Explore the vast range of titles available.

This document summarises best practice recommendations for medical imaging use of ultrasound in Europe, representing the agreed consensus of experts from the Ultrasound Subcommittee of the European Society of Radiology (ESR), the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) Section of Radiology, and the European Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology. Recommendations are given for education and training, equipment and its maintenance, documentation, hygiene and infection prevention, and medico-legal issues.

Ascorbic acid (C6H8O6), is an organic compound belonging to the family of monosaccharides. It is highly soluble in water, and is often called one of the secrets of the Mediterranean diet. Important is also the spread of its use in the food industry, which has always exploits the ability antioxidants and stabilizers. Many indeed are the additive formulations that take advantage of these properties of ascorbic acid. The purpose of this paper is to explain the characteristics that make ascorbic acid an important food additive and to emphasize the technical and legal issues related to its use in food productions. In particular, in the course of this employment, laws and scientific studies have been applied to the resolution of a lawsuit, having as its object the use of ascorbic acid in preparations of ground beef sold at a butcher shop. The views expressed in court by the technical consultant have led to the acquittal of the accused, in the light of the demonstrated and proven non-toxicity of the molecule and the use of a mixture of additives for the production of sausage. The European and national legislation, supported by numerous scientific studies, define the possible use of ascorbic acid according to the principle of \"quantum satis \" and it can be used in foods for children. Our work aims to represent further evidence of the safety of use of ascorbic acid as a food additive and as confirmed by this legal decision, he wants to bring out the prospects for use of ascorbic acid for technological purposes even by registered establishments.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises efficiency and equity in health care. However, adoption remains fragmented due to weak foundations of trust. This Viewpoint highlights the gap between intrinsic trust, based on interpretability, and extrinsic trust, based on functional validation. We propose a contractual framework between AI systems and users defined by 3 promises: reliability, scope and equity, and shift and uncertainty. Illustrated through a vignette, we show how health systems can operationalize these promises through structured evidence and governance, translating trustworthy AI into accountable clinical deployment.

Electronic health record (EHR) data, a key form of routinely collected patient data, offer great potential for medical research and the development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. However, because these data are primarily gathered for health care rather than research, it often lacks the quality needed for AI training, raising both methodological and ethical concerns. While previous studies have reviewed the ethical implications of both routinely collected patient data and AI separately, their intersection, where AI is applied to such data, remains largely unexplored. This study aimed to examine the ethical challenges that arise at the intersection of EHR data and AI development and to derive practice-oriented recommendations using the Dutch LEAPfROG (Leveraging Real-World Data to Optimize Pharmacotherapy Outcomes in Multimorbid Patients Using Machine Learning and Knowledge Representation Methods) project as a guiding case. We used a mixed methods design combining a scoping literature review with a systematic search and 2 stakeholder workshops structured by the guidance ethics approach, reflecting a staged and iterative process aligned with the LEAPfROG project's development phases. The review identified 25 relevant publications from 2014 to 2024. The workshops, conducted with 17 and 13 participants respectively, included patients, clinicians, ethicists, data officers, and AI developers. Both workshops used dialogue to identify ethical values, impacts, and action points, focusing on a case study of drug-induced acute kidney injury. The analysis highlighted four major themes: (1) data privacy, transparency, and consent, including challenges of meaningful consent and risks of reidentification; (2) public trust and regulatory challenges, such as fragmented oversight and inconsistent governance; (3) fair representation and model generalizability, where incomplete or biased data may perpetuate health inequities; and (4) responsible AI integration in clinical practice, including concerns about clinical tropism, administrative burden, and the risk of overreliance on AI outputs. Both literature and stakeholder perspectives underscore the risk of decontextualization when EHR data are reused and emphasize the importance of clearly defining the purpose of data reuse to ensure real-world applicability and foster trust. Responsible AI development requires explicit attention to how EHR data are produced, interpreted, and governed in practice, recognizing that data quality and meaning are shaped by the clinical, institutional, and social contexts in which they originate. Technical solutions or top-down regulation alone are insufficient. Instead, stakeholder-led and context-sensitive approaches are needed to define the purposes, risks, and benefits of medical AI. Grounded in the realities of health care practice and in the perspectives of patients, clinicians, and data custodians, these approaches can strengthen transparency, fairness, and clinical relevance, ensuring that EHR data are used ethically and effectively to support equitable and trustworthy AI innovation.

