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The specialist who is appointed by an employer as a competent physician in an occupational medicine service, has been charged of new public legal tasks, as a result of the changes introduced by Legislative Decree No. 81/08, setting him in a direct relationship with the National Health Service; in particular the Article 40 of decree 81 assigns a strategic role for prevention of new occupational diseases and injuries to the competent physician, as a primary source of epidemiological information, able to bring out "sentinel events" in the population of workers undergoing health surveillance, by the communication to the relevant public health services of combined aggregate data as required by Annex 3B. In a second step such information shall be processed and analyzed on a national scale by Italian Workers' Compensation Authority (INAIL), in order to improve the knowledge useful to a more effective and prompt prevention. The new possibility, introduced by Legislative Decree 106/09, to carry out pre-employment visits as a part of health surveillance, allows the competent physician to establish the fitness to the work of involved persons, a task that was previously assigned by law 300/70 to public bodies only, allowing him to check for alcohol and drug addiction at such stage too, provided the involvement of public health facilities of II level (referred to State/Regions Agreement of September 18, 2008) for relevant clinical examinations for verification purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: To assess the safety profile of dietary supplements with a focus on those purchased online or reported via the internet., Results: Among the 2,367 reports of Adverse Reactions (ARs) to dietary supplements collected within the Italian Phitovigilance System, 49.4% were from citizens and 33.7% from companies. From these we selected 129 reports (6%) in which an online purchase or an adverse reaction retrieved from the web was indicated (e.g. Amazon®). The most frequent ARs referred to the gastrointestinal tract (31.4%) and the central nervous system (17.6%). Nineteen percent were used for sleep disorders and 14% for disturbances of the prostate., Conclusions: The Italian Phytovigilance System is the only tool that provides information on the possible risks associated with the use of food supplements purchased online but the quality of the information collected needs to be improved.

Objectives: to assess the variability in expenditure compared to 2022 assuming different rates of shifting of therapy days from current active ingredients used for the treatment of haemophilia B to nonacog beta pegolDesign: descriptive cross-sectional study., Setting and Participants: consumption in the year 2022 (data source: Medicines Utilisation Monitoring Centre, Italian Medicines Agency) of all medicinal products available in Italy containing coagulation factor IX., Main Outcomes Measures: for each active ingredient, the total number of therapy days and the variability in expenditure compared to 2022 were estimated on the basis of a switch of therapy days, between 5% and 20%, to nonacog beta pegol., Results: on the basis of considered scenarios, the analysis shows that the total annual expenditure for clotting factors used in the treatment of haemophilia B could remain at most unchanged or reduced. Particularly, the extent of the reduction in spending could vary from 0.11% to 2.26%. This trend would be in contrast to the stable increase seen in recent years, particularly in 2022., Conclusions: this predictive spending assessment may be useful in evaluating the economic impact from new treatment options, such as etranacogene dezaparvovec gene therapy already approved by the European Medicines Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, and to improve pharmaceutical governance.

In 2021, the national expenditure for blood coagulation factors was 541.4 million, growing steadily over the past decade. Hemophilia A is the congenital hemorrhagic disease with the highest drug consumption and expenditure. It has also the highest annual increase. Data from the OsMed report showed an increased use of long-acting recombinant factors and a concomitant reduction in consumption of short-acting ones and also an increasing trend of emicizumab. Based on these findings, two possible expenditure scenarios were described: 1) assuming a 25% of reduction in consumption of short-acting recombinant factors with proportional redistribution to the consumption observed in 2022 for long-acting recombinant factors; 2) assuming that all new patients with a moderate and severe form of the disease will start prophylaxis with emicizumab and also calculating different switch percentages (20%, 30%, 50% or 70%). The first hypothesis showed a potential increase in expenditure of 3.3% (approximately 10 million euros) switching from short- to long-acting factors. In the second one, based on estimated number of patients with Hemophilia A on treatment, a total expenditure of about 457.6 million euros was estimated. Based on these findings, different expenditure outlooks were hypothesized and that there should be a switch from the recombinant factors to emicizumab. Specifically, an expenditure increase of 8% in the case of 20% switch and 28.1% in the case of 70% switch were estimated.

Therapeutic strategies for the treatment of congenital bleeding disorders. Congenital hemorrhagic diseases (CHDs) are a group of rare disorders caused by quantitative or qualitative deficiency of one or more coagulation factors. Haemophilia A, Haemophilia B, and von Willebrand disease are the most common congenital bleeding disorders. Over the past decades, the evolution of CHDs treatments has resulted in an increase in the average life expectancy of patients and in an improvement in their quality of life; it has also enabled the prevention of bleeding complications much more effectively than in the past. This has been possible, especially for haemophilia, mainly because of earlier diagnosis, introduction of recombinant factors, especially long-acting factors, and availability of new non-substitutive therapies. In 2021, there was an increase in the overall expenditure and consumption of coagulation factors in Italy; the increase concerned especially the long-acting recombinant factors used in the treatment of Haemophilia A and B and the monoclonal antibody emicizumab. Waiting for innovative therapies that can enable individually tailored therapies, special attention must be paid to prescriptive appropriateness and to identify the best diagnostic and therapeutic care pathways for patients.

