Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) occurs following exposure to potentially traumatic experiences such as those regularly encountered by emergency service workers (police, ambulance and firemen/women) and servicemen/women. PTSD is associated with high rates of somatic comorbidities including metabolic syndrome contributing to an excess mortality rate due to preventable cardiovascular diseases...

An essential activity in managing an emergency is planning, preparation, and training for it. The harmful consequences can be diminished if accurate safety metrics are incorporated before. This leads to the simulation of an emergency event which is required to devise a roadmap, evaluate the effectiveness of numerous possible scenarios and thereby mitigate the damages significantly. An agent-bas...

Although the nature of firefighting involves particular health hazards, previous mortality and morbidity studies of firemen have produced inconsistent evidence for an increased risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer and accidents. Mortality experience since 1915 has been examined in 5655 Boston firefighters, comprising all male members of the city fire depart...

The defensive peripersonal space represents a "safety margin" advantageous for survival. Its spatial extension and the possible relationship with personality traits have never been investigated. Here, in a population of 15 healthy human participants, we show that the defensive peripersonal space has a sharp boundary, located between 20 and 40 cm from the face, and that within such space there i...

Introduction: After each weather front with gales all over Poland, firemen have to perform a few hundred or so interventions. The life of persons covered by specialistic treatment — home mechanical ventilation HMV depends upon stable supplies electricity. In case breakdowns, indispensable aid is given who deliver generating sets available in Rescue and Firefighting Units (RFU). Aim the study: A...

BACKGROUND The World Health Organization refers to stroke, the second most frequent cause of death in the world, in terms of pandemic. Present treatments are only effective within precise time windows. Only 10% of thrombolysis patients are eligible. Late assessment of the patient resulting from admission and lack of knowledge of the symptoms is the main explanation of lack of eligibility. MET...

BACKGROUND Airway management is of essential importance in emergency care. Training and skill retention of endotracheal intubation (ETI) - the technique considered as the "gold standard" -, poses a problem especially among care providers experiencing a low frequency of airway management situations. Therefore, alternative airway devices such as the laryngeal tube (LT) with potentially steeper le...

Circadian cognitive and physical rhythms plus 24 h patterns of accidents and work-related injuries (WRI) have been verified in numerous studies. However, rarely, if ever, have 24 h temporal differences in both work performance and risk of WRI been assessed in the same group of workers. We explored in a homogenous group of French firemen (FM) 24 h patterns of both lag time (LT) response duration...

BACKGROUND Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the most frequent tumour among Caucasian populations worldwide. Among the risk factors associated with this tumour, there are host-related factors and several environmental agents. A greater likelihood of high exposure to physical agents (with the exception of solar radiation) and chemical agents depends on the work setting. Our objective is to eval...

BACKGROUND Measures of socio-economic position, such as education, occupational class and income, are well-known determinants of ill-health, injury and sickness absence. The aim was to analyse socio-economic and occupational determinants of work injury absence and their contribution to overall socio-economic inequalities in all-cause sickness absence. METHODS A register-based follow-up study ...