Microdiscectomy (MD) is a stan­dard technique for the surgical treatment of lumbar disc herniation (LDH). Uniportal percutaneous full-endoscopic in­terlaminar lumbar discectomy (PELD) is another surgical op­tion that has become popular owing to reports of shorter hos­pitalization and earlier functional recovery. There are very few articles analyzing the total costs of these two techniques. The purpose of this study was to compare total hospital costs among microdiscectomy (MD) and uniportal percutaneous full-endoscopic interlaminar lumbar discectomy (PELD). Forty patients aged between 22-70 years who underwent PELD or MD with different anesthesia techniques were divided into four groups: (i) PELD-local anesthesia (PELD-Local) (n=10), (ii) PELD-general anesthesia (PELD-General) (n=10), (iii) MD-spinal anesthesia (MD-Spinal) (n=10), (iv) MD-general anesthesia (MD-General) (n=10). Health care costs were defined as the sum of direct costs. Data were then analyzed based on anesthetic modality to produce a direct cost evaluation. Direct costs were compared statistically between MD and PELD groups. The sum of total costs was $1,249.50 in the PELD-Local group, $1,741.50 in the PELD-General group, $2,015.60 in the MD-Spinal group, and $2,348.70 in the MD-General group. The sum of total costs was higher in the MD-Spinal and MD-General groups than in the PELD-Local and PELD-General groups. The costs of surgical operation, surgical equipment, anesthesia (anesthetist’s costs), hospital stay, anesthetic drugs and materials, laboratory wor­kup, nur­sing care, and postoperative me­dication diffe­red significantly among the two main groups (PELD-MD) (p<0.01). This study demonstrated that PELD is less costly than MD.

[In this paper we present the Comprehensive Aphasia Test-Hungarian (CAT-H; Zakariás and Lukács, in preparation), an assessment tool newly adapted to Hungarian, currently under standardisation. The test is suitable for the assessment of an acquired language disorder, post-stroke aphasia. The aims of this paper are to present 1) the main characteristics of the test, its areas of application, and the process of the Hungarian adaptation and standardisation, 2) the first results from a sample of Hungarian people with aphasia and healthy controls. Ninety-nine people with aphasia, mostly with unilateral, left hemisphere stroke, and 19 neurologically intact control participants were administered the CAT-H. In addition, we developed a questionnaire assessing demographic and clinical information. The CAT-H consists of two parts, a Cognitive Screening Test and a Language Test. People with aphasia performed significantly worse than the control group in all language and almost all cognitive subtests of the CAT-H. Consistent with our expectations, the control group performed close to ceiling in all subtests, whereas people with aphasia exhibited great individual variability both in the language and the cognitive subtests. In addition, we found that age, time post-onset, and type of stroke were associated with cognitive and linguistic abilities measured by the CAT-H. Our results and our experiences clearly show that the CAT-H provides a comprehensive profile of a person’s impaired and intact language abilities and can be used to monitor language recovery as well as to screen for basic cognitive deficits in aphasia. We hope that the CAT-H will be a unique resource for rehabilitation professionals and aphasia researchers in aphasia assessment and diagnostics in Hungary. ]

[Hungarian professional periodicals started quite late in European context. Their publish­ing, editing and editorial philosophy were equally influenced by specific historical and political situations. Certain breaking points of history resulted in termina­tion of professional journals (War of In­de­pendence 1848-1849, First and Se­cond World Wars), however there were pe­riods, which instigated the progress of sciences and founding of new scientific journals. Both trends were apparent in years after the fall of former Hungarian regime in 1990. The structure of book and journal publishing has changed substantially, some publishers fell “victim” others started successfully as well. The latters include the then-established publishing house Literatura Medica and its own scientific journal, Lege Artis Me­di­cinae (according to its subtitle: New Hun­garian Medical Herald) issued first in 1990. Its appearance enhanced significantly the medical press market. Its scientific publications compete with articles of the well-established domestic medical journals however its philosophy set brand-new trends on the market. Concerning the medical community, it takes on its problems and provides a forum for them. These problems are emerging questions in health care, economy and prevention, in close interrelation with system of public health institutions, infrastructure and situation of those providing individual health services. In all of them, Lege Artis Medicinae follows consequently the ideas of traditional social medicine.]

[This study presents the complete history of the Hungarian vaccine production, partly in association with the process of fighting vaccine-preventable infectious diseases, and underlines the fact that every government actively contributed to the age-adjusted mandatory vaccination schedule of the past 140 years. It demonstrates the various achievements from the smallpox lymph production through the launch of diphtheria serum production at Phylaxia and the establishment of the National Public Health Institute (OKI) with its vaccine production and the later institutional transformation of OKI into Humán as economic corporation to its closure. Among all OKI’s vaccine production activities, this study focuses on the production of influenza vaccines, due to its international importance in the 1960s and 1970s. The vaccine production against diphtheria tetanus and pertussis stands out from Humán’s activities, and the tetanus component of this vaccine is still used in the products of a multinational vaccine manufacturer. ]