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Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2019-05-31"

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  • Improving access to community-based pulmonary rehabilitation: 3R protocol for real-world settings with cost-benefit analysis
    Publication . Marques, Alda; Jácome, Cristina; Rebelo, Patrícia; Paixão, Cátia; Oliveira, Ana; Cruz, Joana; Freitas, Célia; Rua, Marília; Loureiro, Helena; Peguinho, Cristina; Marques, Fábio; Simões, Adriana; Santos, Madalena; Martins, Paula; André, Alexandra; De Francesco, Sílvia; Martins, Vitória; Brooks, Dina; Simão, Paula
    Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) has demonstrated patients' physiological and psychosocial improvements, symptoms reduction and health-economic benefits whilst enhances the ability of the whole family to adjust to illness. However, PR remains highly inaccessible due to lack of awareness of its benefits, poor referral and availability mostly in hospitals. Novel models of PR delivery are needed to enhance its implementation while maintaining cost-efficiency. We aim to implement an innovative community-based PR programme and assess its cost-benefit.
    2019-05-31Journal article Open access Show more
  • Communicating with younger consumers – The digital marketing of multinational firms
    Publication . Rodrigues, Marc de Oliveira; Rodrigues, Susana Cristina Serrano Fernandes
    The digital growth is responsible for many changes in the business context. In a general way, these changes tend to occur towards a digitalization of firms’ activities, responsible for the rise of Digital Marketing, which consists in the process of using digital technologies to acquire customers and build customer preferences, promote brands, retain customers and increase sales. Overall, these changes contribute to the globalization and ultimately may enhance firms’ overall performance, thus giving background for research on the topic. This empirical study specifically focusses on the Digital Marketing tools used by Multinational Firms to reach and communicate with younger consumers. As a questionnaire-based study, the aim is to reveal which Digital Marketing tools are more effective at reaching, engaging and communicating with Millennials. Based on a sample of 218 individuals, results have shown that individuals prefer to search for information about products or brands on browsers, instead of increasing their brand awareness through advertising displayed online. Similarly, individuals showed a tendency to visit brands’ websites more often through browser searches. Furthermore, and extensively supported by prior literature, Social Media Marketing proved to have an important role throughout the different stages of the Customer Decision Journey. One example of this role is the proven increase in customer satisfaction reached through the integration of Social Media in the Customer Relationship Management strategy of firms. Additionally, Earned Media proved to have a higher influence on customers’ purchase intent compared to Owned Media, which shows that individuals tend to picture User-Generated Content as a more reliable, trustworthy and non-biased source than content generated by the brand.
    2019-05-31Master thesis Restricted access Show more
  • Late-Night Salivary Cortisol: Cut-Off Definition and Diagnostic Accuracy for Cushing’s Syndrome in a Portuguese Population
    Publication . Lages, Adriana De Sousa; Oliveira, Diana; Paiva , Isabel; Oliveira, Patrícia; Rebelo-Marques, Alexandre; Carrilho, Francisco; Frade, João Gonçalo Leal de Oliveira e Silva
    Introduction: Diagnosis of Cushing’s syndrome remains a challenge in clinical endocrinology. Even though late-night salivary cortisol is used as screening tool, individualized cut-off levels for each population must be defined.Material and Methods: Three groups of subjects were studied: normal subjects, suspected and proven Cushing’s syndrome. Salivary cortisol was measured using an automated electrochemiluminescence assay. The functional sensitivity of the assay is 0.018 μg/dL. The diagnostic cut-off level was defined by Receiver Operating Characteristic curve and Youden’s J index.Results: We studied 127 subjects: 57 healthy volunteers, 39 patients with suspected and 31 with proven Cushing’s syndrome. 2.5th- 97.5th percentile of the late-night salivary cortisol concentrations in normal subjects was 0.054 to 0.1827 μg/dL. Receiver Operating Characteristic curve analysis showed an area under the curve of 0.9881 (p < 0.0001). A cut-off point of 0.1 μg/dL provided a sensitivity of 96.77% (95% CI 83.3 - 99.92%) and specificity of 91.23% (95% CI 80.7 - 97.09%). There was a significant correlation between late-night salivary cortisol and late-night serum cortisol (R = 0.6977; p < 0.0001) and urinary free cortisol (R = 0.5404; p = 0.0025) in proven Cushing’s syndrome group.Discussion: The mean ± SD late-night salivary cortisol concentration in patients with proven Cushing’s syndrome (0.6798 ± 0.52 μg/dL) was significantly higher (p < 0.0001). In our population, the late-night salivary cortisol cut-off was 0.1 μg/dL with high sensitivity and specificity.Conclusion: Late-night salivary cortisol has excellent diagnostic accuracy, making it a highly reliable, noninvasive, screening tool for outpatient assessment. Given its convenience and diagnostic accuracy, late-night salivary cortisol may be added to other traditional screening tests on hypercortisolism
    2019-05-31Journal article Open access Show more