Dr Theofanis Fotis

University of Brighton · School of Sport & Health Sciences

Purpose To explore whether and how eHealth solutions support the dignity of healthcare professionals and patients in palliative care contexts. Method This qualitative study used phenomenographic analysis involving four focus group interviews, with healthcare professionals who provide palliative care to older people. Results Analysis revealed four...

The rapid evolution of healthcare technology, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, has seen a significant rise in the set-up and expansion of Virtual Wards by the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. Virtual wards (also known as hospital@home) allow patients to get hospital-level care at home safely and in familiar sur...

The healthcare sector has undergone significant transformation in recent years, driven by the adoption of advanced medical technologies like IoT, Cloud Computing, and Big Data. This evolution began with the integration of electronic health records and has expanded to encompass a wide range of digital tools, from medical apps to wearables. These tec...

As a shift from 'smart' to 'caring' technologies is needed, which puts the end-user's care needs at the forefront, we developed the Caring Technology guideline which is an added value for caring technology implementation in healthcare organisations. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the needs and expectations associated with the implement...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) present complex challenges in patient care. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers transformative potential, but its implementation requires addressing key issues. This study proposes a swarm intelligence-inspired clinical validation framework for NCDs, promoting openness, trustworthiness, and continuous self-validatio...

Medical imaging plays a crucial role in modern healthcare, providing essential information for accurate diagnosis and treatment planning. The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard has revolutionized the storage, transmission, and sharing of medical images and related data. Despite its advantages, implementation and deploym...

Objective: The objective of this scoping review is to map existing evidence on the use of wearable devices in palliative care for older people. Methods: The databases searched included MEDLINE (via Ovid), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and Google Scholar, which was included to capture grey literature. Databases...

The cyberspace depicts an increasing number of difficulties related to security, especially in healthcare. This is evident from how vulnerable critical infrastructures are to cyberattacks and are unprotected against cybercrime. Users, ideally, should maintain a good level of cyber hygiene, via regular software updates and the development of unique...

Co-creation in healthcare, especially in developing digital health solutions, has been widely identified as a fundamental principle for person-centered technologies that could accelerate the adaptation of innovation. A Digital Health Living Lab based on community offers a sustainable and real-life environment to ideate, develop, and evaluate digita...

Healthcare organizations are attacked daily by malicious hackers who expose the weak security strategies and vulnerabilities of the entities. Attacks to such organisations, are considered a low-risk and high-reward crimes. Breaches in security and privacy usually refer to cyberattacks, when a set of information is hacked, stolen, corrupted or trans...

Worldwide, vulnerabilities and weak security strategies are exploited everyday by adversaries in healthcare organizations. Healthcare is targeted because these crimes are high-reward and low-risk. The attacks differ every time, from hacking medical devices, such as sensors, to stealing patients' data from electronic health records databases. The ef...

With the recent outbreak of coronavirus disease, people are advised to keep social distance. Schools are closed and people work from home. Some community research has had to be suspended to prevent the spread of the disease. Researchers have had to think of ways to deliver and continue their studies. With a large coverage of networks and the availa...

Digital technology provides unique opportunities to revolutionize the healthcare ecosystem and health research. However, this comes with serious security, safety, and privacy threats. The healthcare sector has been proven unequipped and unready to face cyberattacks while its vulnerabilities are being systematically exploited by attackers. The growi...

Background: Chronic pain is highly prevalent in the working population. People tend to attempt self-initiated treatments to manage their pain. The self-efficacy of behavioural change is a suitable model for guiding the development of an electronic pain management programme (ePain). The aim in this study is to develop ePain and to evaluate its effe...

Background: Pain affects a person's physical and psychological well-being, work performance and productivity. Working population bear their pain and continue to work which may contribute to the worsening of their pain condition. However, their pain situation was not well-examined. Objective: The aim of the study was to explore the prevalence of...

