[Diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders play an increasingly important role in everyday clinical practice of family physicians. Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a significant disorder of this disease group due to its relatively high incidence rate and increasing risk of adverse medical outcomes in the course of time. The prevalence of OSAS is 2-4% in the general population. It is characterized by obstructive apneas and hypopneas mostly with desaturations and/or arousals caused by the repetitive collapse of the upper airway during sleep. Besides impairing sleep efficacy and daytime neurocognitive functions, OSAS increases cardiovascular risk as well. The typical clinical presentation is an excessive daytime sleepiness and loud snoring interrupted by brief pauses of breathing. It can be a risk factor for treatment-resistant and/or non-dipper hypertension, nocturnal cardiac arrhythmias, stroke, cognitive decline and depression. The importance of OSAS is presented by the fact that - according to the latest related Hungarian law reforms - risk evaluation of the disorder is part of the medical assessment of suitability for a driving license. The family physician’s tasks are to recognize the clinical symptoms, identify high-risk patients with potential complications who need adequate treatment and eventually guide them to sleep-diagnostic centers. ]

[The purpose of the paper is to find out: what influences the participation in cancer screening. For answer, concepts such as health, health consciousness, health culture, health behaviour have been taken into account, and the factors that have an influence on the health behaviour considered. It concludes that the participation in screening makes a part of the health behaviour which is a mandatory task for the health education to include screening into the health message. ]

[The development of malignous tumours is a prolonged, multistage process. The onset of clinical symptoms and subjective complaints is preceded by the preclinical detectable phase, during which the tumour does not cause any symptoms but it has some signs and can be detected by screening. Information on the tumour’s natural history is of practical importance for choosing the screening strategy. When evaluating screening results, the various biases related to biological reasons need to be taken into consideration.]

[As the prevalence of hypertension in young people aged 14-18 is reported to be 1-1.5%, regular blood pressure measurement is proposed by the international committees in the adolescence, at least once a year. To establish the diagnosis of hypertension, repeated blood pressure measurements and sex-, age-, heightand weigt-based nomograms are needed. If casual blood pressures are consequently elevated, an ABPM measurement may provide additional informations, e.g. about white coat hypertension, daytime and nighttime blood pressure patterns and target organ damage. Thus, in such cases ABPM measurement is proposed to become the part of the routine examination. Following the diagnosis of hypertension in the adolescent, a further important step is to clarify the causes of the disease. In the majority of adolescent cases, essential hypertension is the diagnosis, but secondary (especially renal causes) are more frequent than in adulthood. First line treatment of adolescent hypertension is definitely non-pharmacologic. Pharmacologic treatment may be indicated if blood pressure is significantly increased (diastolic blood pressure, especially), if secondary hypertension is diagnosed or target-organ damage is present, or there are consistent complains related to the increased blood pressure. Treatment can be initiated with any of the antihypertensive drugs used in adults, but most frequently the use of beta-blockers and ACEinhibitors is recommended.]

[INTRODUCTION - Interferon therapy is an effective treatment of several oncological, hematological and viral diseases but it can precipitate serious side effects too. Among others the most frequent are the psychiatric symptoms. These symptoms are also the most frequent reasons of non-compliance and early cessation of treatment which can be avoided with rapid recognition and adequate treatment. Therefore, the early recognition of the psychiatric symptoms is of high importance. METHODS AND RESULTS - Authors report a self-administered questionnaire developed to screen the most frequent psychiatric symptoms precipitated by interferon treatment. They also present the evaluation method for the questionnaire, which makes the evaluation of the data easier for non-psychiatrist doctors as well. Between September 2004 and July 2005 all interferon treated patients who also had psychiatric consultation filled in the questionnaire. The number of patients was 26. Authors set up a decision-making algorhythm for the evaluation, so the non-psychiatrist doctors were able to judge whether a psychiatric consultation was needed as well as its urgency. With the data of 26 interferon treated patients who all went through a psychiatric consultation during a 10 months period, authors discuss their first experience, going into details in the three false positive and the two false negative cases. CONCLUSION - Authors founded the questionnaire helpful in the clinical practice and recommended the use for doctors working in general practice. They also suggest to carry it further research with more patients to strengthen the results.]