An evaluation of self-reported material well-being using latent Markov models with covariates.

A household's financial satisfaction is one of the most significant factors driving subjective well-being. However, Poland ranks close to the lowest position, 22nd out of the 28 EU members, in self-reported financial status. The paper investigates the problem of determining patterns of Polish households' behaviour and shows the evolution of the subjective assessment of financial situation based on the eight waves of the Polish Household panel data. The analysis is carried out on the basis of latent Markov (LM) models, which allow for socio-economic features affecting the parameters of the latent process. We compare different types of LM models considering: (1) different numbers of latent structures; (2) different types of the latent process constraints; (3) socio-economic background characteristics; and (4) survey weights (being excluded in most of the empirical analyses). The final model identifies three latent states, specifies common initial and transition probabilities over a 15-year period and, as a result, enables us to better characterise the families likely to change their position, especially families reporting worsening in their financial situation. To show the main direction of self-reporting financial condition, we present the predicted path for respondents characterised by the selected socio-economic features, relying on algorithm maximising posterior probabilities of the selected LM model.

Correlation between malnutrition, body mass index and complications in patients with urinary bladder cancer who underwent radical cystectomy.

BACKGROUND: Nutrition is the 3rd most important factor in surgery, following anesthesia and asepsis. Until now, it has been a poorly explored field of urology. The relationship between malnutrition and postoperative complications has been proven beyond doubt in general surgery, where 30% of patients are operated in a malnutrition state. OBJECTIVES: The aim of our work was to assess the influence of malnutrition, defined by nutritional risk screening (NRS) scale and body mass index (BMI), on postoperative results in patients with bladder cancer after radical cystectomy. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The research was carried out at 8 urological centers between 2012 and 2014, and included patients with bladder cancer at stage from T2 to T4, who underwent radical cystectomy. The degree of malnutrition was assessed with the aid of the NRS 2002 questionnaire. Other examined parameters were BMI, age, type of operation, and the number of complications, the latter of which were measured by applying the Clavien-Dindo scale. RESULTS: A total of 125 patients were enrolled in our study, out of whom 64 (51.2%) were undernourished. According to the BMI, most of the patients were overweight - 50 (40%) or had normal body weight - 49 (39.2%); 24 (19.2%) were obese, and 2 (1.6%) were underweight. CONCLUSIONS: There was no relationship between malnutrition, defined by the NRS scale, and postoperative complications, and we did not find a significant relationship between the other tested variables. We observed only 1 significant relationship between the nutrition state, measured by BMI scale, and the degree in Clavien-Dindo scale. Body mass index under 18.5 and over 30 increased postoperative complications. Nowadays, the recommended scale is NRS 2002, which is based mostly on loss of weight. In our patients, qualitative malnutrition is more probable than quantitative malnutrition.