Background: Medical economics have significant impact on the entire country. The explosion in surgical techniques has been accompanied by questions regarding actual improvements in outcome and ...cost-effectiveness, such as the da Vinci® Surgical System (dVS) compared with conventional video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS).Objective: To establish a medical fee system for robot-assisted thoracic surgery (RATS), which is a system not yet firmly established in Japan.Methods: This study examines the cost benefit performance (CBP) based on medical fees compared with VATS and RATS under the Japanese National Health Insurance System (JNHIS) introduced in 2012.Results: The projected (but as yet undecided) price in the JNHIS would be insufficient if institutions have less than even 200 dVS cases per year. Only institutions which perform more than 300 dVS operations per year would obtain a positive CBP with the projected JNHIS reimbursement.Conclusion: Thus, under the present conditions, it is necessary to perform at least 300 dVS operations per year in each institution with a dVS system to avoid financial deficit with current robotic surgical management. This may hopefully encourage a downward price revision of the dVS equipment by the manufacture which would result in a decrease in the cost per procedure.
Around two-thirds of chronic human disease can not be explained by genetics alone. The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health estimates that 16% of global premature deaths are linked to pollution. ...Additionally, it is now thought that humankind has surpassed the safe planetary operating space for introducing human-made chemicals into the Earth System. Direct and indirect exposure to a myriad of chemicals, known and unknown, poses a significant threat to biodiversity and human health, from vaccine efficacy to the rise of antimicrobial resistance as well as autoimmune diseases and mental health disorders. The exposome chemical space remains largely uncharted due to the sheer number of possible chemical structures, estimated at over 1060 unique forms. Conventional methods have cataloged only a fraction of the exposome, overlooking transformation products and often yielding uncertain results. In this Perspective, we have reviewed the latest efforts in mapping the exposome chemical space and its subspaces. We also provide our view on how the integration of data-driven approaches might be able to bridge the identified gaps.
Interventional pulmonology: The tipping point Maldonado, Fabien; Edell, Eric S.; Barron, Patrick J. ...
Respirology (Carlton, Vic.),
01/2015, Letnik:
20, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati's 1989 philosophical travelogue Towards the River's Mouth explores perception, memory, place and space as it recounts a series of journeys across the Po ...River Valley in northern Italy. This edition, translated into English for the first time, features a selection of ten essays by various scholars.