Medical psychotropics are widely used and prescribed in developed countries. These medications may have an impairing effect on mood or perception and may induce harmful behaviors. Nevertheless, in Europe, studies on their importance from a medico-legal perspective are scarce. To fill this gap, we evaluate the determinants of these drugs in a retrospective study based on data obtained from forensic autopsies. Toxicological analyses were performed on 394 blood samples from compulsory autopsies at the Institute of Legal Medicine of Las Palmas. Of the samples, 41% (159) were positive for at least one psychotropic, with benzodiazepines being the most frequently detected (24.1%), followed by opiates and antidepressants. Benzodiazepines, opiates, and antidepressants were detected more frequently in men who suffered a violent death. More than 30% of the positive samples showed two or more drugs, suggesting a prevalence of polypharmacy among forensic autopsy subjects, with the most frequently combination found being benzodiazepines plus opiates (28.3% of positive samples). A combination of opiates plus antidepressants was also found in subjects involved in violent deaths. Our results suggest that more than 40% of the adult European population involved in medico-legal issues may be under the influence of legal psychotropics. The link between violent deaths and the use of medical psychotropics is particularly worrisome and indicates that these drugs should be carefully monitored in developed countries, in all forensic autopsies, in a similar way to illegal psychotropics.

Facial biometric data, while valuable for clinical applications, poses substantial privacy and security risks. This paper aims to address the privacy and security concerns related to facial biometric data and support auxiliary diagnoses, in pursuit of which we developed Digital FaceDefender, an artificial intelligence-driven privacy safeguard solution. We constructed a diverse set of digitally synthesized Asian face avatars representing both sexes, spanning ages 5 to 85 years in 10-year increments, using 70,000 facial images and 13,061 Asian face images. Landmark data were separately extracted from both patient and avatar images. Affine transformations ensured spatial alignment, followed by color correction and Gaussian blur to enhance fusion quality. For auxiliary diagnosis, we established 95% CIs for pixel distances within the eye region on a cohort of 1163 individuals, serving as diagnostic benchmarks. Reidentification risk was assessed using the ArcFace model, applied to 2500 images reconstructed via Detailed Expression Capture and Animation (DECA). Finally, Cohen Kappa analyses (n=114) was applied to assess agreement between diagnostic benchmarks and ophthalmologists' evaluations. Compared to the DM method, Digital FaceDefender significantly reduced facial similarity scores (FDface vs raw images: 0.31; FLAME_FDface vs raw images: 0.09) and achieved zero Rank-1 accuracy in Pose #2-#3 and Pose #2-#5, with near-zero accuracy in Pose #4 (0.02) and Pose #5 (0.04), confirming lower reidentification risk. Cohen Kappa analysis demonstrated moderate agreement between our benchmarks and ophthalmologists' assessments for the left eye (κ=0.37) and right eye (κ=0.45; both P<.001), validating diagnostic reliability of the benchmarks. Furthermore, the user-friendly Digital FaceDefender platform has been established and is readily accessible for use. In summary, Digital FaceDefender effectively balances privacy protection and diagnostic use.

