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Biomedical subjects

M Vagliasindi

Publications and source records attributed to M Vagliasindi.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Multimedia presentation of lung sounds as a learning aid for medical students.

New educational technologies might help to compensate for the decrease in time and emphasis dedicated to physical examination in medical training. This may, in particular, be applicable for improving the skills in auscultation of the chest. We investigated whether a multimedia presentation of acoustic and graphic characteristics of lung sounds could improve the learning of pulmonary auscultation by medical students, in comparison with conventional teaching methods. We studied 48 medical students without clinical experience, who had received conventional formal teaching on chest examination. Chest auscultation skills were evaluated using an inaccuracy score for the student's auscultation report on three patients, selected according to a standardized procedure. After a baseline evaluation, 27 students in groups of 5-10, participated in a multimedia seminar on lung sounds during which digitized lung sounds were played and the corresponding time-expanded waveform and frequency spectrum were commented on and displayed on a computer. The remaining 21 students received conventional bedside training, acting as control group. The following week, all the students underwent a second evaluation of chest auscultation skills. No differences in the inaccuracy score were observed between the two groups in the preliminary test. However, in the second postintervention assessment, the inaccuracy score of the students who had followed the seminar (11.2 +/- 1.3 points) was significantly lower than that of the controls (16.6 +/- 1.6 points). The answers to a feedback questionnaire confirmed that the great majority of the students found the association of the acoustic signals with their visual image to be useful for learning and understanding lung sounds.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1993

Imparied interferon-gamma production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells and effects of calcitriol in pulmonary sarcoidosis.

Pulmonary sarcoidosis (S) is a granulomatous disease of unknown etiology characterized by spontaneous release of cytokines and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (calcitriol) at the sites of granulomatous reaction. Stimulated by our previous findings that high levels of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) occur in this disease and that calcitriol reduces IFN-gamma production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from normal subjects, we designed the present study to evaluate IFN-gamma production and the effect of calcitriol on the release of this cytokine by PBMC in S patients. The cells were stimulated with staphylococcal enterotoxin A (SEA) and A23187 calcium ionophore. Our results show that SEA- and A23187-stimulated PBMC from patients with S released significantly less IFN-gamma than those from control subjects. Calcitriol at 10(-6) M and 10(-9) M concentrations reduced IFN-gamma production by SEA-stimulated PBMC but this inhibitory effect was lower in S patients than controls. With A23187 we observed different behaviour at the various doses: at low doses calcitriol was as effective as in controls, but at 10(-6) M it was significantly less inhibitory in S than in healthy subjects.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Abnormalities in calcium metabolism in sarcoidosis.

In sarcoidosis the excess of calcitriol of extrarenal origin induces changes in calcium metabolism (CM), specifically hypercalciuria and less often hypercalcemia. We report the results of the study of CM in 44 sarcoidosis patients (mean age 43.7 +/- 11 years, M +/- SD, 21 males). 25% were on steroid therapy at the time of the tests. 34% of the patients had hypercalciuria, this figure rose to 39% if only untreated patients were considered. Hypercalcemia was found in only 2.2%. Chronic forms and extrathoracic involvement (mostly skin) were more frequent in the hypercalciuric patients than in the normocalciuric.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Erdosteine protection against cigarette smoking-induced functional antiprotease deficiency in human bronchiolo-alveolar structures.

Cigarette smoke reduces the elastase inhibitory capacity (EIC) of alpha 1-antitrypsin by an oxidative process and thus may promote the pathogenetic bases for the development of pulmonary emphysema. The present study was performed with the aim to evaluate the protective activity of erdosteine, a novel thiol derivative endowed with reducing properties, against the functional inactivation of alpha 1-AT induced by smoke. For the purpose, a double-blind study was carried out on 24 healthy smokers divided into two groups orally treated with placebo or erdosteine 900 mg/day for one month. The antigenic and functional alpha 1-AT was measured in bronchoalveolar (BAL) fluids and sera before and shortly after the last treatment. The findings indicate that the loss of EIC of alpha 1-AT in BAL fluids can be partially prevented by pharmacological treatment. In this regard, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the reestablishment of the oxidant-antioxidant balance in favor of the antioxidants would be useful as a therapeutic strategy to arrest or at least delay the emphysematous process.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

[Controlled clinical study of the treatment of chronic bronchitis with guacetisal].

Controlled clinical research has been carried out on the activity and tolerance of a new active principle, guacetisal (Broncaspin) obtained from the esterification of acetylsalicylic acid with guaiacol, in the treatment of chronic bronchitis. The drug's therapeutic response was evaluated with respect to that of bromexine. Guacetisal was generally well tolerated. It had no unwanted side-effects on the main haematochemical parameters or on the function of organs and systems. It was found to have considerable therapeutic effectiveness, at times even superior to that of the control drug, with respect to general symptomatology and at respiratory system level. It produced early, lasting reduction in temperature, heart frequency, dyspnoea, duration of expirium and in the intensity and number of coughing attacks. It also led to an appreciable improvement in thoracic objectivity and the X-ray picture. Variations in respiratory functional parameters were of considerable interest and from these it is concluded that guacetisal exerts its polyvalent activity to a proportionately higher extent in the bronchial districts more seriously involved in the inflammatory process, inducing an elective improvement in bronchial permeability, a reduction in total pulmonary resistances--with consequent tendency for ventilation-perfusion relations to normalise--as well as an improvement in gas exchanges and patient oxygenation.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Detection of specific antibodies in immune complexes of farmer's lung patients.

The authors examined 23 precipitin-positive symptomatic patients with Farmer's Lung(FL) and compared them to different groups of exposed asymptomatic precipitin-positive(EAPP) and precipitin- negative(EAPN) farmers. The sera were tested using several techniques (i.e., immunodiffusion and ELISA for specific antibodies; polyethylene glycol [PEG] for circulating immune complexes [CIC]) in an attempt to find an in vitro test correlated with the disease which could also provide an insight into the pathogenic mechanisms of Farmer's Lung. Circulating immune complexes formed by IgG were significantly higher in Farmer's Lung patients than in EAPP subjects. In polyethlyene glycol precipitates from Farmer's Lung patients, specific antibodies found by ELISA correlated well with serum positivity, but they were not found in EAPP subjects. The possibility that the circulating immune complexes found were Ig aggregates was ruled out, as was the possibility that the antibodies found in the polyethylene glycol precipitate were also due to an unspecific link. The authors suggest that the circulating immune complexes of Farmer's Lung patients contain specific specific antibodies and that since their composition is different in EAPP subjects, these circulating immune complexes may play a role in the pathogenesis of the disease.

Antibody Specificity↗