P R Health Sci J
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Review
[War on Drugs or War against Health? The pitfalls for public health of Puerto Rican drug policy].
Puerto Rico has followed the United States in adopting drug policy sustained on a criminal justice model that limits the opportunities to address problematic drug use through public health interventions. Demand for illegal drugs is controlled by criminalizing drug use and applying jail sentences for drug offenses. ⋯ The present work reviews the assumptions of the punitive prohibitionist model and its outcomes that present themselves as public health challenges in Puerto Rico. It also presents those principles that should sustain pragmatic drug policy to address problematic drug use from a health and social perspective.
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To examine the timeliness of the diagnosis of patients with ALI/ARDS at the San Juan VA Medical Intensive Care Unit. We were also interested in determining the incidence and the overall 28-day mortality for ARDS during the study period. ⋯ Our findings suggest that education in the recognition of ARDS should be aggressively done. In order to implement the recently published successful strategies in the mechanical ventilation of patients with ARDS, it should be first recognized. Our patients need it.
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To study the timeliness of the diagnosis of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)/acute lung injury (ALI) at the Puerto Rico Trauma Center (PRTC) and to determine the overall 28 day mortality for ARDS during the study period. ⋯ The majority of the cases of ARDS were correctly identified as such by caregivers at the time of diagnosis. Mortality as predicted by Injury Severity Score in our ARDS patients' correlates with overall mortality in our TICU. Mortality in this group is lower than that of reported literature, in sharp contrast to our medical ICU counterparts.
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The therapy of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), characterized by the presence of the Philadelphia chromosome in the clonal hematopoietic stem cells, has changed dramatically in the last year with the development of a specific inhibitor of the BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase. This medication, STI571 or imatinib, was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for CML patients refractory or intolerant to interferon. ⋯ STI571 is the first agent in Oncology that directly targets the molecular basis of a malignant disease, changing the way that we will treat these conditions in the future. This new field of molecular and cellular biology has the possibility of controlling not only malignant conditions but also diseases treated by other medical specialties.