 1965/66. The study demonstrated the feasibility to analyze historical outbreak data with modern analytical tools. However, it also confirmed that predicted epidemics from a most carefully parameterized model cannot integrate all eventualities of a real epidemic. Therefore, decision makers need to be aware that infectious disease models are useful tools to support the decision-making process but their results are not equal valuable as real observations and should always be interpreted with caution.

Timely Reporting and Interactive Visualization of Animal Health and Slaughterhouse Surveillance Data in Switzerland

The reporting of outputs from health surveillance systems should be done in a near real-time and interactive manner in order to provide decision makers with powerful means to identify, assess, and manage health hazards as early and efficiently as possible. While this is currently rarely the case in veterinary public health surveillance, reporting tools do exist for the visual exploration and interactive interrogation of health data. In this work, we used tools freely available from the Google Maps and Charts library to develop a web application reporting health-related data derived from slaughterhouse surveillance and from a newly established web-based equine surveillance system in Switzerland. Both sets of tools allowed entry-level usage without or with minimal programing skills while being flexible enough to cater for more complex scenarios for users with greater programing skills. In particular, interfaces linking statistical softwares and Google tools provide additional analytical functionality (such as algorithms for the detection of unusually high case occurrences) for inclusion in the reporting process. We show that such powerful approaches could improve timely dissemination and communication of technical information to decision makers and other stakeholders and could foster the early-warning capacity of animal health surveillance systems.