Security constraints that enforce security requirements characterize healthcare systems. These constraints have a substantial impact on the resiliency of the final system. Security requirements modelling approaches allow the prevention of cyber incidents; however, the focus to date has been on prevention rather than resiliency. Resiliency extends i...

Background: Pain is common in older adults. To maintain their quality of life and promote healthy ageing in the community, it is important to lower their pain levels. Pharmacological pain management has been shown to be effective in older adults. However, as drugs can have various side effects, non-pharmacological pain management is preferred for...

This paper presents a cyber-physical systems modelling language for capturing and describing health-based critical infrastructures. Following this practice incident response plan developers are able to model and reason about security and recovery issues in medical cyber-physical systems from a security requirements engineering perspective. Our work...

Operating theatre scrub nurses (OTSNs) are not required to have undertaken a secondary or specialist post-registration theatre qualification to work in the operating theatre (OT) setting in the UK. From the systematic review there is only very limited literature or research in how technical scrub skills are acquired. This study explores the lived e...

This systematic literature review aimed to identify factors influencing late- and under-diagnosis of COPD in primary care Background: There are millions of people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who have not been diagnosed. Patients have regularly lost half of their lung function by the point of diagnosis, and therefore the...

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ‘the broad scope of digital health includes categories such as mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (IT), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalised medicine, and is used by providers and other stakeholders in their efforts to reduce inefficiencies, improve ac...

Femoral pseudo-aneurysm (FPA) is a pulsatile hematoma (false aneurysm) of the femoral artery that communicates with an artery through a disruption in the arterial wall. Most often, FPA develops after an injury or angiographic access to the femoral artery with bleeding into the adjacent tissue. FPA is an uncommon complication, but a very significant...

There are numerous studies in the literature of anesthesia administered during colonoscopy including various methods, drugs, and monitoring systems; however, none of them has studied whether a university-degreed nurse anesthesia provider (known as a certified registered nurse anesthetist in the United States) is skillful enough to provide safe anes...

Background: The employees' satisfaction from their job and their commitment to the organization appears to be one of the most determinants factors of organizational effectiveness. Aim: The aim of this study was the research of commitment to the organization of employees' working at Sparta General Hospital, as well as the correlation between job sat...

Background: The employees' satisfaction from their job and their commitment to the organization appears to be one of the most determinants factors of organizational effectiveness. Aim: The aim of this study was the research of commitment to the organization of employees' working at Sparta General Hospital, as well as the correlation between job sat...

We report our two-year experience in the endovascular treatment of brain aneurysms in relation to their parent artery wall. We prospectively recorded patients with intracranial aneurysms (107 ruptured - 38 unruptured) treated with coiling during a two-year period: 145 patients, 94 females and 51 males - mean age 56 years. The aneurysms were divided...

Aims and objectives: To evaluate pulse oximetry knowledge of nurses employed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Anesthesiology Department (AD) and Emergency Department (ED) and to compare knowledge among these departments/units. Background: Although pulse oximetry has been widely used in clinical practice, previous studies have reported knowledge...

Background: The employees' satisfaction from their job and their commitment to the organization appears to be one of the most determinants factors of organizational effectiveness. Aim: The aim of this study was the research of commitment to the organization of employees' working at Sparta General Hospital, as well as the correlation between job sat...

Placement of peripherally inserted central catheters (PICCs), definitely offers a clear advantage over any other method regarding central venous catheterization. Its ultrasonographic orientation enhances significantly its accuracy, safety and efficacy, making this method extremely comfortable for the patient who can continue his or her therapy even...

An estimated one-third of the world's population (2 billion people) is infected with the tubercle bacilli (TB), which is estimated to cause 6% of all deaths worldwide. Despite there being a decline in the incidence of tuberculosis seen in Europe, there are still some countries in the rest of the world where the estimated number of new cases is very...

