ría and coastal zone are, in particular, vulnerable to heavy metals pollution. concentrations of 10 metals in liver, muscle and kidney of the sole (solea vulgaris) from ría of vigo and its coastal zone (spain) were measured from april 2006 to february 2007 and the relationships between fish size age and metal concentrations in the tissues was investigated. concentrations of the heavy metals in ...

background: resilience is a personal trait that can influence the stroke subjects’ attitudes toward future opportunities and facilitate the transitional process and adaptation in them. assessment of this trait in stroke subjects with a standardized tool would promote the rehabilitation protocols and occupational therapy interventions. therefore, the objective of this study was to standardize th...

introduction: management development assessment helps managers to systematically assess the current management capabilities of their organization and take critical steps to strengthen the management skills and sustainability of their organizations. this study aimed to identify and compare the health system management development assessment models in selected international organizations and coun...

background: the aim of this paper was the comparison of ergonomic risk assessment results (final score and action levels) for the entire body as determined using quick exposure check (qec) and rapid entire body assessment (reba).  materials and methods: this was a cross-sectional study in which all 82 workers engaged in various processes with different activities in an anodizing and aluminum pr...

The well-designed, model-based cost-utility analysis by Ginsberg and colleagues provides useful information on the value for money of universal GBS screening in Israel. An extended application of the model-based approach used in the study could provide policymakers additional practical information on the budget impact of a potential universal GBS screening program. Such an approach could also b...

Reliability in decision making about intervention plans is a necessary condition for evidence-based probation work and equal treatment of offenders. Structuring decision making can improve agreement between clinical decision makers. In a former study however, we found that in Dutch probation practice structured risk and needs assessment did not result in acceptable agreement about intervention ...

Effectively assessing children's dietary intake is essential for understanding the complex relationships among dietary behaviours and obesity. Dietary assessment accuracy decreases when children are unable or unmotivated to complete accurate self-reports. Technology-based assessment instruments for children's self-report of diet can be enhanced in light of developments in media psychology and c...

OBJECTIVES Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been suggested by some researchers as a method to capture the benefits beyond quality adjusted life-years in a transparent and consistent manner. The objectives of this article were to analyze the possible application of MCDA approaches in health technology assessment and to describe their relative advantages and disadvantages. METHODS Thi...

Age is the greatest risk factor for the progress of cancer. However, cancer can arise at any age, the chance of developing cancer increases with age (Wilkins, 1991). Aging is related to increasing functional decline and several commodities, in addition, elderly cancer patients are more at risk to physical impairment (Stafford et al., 1997). Geriatric cancer patients have more comorbidity condit...

Embedding health technology assessment (HTA) in a fair process has great potential to capture societal values relevant to public reimbursement decisions on health technologies. However, the development of such processes for priority setting has largely been theoretical. In this paper, we provide further practical lead ways on how these processes can be implemented. We first present the misconce...