[The majority of patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease are treated at specialized movement disorder centers. Currently, there is no clear consensus on how to define the stages of Parkinson’s disease; the proportion of Parkinson’s patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease, the referral process, and the clinical features used to characterize advanced Parkinson’s disease are not well delineated. The primary objective of this observational study was to evaluate the proportion of Parkinson’s patients identified as advanced patients according to physician’s judgment in all participating movement disorder centers across the study. Here we evaluate the Hungarian subset of the participating patients. The study was conducted in a cross-sectional, non-interventional, multi-country, multi-center format in 18 countries. Data were collected during a single patient visit. Current Parkinson’s disease status was assessed with Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) parts II, III, IV, and V (modified Hoehn and Yahr staging). Non-motor symptoms were assessed using the PD Non-motor Symptoms Scale (NMSS); quality of life was assessed with the PD 8-item Quality-of-Life Questionnaire (PDQ-8). Parkinson’s disease was classified as advanced versus non-advanced based on physician assessment and on questions developed by the Delphi method. Overall, 2627 patients with Parkinson’s disease from 126 sites were documented. In Hungary, 100 patients with Parkinson’s disease were documented in four movement disorder centers, and, according to the physician assessment, 50% of these patients had advanced Parkinson’s disease. Their mean scores showed significantly higher impairment in those with, versus without advanced Parkinson’s disease: UPDRS II (14.1 vs. 9.2), UPDRS IV Q32 (1.1 vs. 0.0) and Q39 (1.1 vs. 0.5), UPDRS V (2.8 vs. 2.0) and PDQ-8 (29.1 vs. 18.9). Physicians in Hungarian movement disorder centers assessed that half of the Parkinson’s patients had advanced disease, with worse motor and non-motor symptom severity and worse QoL than those without advanced Parkinson’s disease. Despite being classified as eligible for invasive/device-aided treatment, that treatment had not been initiated in 25% of these patients.]

[The author reviews significant results related to hypertension with special emphasis on papers published in the LAM during the past twenty years. The history of hypertensiology, important aspects of hypertension research, therapeutic guidelines, antihypertensive agents and their combinations are also discussed. A brief section is dedicated to the expected future development of hypertension research and new directions of antihypertensive therapy.]

[Recently, physicians and medical literature are more concerned about end-of-life care. A review is given of studies dealing with the rights of the dying patient, with advance directives and with possible treatments in the last days of life. A survey was done in author's department on medical therapy of the terminal period of 103 inpatients, died between 01. 10. 2001. and 31. 03. 2002. Comparing these data with those of American, Finnish etc. authors, the treatments seem to be more generous - probably because in Hungary it is not (yet?) usual to ”declare” endof- life care and to withdraw active therapy. However, indication of antibiotics seems to be more clinical (28.1%, vs. 42%-88% given by similar foreign data). Antibiotics are not palliative means, however, they may be administered in the last days, if the patient is suffering from a terminal infection. Indications and choice of antibiotics are suggested in these cases; medical and ethical problems discussed. Physicians can relieve the physical and mental distressing symptoms of the dying patient and ensure human dignity and peace of the last days.]

[Among the main risk factors of cardiovascular disease which is the leading cause of death dyslipidemia has a great importance beyond hypertension, diabetes, smoking and obesity. These conditions rarely occure as isolated ones but very often a clustering of major CV risk factors within individual patients can be observed called metabolic syndrome. It’s a great challenge to convince asymptomatic but high-risk adults that they have to take a lot of medicine for a long time period uninterruptedly to prevent future vascular events (eg. MI or stroke) in the primary care settings. Mainly the low statin-adherence means the greatest problem particularly if a subject should take statin beside two or more drugs despite statins have the most prominent evidences in the field of cardiovascular prevention. The efficacy in improving adherence to therapy of fixed-dose atorvastatin/amlodipin combination was investigated in this paper based on the experiences of case reports derived from our clinical practice.]

[Authors present the guidelines, indications and utility value of home selfmeasurements of blood pressure. They report the results of the most important clinical studies. They analyze the methodology of the measurements within telemedicinal solutions and describe the consultative scopes associated with the measurement methods already applied in clinical practice. Their own telemonitoring system - called Medistance - is then presented. They have created three modules for the long term registration of blood pressure in hypertensive patients: 1. an individual module for the hypertensive patients, the elderly, the family, for patients with high cardiovascular risk and for the physicians. 2. a module for the pharmaceutical care, 3. a module for the communities (social homes, club for the elderly, etc.). The Medistance system is functioning for two years in our count]