Opioids have a rapid transplacental passage (i.e., less than 60 min); furthermore, symptoms characterize the maternal and fetal withdrawal syndrome. Opioid withdrawal significantly impacts the fetus, inducing worse outcomes and a risk of mortality. Moreover, neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) follows the delivery, lasts up to 10 weeks, and requires intensive management. Therefore, the prevention and adequate management of NAS are relevant public health issues. This review aims to summarize the most updated evidence in the literature regarding toxicological, clinical, and forensic issues of intrauterine exposure to opioids to provide a multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach for managing such issues. Further research is required to standardize testing and to better understand the distribution of opioid derivatives in each specimen type, as well as the clinically relevant cutoff concentrations in quantitative testing results. A multidisciplinary approach is required, with obstetricians, pediatricians, nurses, forensic doctors and toxicologists, social workers, addiction specialists, and politicians all working together to implement social welfare and social services for the baby when needed. The healthcare system should encourage multidisciplinary activity in this field and direct suspected maternal and neonatal opioid intoxication cases to local referral centers.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly emerged as a promising tool in health care. Despite its growing adoption, how physicians make use of it in medical practice has not been qualitatively studied. Existing literature has largely focused on theoretical applications or experimental validations, with limited insight into real-world physician engagement with GenAI technologies. The aim of this study was to leverage a fine-grained dataset at the query level to quantitatively examine how physicians incorporate GenAI into their clinical and research workflows. The primary objective was to analyze usage patterns over time and across physician demographics. A secondary goal was to assess potential risks to patient privacy arising from physicians' interactions with GenAI platforms. This study collected 106,942 query-and-answer pairs by 989 physicians between August 29, 2023, and April 16, 2024. We performed topic classification to identify the most prevalent use cases, examining how these use cases evolved over time and across demographics. We also developed sensitivity classifiers to detect personally identifiable information in physicians' queries to explore the potential privacy breach risks around physicians' use of GenAI. Approximately 40% (396/989) of the enrolled physicians were female, 45.9% (454/989) were younger than 25 years, and 54.1% (535/989) were between 25 and 56 years of age. The majority of them worked in clinical departments (680/989, 68.8%) or medical technology departments (127/989, 12.8%). Our classification-based quantitative analyses suggest the following. First, physicians use GenAI predominantly for medical research (64,379/106,942, 60.2%) rather than clinical practice (13,100/106,942, 12.25%). Second, physicians focus more on health care-related questions (rising from 64,165/106,942, 60% to 83,415/106,942, 78%) within the first 15% (16,041/106,942) of their query sequence. Third, the use of GenAI differed across physician demographics and features. Specifically, female physicians asked a larger proportion of clinical questions (female: 0.154 vs male: 0.108; P<.001) and administration questions (female: 0.027 vs male: 0.018; P<.001) than male physicians; younger physicians posed more clinical questions (age ≤25: 0.146 vs age ∈ (25, 40]: 0.115 vs age >40: 0.103; P<.001) but fewer research questions (age ≤25: 0.580 vs age ∈ (25, 40]: 0.607 vs age >40: 0.664; P<.001) than senior physicians; and physicians accessing GenAI via computers asked more research questions (computer: 0.637 vs mobile: 0.296; P<.001), whereas physicians using mobile devices asked more clinical questions (computer: 0.107 vs mobile: 0.264; P<.001). Fourth, only 2.68% (2866/106,942) of physician queries contained sensitive information, the majority of which were primarily derived from writing and editing. Physicians are actively integrating GenAI into their professional routines, primarily leveraging it for research but also increasingly for clinical support. Usage patterns vary significantly across demographic lines, including gender, age, and device preference. Despite the presence of sensitive information in some queries, the risk of privacy breaches appears to be low.

The awareness of legal issues related to libraries among library professionals in Gujarat is discussed in the current study. The research is based on an online survey of library professionals of Gujarat. The major findings of the survey reveal that there is an acute need to improve the awareness and knowledge about legal issues and legal provisions among LIS professionals in Gujarat. The results also show that educational background, experience, or designation have no correlation with level of awareness or knowledge about legal aspects among library professionals. This study provides indications to major legal issues that affect the work of library professionals and what resources may be needed to enhance the level of awareness and knowledge about legal aspects related to libraries.The current study is limited to the study of library professionals in Gujarat, India and has potential to be conducted on national scale to check the level of awareness and knowledge about legal issues and legal provisions and may also provide important indications to address the issue of training and education of library professionals.