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Overall, 41% of all work-related accidents lead to a hand injury. In the younger generation, the incidence rate even rises to 50%. In Austria, these accidents result in approximately half a million sick leave days per annum, an average of 12.5 days per accident. In comparison, leisure-time hand injuries show a significantly higher accident rate: 60% of hand injuries occur during leisure time. Far fewer safety measures are taken and a lack of adequate training and a disregard for safety recommendations are observed.This large number of hand injuries led to the launch of a campaign in Austria in 2014-2015 called "Hände gut - Alles Gut", (Hands well - all's well). This campaign was aimed at reducing the costs, a sum of 309 million Euros, incurred solely from work-related hand accidents, by at least 5-10%.These exorbitantly high costs are not only due to severe hand trauma, most result from a multitude of slight and superficial wounds.

Although generally accepted as a necessary step to improve water management and planning, integrated water resources management (IWRM) methodology does not provide a clear definition of what should be integrated. The various water-related issues that IWRM might encompass are well documented in the literature, but they are generally addressed separately. Therefore, water management lacks a holistic, systems-based description, with a special emphasis on the interrelations between issues. This article presents such a system model for water management, including a graphical representation and textual descriptions of the various water issues, their components, and their interactions. This model is seen as an aide-memoire and a generic reference, providing background knowledge helping to elicit actual system definitions, in possible combination with other participatory systems approaches. The applicability of the model is demonstrated through its application to two test case studies.

Purtscher's retinopathy is a traumatic angiopathy, most commonly caused by head and chest trauma. Retinal signs include white ischemic infarcts (cotton-wool spots or Purtscher flecken) and hemorrhages (dot and blot, preretinal, or flame). The prognosis for patients with decreased vision is unpredictable. We report one case of this disease developing 3 days after a motorcycle accident.

In recent years, the Internet has generally been growing throughout the world, and physicians have taken to the Web as well. Besides its use for medical data research, physicians and hospitals are increasingly discovering the Internet as a vehicle for the presentation of their scope of practice. In this regard, the legal frameworks in Germany are strictly regulated. This article presents current legal standards and consequences to be faced when the law on prohibited advertising is broken. Included are references to specific laws concerning Internet pages.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to obtain an overview of the use of the Internet by surgical departments in Germany as a presentation platform and information resource for their patients., Methods: After a randomizing a total of 1,760 surgical departments in Germany, 200 were chosen and asked about their Internet use., Results: Most of the questionnaires (81.5%) were received and analyzed; 32.5% of the German surgical departments are represented on the Internet; 81.4% of the clinics without a homepage are planning to have one in the future. The hospitals represent themselves on average on two HTML documents., Conclusion: Approximately a third of the German surgical departments currently give information over the Internet with a wide and heterogeneous spectrum. In the near future approx. 80% of the German surgical departments will have online presence. Therefore, the increasing demand for medical information by the patients will be fulfilled. The professionalism and effectiveness of the home-pages can be increased through registration with many search engines and the use of e-mail.

Introduction: About 90 % of the patients have abdominal surgery develop adhesions afterward. Studies analyzing complications and follow-up even in emergency cases are rare., Methods: Intra- and postoperative findings and complications and follow-up were analyzed in a prospective trial between January 1994 and June 1998., Results: We performed laparoscopic procedures in 56 patients with complaints of obstructing adhesive bands or adhesions. Ninety-six percent of the patients have had abdominal surgery; 51.8 % were treated as emergency cases with acute pain, 48.2 % with chronic abdominal pain. Intraoperatively, 37.5 % of the patients showed single adhesive bands; 62.5 % showed adhesions. Mean operation time was 60 min, conversion rate: 5.4 %. Complications were recorded according to the "Cologne classification": class I: 78.6 %, class II: 8.9 %, class III: 1.8 %, class IV: 10.8 %, class V: 0 %. The postoperative hospital stay was 6 days on average., Conclusion: Our study suggests that laparoscopic adhesiolysis can be done safely in emergency cases and in patients with extensive adhesions as well.