Most out-of-treatment deaths occurred in people with known histories of drug misuse. Forty-three methadone positive
cases – 19/32 in treatment, and 24/28 out-of-treatment – and 2 of the 7 buprenorphine-positive deaths were due to overdose. selleck The risk of overdose death per thousand people in treatment was lower for buprenorphine than for methadone (RR 4.25 [1.03, 17.54]).
Conclusion: In this short-term study, buprenorphine was associated with lower overdose risk than methadone. Crown Copyright (C) 2009 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Question under study: Purpose was to validate accuracy and reliability of automated oscillometric ankle-brachial (ABI) measurement prospectively against the current gold standard of Doppler-assisted ABI determination.
Methods: Oscillometric ABI was measured in 50 consecutive patients with peripheral arterial disease (n = 100 limbs, mean age 65 +/- 6 years, 31 men,
19 diabetics) after both high and low ABI had been determined conventionally by Doppler under standardised conditions. Correlation was assessed by linear regression and Pearson product moment correlation. Degree of inter-modality agreement was quantified by use of Bland and Altman method.
Results: Oscillometry was performed significantly learn more faster than Doppler-assisted ABI (3.9 +/- 1.3 vs 11.4 +/- 3.8 minutes, P <.001). Mean readings were 0.62 +/- 0.25, 0.70 +/- 0.22 and 0.63 +/- 0.39 for low, high and oscillometric ABI, respectively. Correlation between oscillometry and Doppler ABI was good overall (r = 0.76 for both low and high ABI) and excellent in oligo-symptomatic, non-diabetic patients (r = 0.81; 0.07 +/- 0.23); it was, however, limited in diabetic patients and in patients with critical limb ischaemia. In general, oscillometric ABI readings were slightly higher (+0.06), but linear regression analysis
showed that correlation was sustained over the whole range of measurements.
Conclusions: Results of automated oscillometric ABI determination correlated well with Doppler-assisted measurements and could be obtained in shorter time. Agreement was particularly high in oligo-symptomatic non-diabetic patients.”
“Migraine is a disabling neurological disease Selleck Bucladesine that affects 14.7 % of Europeans. Studies evaluating the economic impact of migraine are complex to conduct adequately and with time become outdated as healthcare systems evolve. This study sought to quantify and compare direct medical costs of chronic migraine (CM) and episodic migraine (EM) in five European countries. Cross-sectional data collected via a web-based survey were screened for migraine and classified as CM (a parts per thousand yen15 headache days/month) or EM (< 15 headache days/month), and included sociodemographics, resource use data and medication use. Unit cost data, gathered using publicly available sources, were analyzed for each type of service, stratified by migraine status.