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Background:Giuseppe Gradenigo (1859–1926), a legendary figure of Otology, was born in Venice, Italy. He soon became a pupil to Adam Politzer and Samuel Leopold Schenk in Vienna, demonstrating genuine interest in the embryology, morphology, physiopathology, as well as the clinical manifestations of ear diseases. In this paper, the authors attempt to highlight the major landmarks during Gradenigo's career and outline his contributions to neurosciences, which have been viewed as looking forward to the 20th century rather than awkward missteps at the end of the 19th.Methods:Several rare photographs along with many non-English, more than a century old articles have been meticulously selected to enrich this historical journey in time.Results:It was after Gradenigo that the well-known syndrome consisting of diplopia and facial pain due to a middle ear infection was named. However, Gradenigo was much more than a syndrome. Surprisingly, despite the fact that he is considered a pioneer of the Italian Otology of the late 19th and early 20th century, little is written of his life and his notable achievements in the English literature.Conclusions:Even though his name lives on nowadays only in the eponym “Gradenigo's syndrome,” his accomplishments are much wider and cast him among the emblematic figures of science. His inherent tendency for discovering the underlying mechanisms of diseases and his vision of guaranteeing quality of services, professional proficiency, respect, and dedication toward the patients is in fact what constitutes his true legacy to the next generations.

The scope of this research has been to investigate the satisfaction of Greek patients hospitalized in a tertiary care university public hospital in Alexandroupolis, Greece, in order to improve medical, nursing and organizational/administrative services. It is a cross-sectional study involving 200 patients hospitalized for at least 24 h. We administered a satisfaction questionnaire previously approved by the Greek Health Ministry. Four aspects of satisfaction were employed (medical, hotel facilities/organizational, nursing, global). Using principal component analysis, summated scales were formed and tested for internal consistency with the aid of Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The non-parametric Spearman rank correlation coefficient was also used. The results reveal a relatively high degree of global satisfaction (75.125%), yet satisfaction is higher for the medical (89.721%) and nursing (86.432%) services. Moreover, satisfaction derived from the hotel facilities and the general organization was found to be more limited (76.536%). Statistically significant differences in participant satisfaction were observed (depending on age, gender, citizenship, education, number of previous admissions and self-assessment of health status at the first and last day of patients' stay) for the medical, nursing and hotel facilities/organizational dimension, but not for global satisfaction. The present study confirms the results of previously published Greek surveys.