Medicina
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Discussions about the goals of medicine and health care have significantly increased through the last decade of the past century. This was determined by the highly increased extent of health care, scarce health care resources, fundamental changes of health care technologies and well-established market relationships in health care. For a long time medicine attempted to achieve three main goals: to save and prolong life, fight and prevent diseases, reduce pain and sufferings. ⋯ Often the society tries to escape from number of social problems medicalizing them. Spiritual and social problems of human are often supposed to be as medical ones, thus it is crucial to separate the main goals of medicine, which represent its values and targets, from the secondary ones, related to social or individual welfare, crime, dilemmas of poverty or morality. The aim of the article is to reveal the key values of medicine and health care, which determine the goals of medicine and health care.
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Comparative Study
[Analysis of burn-related deaths in Kaunas University of Medicine Hospital during 1993-2002].
Objective of this study was to investigate mortality of burned patients, treated in Kaunas University of Medicine Hospital during 1993-2002, changes of mortality, causes of death, to assess patients' age, gender, burn agent, and adjacent diseases. ⋯ At higher mortality risk are elder burned patient with major burns, especially with serious adjacent diseases. Common death causes in burned patients are pneumonia, pulmonary edema and sepsis.
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While still relatively uncommon in many countries, esophageal cancer is fatal in the vast majority of cases. In the USA, estimated 13,100 of new cases were diagnosed in 2002. In Lithuania, 163 new cases were diagnosed in 2001. ⋯ The superiority of preoperative chemoradiation over surgery alone in esophageal cancer has been demonstrated in a prospective trials. Recently published phase I and II studies have demonstrated moderate response rates to taxanes in esophageal cancer. Taxanes and irinotecan in combinations with platinum compounds and fluoropyrimidines are being tested in regimes with radiation.
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The prevalence of minor anorectal diseases is 4-5% of adult Western population. Operations are performed on ambulatory or 24-hour stay basis. Requirements for ambulatory anesthesia are: rapid onset and recovery, ability to provide quick adjustments during maintenance, lack of intraoperative and postoperative side effects, and cost-effectiveness. ⋯ Complications may lead to hospital admission. In conclusion, novel general anesthetics are recommended for ambulatory anorectal surgery. Further studies to determine an optimal dose and method are needed in the group of regional anesthesia.
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Comparative Study
[Assessment of health care services quality by medical professionals and patients].
The article presents the data of medical professionals and patients' assessment of health care services quality in Jurbarkas hospital. All physicians and nurses, working full time, and patients, treated in the hospital within November-December 2002, were invited to participate in the survey. The response rate among the physicians was 79.5%; while among the nurses and the patients it was 64.5%, and 68.9% correspondingly. ⋯ The physicians and nurses rated their communication with the patients more critically than the patients. The differences between the medical professionals and patients' assessments concerning health care services quality demonstrate, that in order to achieve comprehensive information, it is necessary to organize a universal survey. The information assembled from different sources will allow collecting more objective and comprehensive data about the quality of health care services in hospital.