Biomedical subjects

L Kovacic

Publications and source records attributed to L Kovacic.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

Health status and service utilisation of older people in different European countries.

OBJECTIVE: Care of elderly demands more and more resources. The purpose of this study was to compare the health of the elderly and the differences in utilisation of services. DESIGN: Health status was measured using the Short Form 36, the Barthel Index of Activities of Daily Living, the Abbreviated Mental Test and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Information was also obtained on health and social service utilisation. SETTING: Eight European districts. SUBJECTS: 4004 elderly aged 70-94 years were studied. RESULTS: General health perception measured with SF-36 was significantly better in men than in women and in elderly living outside institutions. Measured with the Barthel scale, the elderly living in the southern districts were more disabled. Women were more disabled than men. Depression and anxiety were common, but inadequately treated and strongly linked with disability. There was a north-south difference also in mental disability, people in the north feeling healthier. CONCLUSION: Cultural differences probably explain most of the differences observed. However, treating depression and anxiety more adequately could help elderly people to avoid early institutionalisation.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed2001

Public health training and research collaboration in South Eastern Europe.

The health care systems in South Eastern Europe are characterized by a predominantly curative orientation. During the last decade public health became insufficient due to war as well as economic and political changes. Today there is a lack of competence in public health above all in health management and strategy development, but also in the fields of health surveillance and prevention. The great need for a sustainable collaboration and support in advanced training and continuous education of qualified professionals to reach required conditions was recognized. Therefore, the project for the development of training modules and research capabilities in public health in South Eastern European countries (SEE) was proposed to the Stability Pact (PH-SEE Project). The project is to support the reconstruction of postgraduate public health training through development of teaching materials in English for the Internet. A regional network of lecturers in the health sciences will be established. The up to date texts should be of international standard but also be of regional specificity.

Croatia↗

PubMed1998

Young child injury analysis by the classification entropy method.

The project 'The Register and Preventive Programs for Accidents and Injuries' enabled data collection on all the injured who sought medical aid in Koprivnica County (population 61,052), Croatia, since 1992. Children aged 1-4 years are 5.03% of the whole population of the district. Complex injury attributes were analysed. Binary attributes were classified as input: age, gender, place of injury; and output: severity of injury. A new application of information entropy was introduced and applied to the classification of injury-causes attributes. The information entropy was calculated for the classification of input attributes according to the minimum information content. The decision procedure is given as a sequential procedure separating important from unimportant causes of injury at each decision level. Thus a decision tree with increasing entropy, i.e. decreasing determinism, was obtained showing that age (0.5347 N), place (0.6062 N) and gender (0.6105 N) are measurable attributes in child injury ascertainment in a descending pattern. It was shown that this method is, at the same time, an optimal way of using an attribute decision process of injury causes classification.

Accidents↗