The aim of this work is to establish the accuracy of pulmonary magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) compared to multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) and pulmonary angiography in the diagnostic evaluation of pulmonary arteriovenous malformations (PAVMs) in patients with hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. Eight consecutive patients underwent MRA, MDCT and pulmonary angiography. All patients were carriers of PAVMs amenable to endovascular treatment. The parameters we have evaluated were the presence, the number of fistulas and the diameter of the feeding artery of the malformation. In all cases, the findings of the three tests were comparable. In only one case, MR images were considered qualitatively poorer than MDCT, although sufficient for the recognition of the lesion located in the hilum. The diameters of the arteries showed no statistically differences between MRA and CT. In conclusion, the MRA technique was found to be valid and reliable in the diagnosis of PAVMs in patients with HHT.

The specialist who is appointed by an employer as a competent physician in an occupational medicine service, has been charged of new public legal tasks, as a result of the changes introduced by Legislative Decree No. 81/08, setting him in a direct relationship with the National Health Service; in particular the Article 40 of decree 81 assigns a strategic role for prevention of new occupational diseases and injuries to the competent physician, as a primary source of epidemiological information, able to bring out "sentinel events" in the population of workers undergoing health surveillance, by the communication to the relevant public health services of combined aggregate data as required by Annex 3B. In a second step such information shall be processed and analyzed on a national scale by Italian Workers'Compensation Authority (INAIL), in order to improve the knowledge useful to a more effective and prompt prevention. The new possibility, introduced by Legislative Decree 106/09, to carry out pre-employment visits as a part of health surveillance, allows the competent physician to establish the fitness to the work of involved persons, a task that was previously assigned by law 300/70 to public bodies only, allowing him to check for alcohol and drug addiction at such stage too, provided the involvement of public health facilities of II level (referred to State/Regions Agreement of September 18, 2008) for relevant clinical examinations for verification purposes.

Introduction: The present research study starts up from the current scientific and academic interest concerning Deficit and Attention/Hyperactivity Disorders, which in this period seems to have an "epidemic" diffusion. Some authors have proved how the Deficit and Attention/Hyperactivity Disorder may predispose to the development of other psychopathological attitude in adulthood. A recent study has underlined a common comorbidity between ADHD in childhood and Bipolar Disorder. The aim of the present was to verify the existence of an ADHD diagnosis in patients with depression (Unipolar and Bipolar) and to verify if such syndrome overstays in the present psychopathological picture. Moreover there has been even the intention to investigate on a difference in ADHD symptomatology in patients with Bipolar and Unipolar Depression., Materials and Methods: The study has been conducted on a sample of 67 patients with depression diagnosis (35 patients with bipolar depression diagnosis, 32 patients with depression unipolar diagnosis) enrolled at the Bipolar Disorders Unit of the Clinical Psychiatry and Drug Dependence Institute of the Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli in Rome. The evaluation has been performed through the supply of the following psychometric tests: Neo Personality Inventory (Mole-pi-R), Brown Attention Deficit Disorder Scale (Brown ADD-Scale), Adult ADHD Self-Report Staircases (ASRS-v1.1), Criteria of the Deficit and Attention / Hyperactivity Disorder for childhood according to the DSM-IV-Tr., Results: The achieved results point out that 42% of the sample has satisfied the ADHD Criterions during their childhood according to the DSM-IV-Tr and that symptomatology seems to remain in the present psychopathological picture. As to polarity of depression it has emerged that patients with Bipolar Depression diagnosis have satisfied with a greater frequency the ADHD criteria during their childhood than patients with Unipolar Depression., Conclusions: Our results seem to confirm the hypothesis that patients with bipolar depression diagnosis have more Deficit and Attention / Hyperactivity Disorders comorbidity diagnosis than others.

Gingival overgrowth induced by calcium channel blockers can cause significant disfigurement and functional difficulty since it interferes with eating and speech, prevents effective plaque control, and disturbs occlusal relationships. It occurs more in young and male patients. The aim of this paper is to study the physiopathology of gingival overgrowth induced by calcium channel blockers and propose different choices of treatment.

