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Objective: The aim: The aim of the research is to study the medical, social and psychological aspects of providing assistance to families of military personnel who performed combat missions in extreme conditions and to develop the main directions for improving the organization of providing psychological assistance to such families in Ukraine., Patients and Methods: Materials and methods: The research material is the legislation of Ukraine, foreign and domestic experience in providing psychological assistance to families of military personnel, statistical information. In the course of the study, the method of systematization, the comparative method, content analysis, the research of products of activity, concretization, abstraction and generalization of statistical data were applied., Conclusion: Conclusions: The study of foreign and current domestic experience in providing psychological assistance to families of military personnel shows that today the need for its integration with such an important area as medical and social work is not fully taken into account. The break in unity between these areas significantly impairs the effectiveness and completeness of the rehabilitation of servicemen, violates the integrity and staged provision of all-round assistance to the families of Ukrainian combatants. Along with this, it should be noted the increasingly significant role that the work of specialists in the field of Civil-Military Cooperation takes, who, among other tasks, in special cases are obliged to organize work with members of the families of military personnel. To design the main directions for improving work with families, we analyzed the ramified structure of state and non-state organizations and institutions, volunteer and research centers, support groups for military personnel, veterans and their family members, which today operate in the United States. Proceeding from this and the realities of solving the problem in Ukraine, the main directions and proposals for the organization of medical, social and psychological assistance to the families of Ukrainian military personnel who performed combat missions in extreme conditions were formulated.

Background: The role of adjuvant radiotherapy after gross total resection (GTR) of WHO grade 2 meningioma remains unclear, and conflicting results have been published. We hypothesized that authors' medical specialties could be associated with reported findings on the role of adjuvant radiotherapy after GTR of WHO grade 2 meningiomas., Method: A systematic review was conducted in Embase and Medline databases, in addition to screening of all relevant bibliographies. Articles including patients aged 18 years or older, with histologically confirmed WHO grade 2 meningioma, were included. We extracted data on medical subspecialties using the author list. We registered study design, median follow-up, number of included patients, WHO classification in use, and years of study inclusion., Results: Thirty-seven relevant studies were identified, where 34 (92%) were retrospective cohort studies, two studies (5%) were systematic reviews, and one study (3%) was a meta-analysis. If the last author was a radiation-oncologist, the study was more likely to favor adjuvant radiotherapy, and if a neurosurgeon was last author, the study was more likely to not advocate adjuvant radiotherapy (p=0.009). There was no significant association between study result and whether the study was published in a neurosurgical or oncological journal (p=0.802). There was no significant difference in follow-up time, years of inclusion, or number of included patients between studies favoring or not favoring adjuvant radiotherapy., Conclusions: In this systematic review of the literature, we found that if a radiation-oncologist was the last author of the study, the study was more likely to favor adjuvant radiotherapy after gross total resection of WHO grade 2 meningioma. Clinicians and researchers should be aware of a possible genealogy bias in the neuro-oncological literature., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Background: Palliative care needs a high level of expertise. In particular, there are some potential difficulties in the treatment of patients with the symptom cancer pain (for example lack of education). In Germany, various physicians are involved in cancer pain treatment but in general palliative care patients are treated by a physician who is educated in palliative medicine. In special circumstances prehospital emergency physicians and other physicians are involved in therapy decisions in palliative care patients as well. The authors surveyed different groups of physicians in Germany about their specific knowledge of cancer pain management., Material and Methods: A self-designed, standardized questionnaire (50 items) was given to palliative physicians in training (PP). The survey asked prospectively for knowledge on the World Health Organization (WHO) step ladder of cancer pain therapy. The results were retrolectively compared with an earlier investigation with the same background (emergency physicians in training EP)., Results: There was a 99.5% response rate with a total of 654 respondents (PP 185, EP 469) and 461 (70.5%) of the respondents had knowledge of the WHO step ladder for the treatment of cancer pain [PP 164/185 (88.6%), EP 297/469 (63.3%), PP versus EP p < 0.001)]. The correct numbers of therapeutic levels were known by 361/461 participants [PP 151/164 (92.1%), EP 210/297 (70.7%), p < 0.001].The EPs with a professional experience less than 5 years answered statistically significantly more questions correctly (p = 0.004). Concerning the defined parameters knowledge and professional experience, there was no statistically significant difference in the group of PP., Conclusions: The results of this study verified that the highest knowledge scores were achieved by PPs and overall, the knowledge scores showed an improvement in comparison to previous investigations. In recent years there seems to have been an improvement in education on pain treatment,for example during medical school. Whether this also leads to an improvement of patient care and the relevance of these data for the clinical practice needs to be investigated in further studies.

Background: Despite the increase in the proportion of older people in the population, little is known about factors that facilitate the development of specialist mental health services for older people., Methods: The relationship between the presence of specialist mental health programs for older people and elderly population size, proportion of older people in the population, gross national domestic product (GDP), and various parameters of health funding, mental health funding and mental health service provision was examined in an ecological study using data from the World Health Organization., Results: The presence of specialist mental health programs for older people was significantly associated with higher GDP, higher expenditure on healthcare and mental healthcare, the presence of a national mental health policy and a national mental health program, the availability of mental health care in primary care and the community, and higher density of psychiatric beds, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychologists and social workers., Conclusion: The challenge will be to persuade policy-makers in low and medium income countries, where the increase in the elderly population is most rapid, to develop specialist mental health services for older people.

The development of the specialty of critical care and the intensivist is outlined and the data that favours critically ill patients being cared for by intensivists are reviewed. The future challenges for intensive and critical care are dealing with the new ethical dilemmas raised by intensive care, providing appropriate intensive care in both developed and developing countries and applying the principles of evidence-based medicine to intensive therapy.

Molecular epidemiology represents an association between molecular biology and traditional epidemiologic research. Molecular epidemiology focuses on genetic and environmental risk factors at the molecular level that influences etiology and distribution of diseases oriented to early diagnosis and treatment. Since 1993 Mexico has been participating at the International Molecular Epidemiology Task Force (IMETAF) supported by the World Health Organization and Pan American Health Organization. Mexico was the first country in Latin American that established projects in molecular epidemiology. Presentations in the Symposium Projection of molecular epidemiology in medicine, expressed the future potential of genetic knowledge in identification of genes that contribute to susceptibility or resistance to diseases.

Recent efforts at international coordination in biomedical research have taken place at two levels. At the level of the working clinician and scientist, European regionalism has become increasingly manifest in such organizations as the European Society for Clinical Investigation, the European Organization for Research into the Treatment of Cancer, the European Molecular Biology Organization and many others. These have developed largely, though not entirely, independently of government funding. At the level of science policy, i.e. of bodies supporting biomedical research mainly from public funds, the major developments have been the Comité de la Recherche Médicale of the European Community and the much wider association of European Medical Research Councils, based on the whole of Western Europe; in October 1975 the latter group became incorporated into the new European Science Foundation as the first Standing Committee of that body. Wider, interregional, cooperation presents greater problems, though there have been some modest successes, and the multinational drive on research into six of the major health problems of the Third World now being proposed by WHO holds further promise for the future.

In 1960 the World Health Organization initiated a new scheme for the international exchange of duplicate medical literature. An account is given of its mode of operation and of the results achieved to date.