A month ago Professor Giovan Giacomo Giordano, the distinguished medical pathologist who has devoted over sixty years of his life in the field of cancer research and teaching Anatomic and Pathological Histology at the University of Naples, passed away. Author and coauthor of over three hundred publications, has spent most of his scientific research to study: the interaction between chemical...read

In recent decades, the profound anthropological and socio-demographic changes of the childbearing population have resulted in a new approach to childbirth. As documented by ISTAT, the increase in the number of female population (greater than 20%) and of their cultural level (8-fold increased rate of women holding a university degree), together with medical advances, a demographic decline in the...read

The Institute of Biosciences for Human Health of the Human Health Foundation Onlus of Spoleto (HHF), Foundation for Human Health, based in Spoleto and Terni, opened in Terni, in the Maratta location (via Bartocci 9 / B) on June 7. Some years ago, two professionals coming from completely different areas of work, met and discussed at length, and afterwards created, a completely innovative project...read

Thanks to the success of antiretroviral therapies, the HIV / AIDS has been transformed into a chronic condition, and has assured HIV patients undergoing treatment with diligence, a quality of life and a survival that was unthinkable a few years ago. However, these advances obtained in the therapeutic field generated in the public the false belief that the "problem HIV / AIDS" was entirely, or...read

The Advanced Training Course In Management Of Communication and Information in Healthcare, jointly organized by the Faculty of Education of the University Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples, headed by Lucio d'Alessandro, and by the Training School in Health Management, Department of Preventive Medical Sciences, directed by Maria Triassi, of the Faculty of Medicine of the University Federico II, is...read

The swine flu is now the most frequently talked about topic and it has been more successful than the reality shows, with a frightening marketing induction. Although it is too large to be covered with one article, this one will partly clarify this issue. Contrary to popular belief, swine influenza is not new: it frequently affects pigs, and its first appearance in the virology world dates back...read

Optimizing the management of information flows to facilitate the sharing of information and knowledge is now more vital than ever for healthcare organizations. The AOU Federico II of Naples has made all the operators of the Company aware of a series of projects, through activities planned and organized in a shared communication plan. The communication plan, validated in March 2009, has the...read

Loss of fertility is one of the most frequent consequences for patients undergoing treatments with chemotherapy and/or radiation for cancer. When the disease occurs at young age, that is when the patient has not yet achieved his or her desire for maternity or paternity, the inability to have biological children may cause great sense of deprivation and frustration. Just recently the news...read

In the days when the roles were rigidly codified, and "patiently” accepted, it was unusual to raise questions, and any inner conflicts were resolved in line with codes, not always written, but long handed down. Abandoning those tracks, laid down by tradition, seemed unthinkable, but ... something gave: today there are no more roles built in "granite", but there are organizational and social...read

The strategic role of communication in health care management is still not fully recognized, despite overwhelming evidence provided by the vast legislation created in the last fifteen years covering the Italian Health and Public Communications. The PO of San Felice a Cancello, promoted a project of organizational communication with the intent to finalize the actions of individual professionals...read

Death was in every age a subject that has caused anxiety; it was always difficult to face this reality that, strictly speaking, is ineffable. In fact, one cannot have direct access to death: we cannot speak of it personally, because it is necessarily the death of the other person. Modern medical knowledge has changed the concept of death: the concept of death that was understood as the...read

The term "health" has long been understood in a restrictive meaning: "The healthy man is the one whose biological parameters are normal compared to an ideal static prototype. In essence, it would be possible to configure a model of an average biologically healthy individual, statistically derived from the population. In particular, the parameters of normality are those in which the structures...read

The reference intervals (IR) are some of the most used tools in medical decision-making. They are used as dividing lines, when there are no better ways to distinguish if a condition is health or disease. Very often, in population screening for a disease, we should use an IR based on the central 95% of the reference population but, if the purpose of IR is to assist the clinician in interpreting...read

The abortion pill RU 486 (invented by the French biochemist Beaulieu) will be introduced in Italy fairly soon. The Board of Directors of Aifa, the national Italian drug regulatory agency, could give the final go-ahead to the pill, which has allowed millions of women around the world to interrupt pregnancy without entering the operating room. The Welfare Undersecretary Eugenia Roccella affirms...read

Pain is an "epidemic" that hinders the full expression of life to millions of people, both in European countries and, even more, in the Mediterranean countries with lesser health-power. The World Health Organization indicates that pain is one of the main causes for which medical attention is requested, and represents a serious public health problem (1-3). Defeating pain therefore allows people...read

Italy is second in the world in the field of robotic surgery, with as many as 1585 cases treated in 29 hospitals in Italy in 2007. The United States hold the world record with 545 of the 719 installed systems worldwide, against 119 installed in Europe. Italy also exceeds France (18 hospitals with a robot in the operating room), Germany (13) and United Kingdom (9). The news comes from the...read

The tumor suppressor gene pRb2/p130 may provide the first independent prognostic biomarker in cases of soft tissue sarcoma (STS), according to an international collaboration of researchers, including scientists at the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine at the College of Science and Technology at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, the Department of Human Pathology and...read

Modern medical science is now able to artificially support life and has created a new boundary between life and death, no longer anchored to the cessation of control of body functions by the individual, thus raising debatable ethical issues. The case of Eluana Englaro, who has been in a deep coma for 16 years, has recently received great public attention. Her father initially obtained a court...read

A new discovery on the role of the protein cdk9-55 in the regeneration of muscle tissue and in cell differentiation could lead to find new therapies for the reconstruction of muscle tissue damaged by disease, accidents or aging, as reported by the researchers of the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine of Temple University in Philadelphia, and of the University of Siena. In...read