Cuestiones bioéticas involucradas en los Cuidados Paliativos: desde la perspectiva de los profesionales de la salud / Bioethical issues involved in Palliative Care: from the perspective of health professionals

Las cuestiones inherentes al final de la vida constituyen un inmenso desafío para los médicos, debido a la falta de educación formal en lo inherente a cuidados paliativos, y a que se entrelazan conceptos médicos, religiosos, legales y bioéticos en su abordaje. El objetivo de este estudio es identificar, desde la perspectiva de los profesionales de la salud, las cuestiones éticas involucradas en el proceso de atención de pacientes incluidos en cuidados paliativos. Para ello se llevó a cabo de una revisión de 10 artículos, en los cuales se observa la carencia de formación bioética y la aplicación inadecuada (o falta) en lo inherente a manejo adecuado de la información y la dificultad en su comunicación, toma de decisiones compartidas, respeto de la autonomía del paciente, verdad médica, limitación de esfuerzos terapéuticos (AU)

End-of-life issues constitute an immense challenge for physicians, due to the lack of formal education regarding palliative care, and the intertwining of medical, religious, legal, and bioethical concepts in their approach. The objective of this study is to identify, from the perspective of health professionals, the ethical issues involved in the care process for patients included in palliative care. For this, a review of 10 articles was carried out, in which the lack of bioethical training and the inadequate application (or lack) is observed in terms of the proper management of information and the difficulty in its communication, decision making shared, respect for patient autonomy, medical truth, limitation of therapeutic efforts (AU)

Color Dependence Analysis in a CNN-Based Computer-Aided Diagnosis System for Middle and External Ear Diseases.

Artificial intelligence-assisted otologic diagnosis has been of growing interest in the scientific community, where middle and external ear disorders are the most frequent diseases in daily ENT practice. There are some efforts focused on reducing medical errors and enhancing physician capabilities using conventional artificial vision systems. However, approaches with multispectral analysis have not yet been addressed. Tissues of the tympanic membrane possess optical properties that define their characteristics in specific light spectra. This work explores color wavelengths dependence in a model that classifies four middle and external ear conditions: normal, chronic otitis media, otitis media with effusion, and earwax plug. The model is constructed under a computer-aided diagnosis system that uses a convolutional neural network architecture. We trained several models using different single-channel images by taking each color wavelength separately. The results showed that a single green channel model achieves the best overall performance in terms of accuracy (92%), sensitivity (85%), specificity (95%), precision (86%), and F1-score (85%). Our findings can be a suitable alternative for artificial intelligence diagnosis systems compared to the 50% of overall misdiagnosis of a non-specialist physician.

Artificial intelligence for the early detection of colorectal cancer: A comprehensive review of its advantages and misconceptions.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) was the second-ranked worldwide type of cancer during 2020 due to the crude mortality rate of 12.0 per 100000 inhabitants. It can be prevented if glandular tissue (adenomatous polyps) is detected early. Colonoscopy has been strongly recommended as a screening test for both early cancer and adenomatous polyps. However, it has some limitations that include the high polyp miss rate for smaller (< 10 mm) or flat polyps, which are easily missed during visual inspection. Due to the rapid advancement of technology, artificial intelligence (AI) has been a thriving area in different fields, including medicine. Particularly, in gastroenterology AI software has been included in computer-aided systems for diagnosis and to improve the assertiveness of automatic polyp detection and its classification as a preventive method for CRC. This article provides an overview of recent research focusing on AI tools and their applications in the early detection of CRC and adenomatous polyps, as well as an insightful analysis of the main advantages and misconceptions in the field.

Design and evaluation of sound-based electronic football soccer training system for visually impaired athletes.

BACKGROUND: Several countries encourage the practice of football for rehabilitation and social inclusion purposes. For visually impaired people, football is purely sound-based, where the ball and the players are constantly emitting sounds for localization purposes in the field. However, the task of shooting the ball requires of a non-visually impaired extra person, behind the goal (known as caller), whom is punching the four corner of such goal to help the athletes. The presence of the caller restricts the self-sufficiency of the players. This work addresses such problem, by presenting a goal for visually impaired players with the aim of enhancing their self-sufficiency. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The electronic goal is designed with four functionalities for training purposes, by returning sound-based feedback of its position and the places where the ball has impacted. The system is validated with seven volunteers from Chilean Football Soccer National Team. A questionnaire was answered by the players before and after the tests to statically validate the proposed device. RESULTS: The presented system is portable and designed following a modular criterion suitable for visually impaired people self-assembling. From a test of 350 shootings, the electronic goal showed to enhance the shooting assertiveness from 82 to 92%, and the accuracy from 20 to 56% compared to the traditional caller. CONCLUSIONS: The electronic goal showed to enhance the self-sufficiency of athletes, by improving their assertiveness in shooting training. Nevertheless, and according to the responses to the questionnaires, the system needs improvements in its portability and handling.