Abstract In this study we aimed to evaluate the efficiency of percutaneous endovascular aortic aneurysm repair (p-EVAR). Anatomically selected patients treated with a single 10Fr Perclose Prostar XL vascular closure device (VCD) were examined. Primary success rate and common femoral artery (CFA) open conversion (OC) requirement per sheath size used...

Perioperative use of a cell saver device can serve as a cost-beneficial alternative to the transfusion method, especially in countries where the cost of a single unit of blood is high. The purpose of this study, conducted in a Greek hospital, was to calculate the cost benefit of using a cell saver device to salvage intraoperative blood during open...

The currently available genetic tests for identification of the RET proto-oncogene mutation offer the possibility of prospective successful therapy before the hyperplasia of C-cells evolve to Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma. We present our experience regarding the preventive thyroidectomy of family members with history of Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma, w...

Background: In modern society there appears to be a common understanding that incidents of violence and aggression are usual. Such behaviour is commonplace, also, in the nursing working environment. Over recent years incidents of workplace violence, aggression and harassment have been increasingly observed in the health care sector. Aim: The purpos...

This articles presents a rare case of accidental insertion of an intravascular catheter into an artery by an experienced nurse (RN). Due to the patient's hypotension, this faulty positioning was misdiagnosed and a potential peripheral ischemic necrosis was, fortunately, avoided only because the anesthesia drug injection was performed through anothe...

To present performance data on the use of the Aorfix stent-graft in patients with hostile infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) anatomy. A study protocol was designed to examine the safety and efficacy of the Aorfix endovascular stent-graft in AAA patients who had a proximal neck diameter between 18 and 30 mm, neck angulation between 60 degree...

The coexistence of two histologically different primary tumours in the same brain region is relatively rare. The situation where these tumours in collision appear in an area of a previously excised meningioma is even more rare and only two cases have been reported so far. We present the third case of a 73-year-old woman who underwent an uneventful...

Thyroid carcinoma usually presents as asymptomatic thyroid nodule. Thyroid cancer may show microscopic vascular invasion; however, internal jugular vein (IJV) invasion is a rare complication of thyroid cancer. We present a case of unilateral invasion of IJV caused by local nodal recurrence of the primary thyroid carcinoma. The patient had undergone...

Blunt traumatic injury and acute dissection of thoracic aorta is increasing in incidence in seriously multi-trauma patients, remaining highly lethal. Early identification and repair is the key to a successful outcome. We report an unusual case of a 62-year-old man involved in a motor vehicle accident after subarachnoid hemorrhage due to an intracra...

Background Minimally invasive surgical techniques are a revolutionary and innovative approach to the practice of surgery. Endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) may offer a number of significant advantages in comparison with conventional open surgical repair. Aim The purpose of this study was to compare regional anaesthesia (RA) and general anaesthes...

To evaluate the prevalence of bacteremia after mask ventilation, laryngoscopy, and endotracheal intubation before induction of general anesthesia and to discover any correlation between traumatic manipulations and bacteremia. The specific bacteria responsible, knowledge of which may guide the prophylactic use of antibiotics, also were investigated....

The study objective was to compare the cost and effectiveness of two surgical techniques: open repair and endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). We assessed 58 surgical operations of AAA repair conducted in 54 men and 4 women (aged 49-94 years) during 2003 and 2004. Open surgical repair was performed in 21 patients,...

Purpose The aim of this study was to evaluate neuron specific enolase (NSE) as prognostic factor for CNS disorders developed in relation to cardiac surgery. Patients and methods A cohort of 92 patients were divided into two groups; the experimental group consisted of patients undergoing open-heart bypass surgery (50 patients) and the control group...

Popliteal artery aneurysms are the most common peripheral arterial aneurysms, and are frequently bilateral. Acute limb ischemia, rupture and compression phenomena can complicate these aneurysms when the diameter exceeds 2 cm. We report an 82-year-old male patient with two giant femoropopliteal aneurysms, 10.5 and 8.5 cm diameters, managed in our in...