Volume 60 (2019): Issue 1 (December 2019)

Syphilis is a bacterial sexually transmitted disease (STD), whose main route of infection is through sexual contact. In order to diagnose syphilis, Treponema pallidum must be detected in the material sampled from a lesion and a blood test must be performed in order to detect serological response to syphilis. Since 1946, a statutory obligation to report all cases of syphilis has been in force in Poland, which is why data concerning the incidence is available. The aim of this paper is to analyse trends in syphilis incidence in the years 1950–2017 using Joinpoint Regression and to present the impact of prophylaxis and education of society on syphilis prevention. The Joinpoint Regression method indicated the splitting time points of the trend corresponding to real changes in incidence, which corroborates the purpose of using the method in question in epidemiological studies.

Industrial engineering is a field dealing with optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, and materials. Hence, the scope of industrial engineering is wide and includes various fields, from manufacturing, through banking, different types of services, to administration and healthcare. Various industrial engineering tools could be implemented in healthcare settings. The use of such tools is popular in western economies. For example, simulation modelling of services is popular in the US. However, there is still a very limited number of case studies on the application of such tools in healthcare that would consider the Polish economy. The aim of this paper is to present selected successful applications of lean management tools in the Polish healthcare. This may serve as an inspiration for healthcare organizations to search for and implement methodological approaches to improve their services.

The paper presents a comparison of the two most commonly used diagnostic tests for orthorexia – ORTO-15 Questionnaire and BOT (Bratman Orthorexia Test) – that use data-mining methods. Orthorexia nervosa is perceived as a new, unclassified eating disorder, which is characterized with pathological fixation on the consumption of healthy foods. In order to assess the coherence of the aforementioned tests, a method from the data-mining group, i.e. correspondence analysis, was used in addition to traditional statistical methods. On the basis of the obtained results, only average correlation between ORTO-15 Questionnaire and BOT test was found. More cases of orthorexia were diagnosed with the use of ORTO-15 Questionnaire, which may result from its higher sensitivity. It was also noted that the coherence of tests increases with increasing BMI values, despite no relationship between BMI and the presence of orthorexia having been proved. Diagnosis of an orthorexia case with the use of BOT test implies that there is a high probability that it will also be diagnosed with the use of ORTO-15 test, but not necessarily the other way around. The performed correspondence analysis confirmed a not very strong coherence of the results of both tests.

The study aims to analyse the clinical proceedings in pregnant women diagnosed with brain death. Apart from the diagnostic premises and the patient’s rights, the ontological status of the foetus proves to be a severe problem. In reference to the principles of zeroth-order logic, the assumption of potential used by personalists is not a tautology.

Moodle is applied as an online learning management system in the Faculty of Medicine, Thammasat University (TU), where the curriculum has been based on problem-based learning (PBL) since 2015. Little research on the effectiveness of Moodle and students’ attitudes during their studies at the pre-clinical medical level within a PBL curriculum has been conducted. Hence, this cross-sectional study focuses on second- and the third-year (MD-2 and MD-3) preclinical medical students’ attitudes towards Moodle and its effectiveness in the PBL curriculum by using a 27-itemed self-constructed online questionnaire. Additionally, students’ preferences as regards the materials managed by the Moodle platform were also evaluated as students’ preferred behaving style (SPBS). After obtaining ethical approval from the Human Ethics Committee of TU No. 1 (Faculty of Medicine), the data was collected and analyzed by medians and inter-quartile ranges, Mann-Whitney U test, and Spearman correlation (ρ). After analyzing the data, the results indicated the following: (1) the top four attitudes scores, (2) the two lowest-attitude scores, (3) the top five effectiveness scores (Ef), (4) the three lowest effectiveness scores, and (5) the top three SPBS scores. Interestingly, a stronger positive Spearman’s correlation (ρ) between ‘Prefer doing quizzes in Moodle to in classroom’ and ‘Moodle enhances learning capability’ was found for MD-3 compared with MD-2. This study reports that Moodle is preferable as a platform supporting students’ self-learning within a PBL curriculum. However, to use the Moodle platform to the highest benefit, instructors need to upgrade its capabilities, especially in the area of student-teacher interaction and the enhancement of students’ critical thinking and creativity, as demonstrated by the lowest scores obtained in this study.

In many cases medical diagnosis is based on information obtained through a process involving the emission of different forms of ionizing radiation. The safety of the medical staff and patients exposed to ionizing radiation is highly dependent on the proper design of the shielding used in the laboratory. Therefore, the authors propose a multi-platform application supporting such a design through the computation of the critical parameters of shielding. The specific requirements for shielding are defined by government authorities so the algorithm must comply with all the written standards. The application was implemented using Xamarin. Forms for cross-platform development. The results obtained with the use of the developed tool were compared with those calculated manually for the design of stationary shields developed, deployed, and validated by local inspection.

The notion of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may have its origins in 1763, when Scottish physician Sir Arthur Crichton observed people who could be easily distracted to a degree approaching the nature of delirium. Since then, the notion of ADHD matured and aroused controversy concerning whether it is a real illness and the motives behind particular methods of its treatments. Despite the controversy, ADHD is well established as a research subject and a frequently diagnosed disorder. Thus, the aim of this paper is not to deal with controversies but rather to show the evolution of methods used for the detection of this disorder. Literature analysis revealed that those methods varied from classical psychological tests/questionnaires to analyses of: eye-motion, micro-motion, brain activity, and behavioral patterns in virtual reality. The main conclusion is that the above methods tend to be heavily computer-aided and that the future belongs to mobile solutions incorporated into complex e-health systems.

The paper focuses on automation of signal processing, which also considers analysis of biomedical data, such as EEG. The results of the study prove that this enables a better understanding of signal changes and makes it possible to address some specific disturbances. It also makes it possible to describe the relevant changes in signals mathematically and helps to create markers of various brain disorders. This paper presents the study at the initial stage and focuses on the mathematical markers of concentration disorders associated with Theta waves. The presented markers presented are based on Welch’s periodograms. The obtained results are very promising and further studies aimed at refining them are currently being carried out.