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This study examines the time course of inhibitory processes in Spanish-English bilinguals, using the procedure described in Macizo, Bajo, and Martín. Bilingual participants were required to decide whether pairs of English words were related. Critical word pairs contained a word that shared the same orthography across languages but differed in meaning (interlingual homographs such as pie, meaning foot in Spanish). In Expts 1 and 2, participants were slower to respond to homographs presented along with words related to the Spanish meaning of the homograph as compared to control words. This result agrees with the view that bilinguals non-selectively activate their two languages irrespective of the language they are using. In addition, bilinguals also slowed their responses when the English translation of the Spanish homograph meaning was presented 500 ms after responding to homographs (Expt 1). This result suggests that bilinguals inhibited the irrelevant homograph meaning. However, the inhibitory effect was not observed in Expt 2 when the between-trial interval was fixed to 750 ms which suggests that inhibition decayed over time.

Our findings suggest that early oseltamivir administration was associated with favourable outcomes among critically ill ventilated patients with 2009 H1N1 virus infection.

PCT has a high negative predictive value (94%) and lower PCT levels seems to be a good tool for excluding coinfection, particularly for patients without shock.

In view of the exceptional public health situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a consensus work has been promoted from the ethics group of the Spanish Society of Intensive, Critical Medicine and Coronary Units (SEMICYUC), with the objective of finding some answers from ethics to the crossroads between the increase of people with intensive care needs and the effective availability of means. In a very short period, the medical practice framework has been changed to a ‘catastrophe medicine’ scenario, with the consequent change in the decision-making parameters. In this context, the allocation of resources or the prioritization of treatment become crucial elements, and it is important to have an ethical reference framework to be able to make the necessary clinical decisions. For this, a process of narrative review of the evidence has been carried out, followed by unsystematic consensus of experts, which has resulted in both the publication of a position paper and recommendations from SEMICYUC itself, and the consensus between 18 scientific societies and 5 institutes/chairs of bioethics and palliative care of a framework document of reference for general ethical recommendations in this context of crisis.

In January 2007, a telestroke system was established between a community hospital lacking a neurologist on call and a stroke centre 70 km away. The telestroke system allowed urgent remote evaluation of the patient by a specialized neurologist, supervised thrombolytic treatment or a decision for urgent transfer to the stroke centre. During the first year of operation of the telestroke system, we studied all acute ischaemic stroke patients admitted to the community hospital and compared the results with the previous year. Approximately the same number of acute stroke patients were admitted to the community hospital in each year (201 cases in 2006 and 198 in 2007). The telestroke system was activated 75 times in 2007, the number of stroke patients evaluated by a specialized neurologist increased (17% vs. 38%, P > 0.001) and interhospital transfers were reduced (17% vs. 6%, P = 0.001). The number of thrombolytic treatments was doubled: 4.5% (n = 9) in 2006 vs. 9.6% (n = 19, 12 of them in the community hospital) in 2007 (P = 0.073). The telestroke system also reduced the time to tPA treatment from symptom onset (210 vs. 162 min, P = 0.05) and increased the number of patients treated in the 0-3 hours window (40% vs. 63%, P = 0.09). Telemedicine improved the quality of care administered to acute stroke patients admitted to a community hospital and reduced the number of inter-hospital transfers.

The utility of using quality indicators as a tool to measure the common practice and evaluate efficacy of measures established to improve quality has been demonstrated, making it possible to identify and make known the improvements carried out. The project "Quality indicators in the critical patient" has been conducted by the Spanish Society of Intensive and Critical Medicine (SEMICYUC) under the methodological management of the Foundation Avedis Donabedian (FAD) of Barcelona. Its objective was to develop key indicators in the care of the critical patient, considering the following as added values: reaching an agreement on the quality criteria in these patients and providing the professionals with a potent and reliable instrument for clinical evaluation and management, introducing common evaluation methods that make it possible to unify the measure, making a comparative evaluation (benchmarking), having information that makes it possible to develop quality plans (quantitative, objective, reliable and valid data) and having a system that assures total quality of care to the critical patient.