BACKGROUND: Improvement of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is an important goal in preventive cardiology. HRQOL is also related to depressive symptoms, which represent a common co-morbidity and risk factor in patients with an acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Comprehensive nurse-coordinated prevention …

Major resections for esophageal, gastric, hepatic, pancreatic, and colorectal cancer continue to be associated with a high peri-operative morbidity of up to 30%–40%. To a large extent, this morbidity is caused by infectious complications that add up to a considerable burden to patients and hospital costs. …

Combined lifestyle interventions (CLIs) are designed to reduce risk factors for lifestyle-related diseases through increasing physical activity and improvement of dietary behaviour. Objective. To evaluate the effects of a CLI for overweight and obese patients on lifestyle-related risk factors and …

Introduction: Elderly alcohol dependent patients can be discriminated based on the age of onset of alcohol use. This is relevant for their clinical problem presentation and for the course of treatment. Materials and methods: In this paper, problems of elderly patients are presented at intake in an addiction …

BACKGROUND: Hemodialysis patients experience an elevated risk of malnutrition associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Nocturnal hemodialysis (NHD) results in more effective removal of waste products and fluids. Therefore, diet and fluid restrictions are less restricted in NHD patients. However, …

Patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) comprise of a heterogeneous population with substantial differences in admission diagnosis, length of stay and co-morbidity. Therefore, very often the prognosis for each patient differs. In the Netherlands, over 20% of the more than 80,000 patients treated …

Introduction: Self-management is considered a potential answer to the increasing demand for family medicine by people suffering from a chronic condition or multi-morbidity. A key element of self-management is goal setting. Goal setting is often defined as a moment of agreement between a professional …

Children with acute respiratory or ear infections (RTI/OM) are often unnecessarily prescribed antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance is a major public health problem and antibiotic prescription for RTI/OM should be reduced. Anthroposophic treatment of RTI/OM includes anthroposophic medications, nonmedication …

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the increased cesarean rate for term breech presentation on neonatal outcome. We also investigated whether the clinical case selection for vaginal delivery applied by Dutch obstetricians led to an optimization of neonatal outcome, or whether …

Background: Post-term pregnancy, a pregnancy exceeding 294 days or 42 completed weeks, is associated with increased perinatal morbidity and mortality and is considered a high-risk condition which requires specialist surveillance and induction of labour. However, there is uncertainty on the policy …