Prevention of fragility fractures in older people has become a public health priority, although the most appropriate and cost-effective strategy remains unclear. In the present statement, the Interest Group on Falls and Fracture Prevention of the European Union Geriatric Medicine Society, in collaboration with the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics for the European Region, the European Union of Medical Specialists, and the International Osteoporosis Foundation-European Society for Clinical and Economic Aspects of Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis, outlines its views on the main points in the current debate in relation to the primary and secondary prevention of falls, the diagnosis and treatment of bone fragility, and the place of combined falls and fracture liaison services for fracture prevention in older people.

A Good Practice is a practice that works well, produces good results, and is recommended as a model. MACVIA-ARIA Sentinel Network (MASK), the new Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma (ARIA) initiative, is an example of a Good Practice focusing on the implementation of multi-sectoral care pathways using emerging technologies with real life data in rhinitis and asthma multi-morbidity. The European Union Joint Action on Chronic Diseases and Promoting Healthy Ageing across the Life Cycle (JA-CHRODIS) has developed a checklist of 28 items for the evaluation of Good Practices. SUNFRAIL (Reference Sites Network for Prevention and Care of Frailty and Chronic Conditions in community dwelling persons of EU Countries), a European Union project, assessed whether MASK is in line with the 28 items of JA-CHRODIS. A short summary was proposed for each item and 18 experts, all members of ARIA and SUNFRAIL from 12 countries, assessed the 28 items using a Survey Monkey-based questionnaire. A visual analogue scale (VAS) from 0 (strongly disagree) to 100 (strongly agree) was used. Agreement equal or over 75% was observed for 14 items (50%). MASK is following the JA-CHRODIS recommendations for the evaluation of Good Practices.

Objective: Rehabilitation is often neglected in clinical practice guidelines, even when there is evidence for its effectiveness. The Current Rehabilitation development project, documented in this article, aimed to develop processes and structures to incorporate evidence and good practice on rehabilitation and functional capacity into the Finnish national Current Care Guidelines. Design: Descriptive assessment. Methods: The 3-year Current Rehabilitation development project was launched in 2012. It began with an assessment of existing rehabilitation evidence on the Current Care Guideline database and a query to Finnish rehabilitation experts. The project group developed and compiled tools for Current Care editors and guideline panels. The editorial team continued to monitor changes in rehabilitation evidence in the guidelines. Results: During the years 2012-2014, a total of 54 guidelines were published, and rehabilitation was incorporated into 31 of them. The number of rehabilitation-related evidence summaries increased from 49 to 164. During the next 3 years an additional 41 guidelines were published. Rehabilitation was incorporated to 24 of them, and the number of rehabilitation-related evidence summaries increased from 78 to 136. Conclusion: The level of evidence criteria used for rehabilitative interventions were the same as for symptomatic or curative interventions. Evidence showing the effectiveness of rehabilitation increased substantially during the project.

Background: Higher lifetime antipsychotic exposure has been associated with poorer cognition in schizophrenia. The cognitive effects of adjunctive psychiatric medications and lifetime trends of antipsychotic use remain largely unclear. We aimed to study how lifetime and current benzodiazepine and antidepressant medications, lifetime trends of antipsychotic use and antipsychotic polypharmacy are associated with cognitive performance in midlife schizophrenia. Methods: Sixty participants with DSM-IV schizophrenia from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 were examined at 43 years of age with an extensive cognitive test battery. Cumulative lifetime and current use of psychiatric medications were collected from medical records and interviews. The associations between medication and principal component analysis-based cognitive composite score were analysed using linear regression. Results: Lifetime cumulative DDD years of benzodiazepine and antidepressant medications were not significantly associated with global cognition. Being without antipsychotic medication (for minimum 11 months) before the cognitive examination was associated with better cognitive performance (P = 0.007) and higher lifetime cumulative DDD years of antipsychotics with poorer cognition (P = 0.020), when adjusted for gender, onset age and lifetime hospital treatment days. Other lifetime trends of antipsychotic use, such as a long antipsychotic-free period earlier in the treatment history, and antipsychotic polypharmacy, were not significantly associated with cognition. Conclusions: Based on these naturalistic data, low exposure to adjunctive benzodiazepine and antidepressant medications does not seem to affect cognition nor explain the possible negative effects of high dose long-term antipsychotic medication on cognition in schizophrenia. (C) 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Background: Most survival data in colorectal cancer (CRC) is derived from clinical trials or register-based studies. Hospital Biobanks, linked with hospital electronic records, could serve as a data-gathering method based on consecutively collected tumor samples. The aim of this Biobank study was to analyze survival of colorectal patients diagnosed and treated in a single-center university hospital over a period of 12 years, and to evaluate factors contributing to outcome.Material and methods: A total of 1777 patients with CRC treated during 2001-2012 were identified from the Auria Biobank, Turku, Finland. Longitudinal clinical information was collected from various hospital electronic records and date and cause of death obtained from Statistics Finland.Results: Cancer-specific, overall and disease-free survival was higher in patients diagnosed during 2004-2008 as compared with patients diagnosed in 2001-2003. Further improvement was not seen during years 2009-2012. Potential factors contributing to the improvement were introduction of multidisciplinary meetings, centralization of rectal cancer surgery, use of adjuvant chemotherapy and systematic preoperative radiotherapy of rectal cancer. The proportion of patients with stage I-IV CRC remained similar over the study period, but a marked decrease in non-metastatic rectal cancer with biopsy only (locally advanced disease) was observed. In stage I-III rectal cancer, Cox multivariate analysis suggested age, comorbidity, R1 resection, T staging and tumor grade as prognostic factors. In colon cancer, prognostic factors were age, comorbidity, gender and presence of lymph node metastases.Conclusions: Organizational changes in the treatment of CRC patients made since 2004 coincide with improved survival in CRC and a marked reduction in locally advanced rectal cancers. The clinical presentation of CRC has remained similar between 2001 and 2012.

A number of controlled trials have previously found that in some contexts, vitamin C can have beneficial effects on blood pressure, infections, bronchoconstriction, atrial fibrillation, and acute kidney injury. However, the practical significance of these effects is not clear. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to evaluate whether vitamin C has an effect on the practical outcomes: length of stay in the intensive care unit (ICU) and duration of mechanical ventilation. We identified 18 relevant controlled trials with a total of 2004 patients, 13 of which investigated patients undergoing elective cardiac surgery. We carried out the meta-analysis using the inverse variance, fixed effect options, using the ratio of means scale. In 12 trials with 1766 patients, vitamin C reduced the length of ICU stay on average by 7.8% (95% CI: 4.2% to 11.2%; p = 0.00003). In six trials, orally administered vitamin C in doses of 1-3 g/day (weighted mean 2.0 g/day) reduced the length of ICU stay by 8.6% (p = 0.003). In three trials in which patients needed mechanical ventilation for over 24 hours, vitamin C shortened the duration of mechanical ventilation by 18.2% (95% CI 7.7% to 27%; p = 0.001). Given the insignificant cost of vitamin C, even an 8% reduction in ICU stay is worth exploring. The effects of vitamin C on ICU patients should be investigated in more detail.