Purpose: To set Diagnostic Reference Levels (DRLs) in interventional radiology by means of dose area product (DAP) measurements and the grouping of homogeneous procedures, and to quantify the associated errors in the DRL estimates. To evaluate the Mean Effective Doses per single procedure., Materials and Methods: Interventional radiology procedures were divided into four main groups: neuroradiological, vascular, extravascular and paediatric. Neuroradiological and vascular procedures were further divided into diagnostic and interventional procedures. Starting from DAP and total fluoroscopy time measurements in 1,256 patients, the DRLs were determined for 17 procedures, together with an estimate of their uncertainty. The correlation between fluoroscopy time and DAP was assessed. Mean effective dose estimates were obtained from measured DAP values and from the analysis of the dosimetric data reported in the literature for similar procedures., Results: The main features of DAP distributions are long high-dose tails, indicating asymmetric distributions, together with a large interquartile range. Rounded third-quartile values of DAP distributions showed a large range in the procedures taken into consideration. Values of 147, 198, 338 Gy cm(2)were obtained for supra-aortic angiography, cerebral angiography and embolization. Values of 86-101 and 459-438 Gy cm(2)were obtained for diagnostic and interventional vascular procedures on the lower limbs and on the abdomen, respectively. Values of 25-33 Gy cm(2)were obtained for retrograde cystourethrographies and ERCP, and values of 62-158 Gy cm(2)were obtained for nephrostomy and percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography. The correlation between total fluoroscopy time and the DAP values was poor. Mean effective dose estimates showed lower values for extravascular procedures (4.8-28.2 mSv), intermediate values for neuroradiological procedures (12.6-32.9 mSv) and higher values for vascular procedures involving the abdomen (36.5-86.8 mSv)., Discussion: DAP values were generally higher in vascular than in extravascular procedures. In generally, interventional vascular procedures show higher DAP values than the corresponding diagnostic procedures, with the exception of the abdominal region where the values were similar. Extravascular procedures with percutaneous access show significantly higher DAP values than those with endoscopic access. Total fluoroscopy time is a poor predictor of patient doses in interventional radiology., Conclusions: The systematic recording of DAP values, together with adequate grouping of similar procedures makes it possible to establish stable DRLs on a local basis and to carry out dosimetric evaluations, although on a statistical rather than individual basis. Patient radiation doses during interventional radiological procedures may be high, particularly when the abdominal region is involved.

Purpose: To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of MRA (3D TOF) in comparison to contrast-enhanced MRA using DSA as the gold standard in the study of steno-occlusive disease of the internal carotid artery, in order to determine if this technique still has a diagnostic value., Materials and Methods: Three radiologists blindly and independently evaluated either the unenhanced MRA, CE MRA, or DSA images of 23 consecutive patients, assessing the stenosis based on a NASCET five-class classification., Results: The sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy of CE MRA and unenhanced MRA were 100% and 100%, 100% and 95.5% and 100% and 93.2%, respectively. These differences were not statistically significant., Conclusions: Unenhanced MRA should be still considered a valid alternative for studying the extracranial section of the internal carotid arteries especially in patients who refuse or whose laboratory results exclude the use of contrast medium or in patients in whom continuous monitoring of a clinical condition is required but a repeated and/or frequent use of contrast medium is not possible.

Platelets are thought to be involved in the initiation and propagation of arterial and venous thrombi. A new formation of platelet thrombus in a coronary artery has been implicated in the genesis and extension of myocardial infarction. Experimental evidence suggests that platelet aggregates may be responsible for occlusion of small coronary arteries and subsequent ischemia. Whether the thrombotic component of myocardial infarction is primary or secondary in a given patient, platelet function alterations can influence many mechanisms - operating at the microenvironment level from which depends if the thrombotic lesion grows or sends platelet emboli to the smaller myocardial vessels. Although myocardial infarction is usually associated with arteriographic evidence of atherosclerotic coronary obstruction, examples of infarction in the absence of coronary artery disease have been reported. ARterial thrombosis, small vessel coronary disease and arterial spasm are several possibilities that have been described. Recently in some cases of myocardial infarction, coronary artery spasm has been demonstrated angiographically; thromboxanes, vasoconstrictive and platelet aggregating substances, are released by platelets; thromboxanes, vasoconstrictive and platelet aggregating substances, are released by platelets during myocardial ischemia as an increase of prostaglandin synthesis, like prostacyclin, is stimulated by ischemia and hypoxia. The local release of these substance may modify the myocardial cell viability and regional blood flow. The aim of the present study was to investigate some changes in platelet function in relation to the time stimulated with thrombin. The tests showed, in the first three days, an augmented release of BTG levels with a platelet "exhaustion", demonstrated by a reduced formation of MDA by platelets changing to a state of hyperactivity, with a maximal production of MDA in 10th-15th day.