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Background Women with aesthetic prostheses must be included in the target population of mammography screening programmes. Breast implants are radiopaque and partially obscure the breast tissue. This can be avoided with the use of the Eklund technique, which causes an increased radiation exposure. In this study, augmented women undergoing a dedicated protocol within a population-based screening programme were compared according to selected indicators with the standard screening population. Essential dosimetric parameters and their time trend were also assessed. Materials and methods The study was conducted in a screening centre in Milan in the years 2009–2016. The screening protocol for women with breast implants included a double-read mammography with the Eklund views, ultrasound and clinical breast examination. Results A total of 28,794 women were enrolled, including 588 (2%) women with breast implants and 28,206 (98%) undergoing the standard screening protocol. The invasive assessment rate was 9.0‰ for women with breast implants vs. 15‰ in the standard cohort. The surgical referral rate was 2.2% vs. 0.9%. The detection rate was similar in the two groups (4.0 and 4.5‰, respectively). There were significant differences in the average glandular dose according to the mammography equipment. The use of the Eklund views increased over time. Conclusions Screening of augmented women according to a specific protocol in the contexts of population-based programmes is feasible. Observed differences in screening indicators relative to the standard screening population require further research. The increasing use of Eklund views probably results from quality assurance measures associated with screening programmes.

Background The aim of this study is to quantify the hospital burden of COVID-19 during the first wave and how it changed over calendar time; to interpret the results in light of the emergency measures introduced to manage the strain on secondary healthcare. Methods This is a cohort study of hospitalised confirmed cases of COVID-19 admitted from February–June 2020 and followed up till 17th July 2020, analysed using a mixture multi-state model. All hospital patients with confirmed COVID-19 disease in Regione Lombardia were involved, admitted from February–June 2020, with non-missing hospital of admission and non-missing admission date. Results The cohort consists of 40,550 patients hospitalised during the first wave. These patients had a median age of 69 (interquartile range 56–80) and were more likely to be men (60%) than women (40%). The hospital-fatality risk, averaged over all pathways through hospital, was 27.5% (95% CI 27.1–28.0%); and steadily decreased from 34.6% (32.5–36.6%) in February to 7.6% (6.3–10.6%) in June. Among surviving patients, median length of stay in hospital was 11.8 (11.6–12.3) days, compared to 8.1 (7.8–8.5) days in non-survivors. Averaged over final outcomes, median length of stay in hospital decreased from 21.4 (20.5–22.8) days in February to 5.2 (4.7–5.8) days in June. Conclusions The hospital burden, in terms of both risks of poor outcomes and lengths of stay in hospital, has been demonstrated to have decreased over the months of the first wave, perhaps reflecting improved treatment and management of COVID-19 cases, as well as reduced burden as the first wave waned. The quantified burden allows for planning of hospital beds needed for current and future waves of SARS-CoV-2 i.

The tests currently used for the identification of SARS-CoV-2 include specimens taken from the upper and lower respiratory tract. Although recommendations from the World Health Organization prioritise the usage of a nasopharyngeal swab (NS), nasopharyngeal aspirates (NPA) are thought to be superior in identifying SARS-CoV-2 in children. To our knowledge, however, no paediatric study has been published on the subject. The aim of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic performances of NS referred to NPA for SARS-CoV-2 in children. We calculated the sensitivity and specificity of the NS referred to the NPA of the whole sample and considered both age and collection period as covariates in different analyses. We collected 300 paired samples. The NS had a specificity of 97.7% and a sensitivity of 58.1%. We found similar results for the group of subjects ≥ 6 years old, while for subjects < 6 years old, the sensitivity was 66.7% and the specificity 97.8%. Considering period as a covariate, the sensitivity and specificity for patients hospitalised in March (31 patients, 52 records) were 70.0% and 97.6%, while for patients involved in the follow-up (16 patients, 57 records), they were 57.2% and 89.7%. The NS has a low sensitivity in detecting SARS-CoV-2 in children when referred to the NPA, whereas its specificity is high. Our results suggest that in children under 6 years of age, NSs should be preferred whenever possible. Though statistically not significant, the sensitivity of the NS rises when performed before the NPA.

To date, legitimacy of the application of cognitive enhancement programs to healthy individuals is still fueling neuroethics discussions. The aim of the present investigation is analyzing naive conceptions of the ethical implications of different practices—namely, non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS), psychotropic drugs, diet, hydration, and physical activity—which can be followed to enhance cognitive performance. An online survey targeted the opinions of the general public about the efficacy of the neuroenhancement techniques and ethical concerns in different contexts. Measures of general self-efficacy and beliefs about intelligence have been collected as well. Responses of 89 Italian undergraduate students of medicine or psychology were analyzed statistically and thematically. Findings supported the notion that passive ways of enhancing human performance, which fail to imply any personal effort and individual responsibility, are conceived as infringing moral rules, regardless of the context where they are implemented.

Background In Public Health, a thorough review of abstract quality evaluations and the publication history of studies presented at scientific meetings has never been conducted. To analyse the long-term outcome of quality abstracts submitted to conferences of Italian Society of Hygiene and Public Health (SItI) from 2005 to 2007, we conducted a second analysis of previously published material aiming to estimate full-text publication rate of high quality abstract presented at Italian public health meetings, and to identify predictors of full-text publication. Methods The search was undertaken through scientific databases and search engines and through the web sites of the major Italian journals of Public Health. For each publication confirmed as a full text paper, the journal name, impact factor, year of publication, gender of the first author, type of study design, characteristics of the results and sample size were collected. Results The overall publication rate of the abstracts presented is 23.5 %; most of the papers were published in Public Health journals (average impact factor: 3.007). Non universitary affiliation had resulted in a lower probability of publication, while some of the Conference topics had predisposed the studies to an increased likelihood of publication as well as poster form presentation. Conclusions The method presented in this study provides a good framework for the evaluation of the scientific evidence. The findings achieved should be taken into consideration by the Scientific Societies during the contributions selection phase, with the aim of achieving a continuous improvement of work quality. In the future, it would be interesting to survey the abstract authors to identify reasons for unpublished data.