Since 2020, the "marketing authorization updates" section of Bulletin du Cancer has provided a monthly educational summary of new marketing authorizations (MAs) granted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the fields of oncology and hematology. A survey was conducted five years after its creation to assess the functioning of the format, its informative and educational value, and potential areas for improvement. An online questionnaire comprising 16 items was distributed in May 2025 to the 245 authors who had contributed to at least one article in the AMM section. A total of 78 responses were collected, including 52 residents and 26 senior physicians. The results were positive regarding the organization and the quality of interactions within the author pairs, with writing guidelines rated as "clear" or "perfectly clear" in over 80% of responses. The perceived educational value was high for both trainees and seniors (median self-reported educational benefit of 9/10 for residents and 7.5/10 for senior physicians). Overall satisfaction with the format was also high, with a median rating of 9/10 in both groups. This survey highlights the value of the "marketing authorization updates" section, which successfully fulfils a dual mission of education and information, while fostering intergenerational collaboration.
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In 2023, a significant increase in the number of pertussis cases was recorded in Poland, which is consistent with the trend of a resurgence of respiratory diseases observed across Europe following the COVID-19 pandemic. This increase is related to factors such as declining population immunity, delays in vaccinations, and diagnostic difficulties, particularly in adults and adolescents. The aim of the study was to assess the epidemiological situation of pertussis in Poland in 2023 compared to the situation in previous years, with particular emphasis on assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and assessing the vaccination status of children against pertussis. The assessment of the epidemiological situation of pertussis in Poland was made based on the results of the analysis of individual reports on pertussis cases registered at the National Institute of Public Health NIH - National Research Institute in the EpiBaza system and data from the annual bulletins "Infectious diseases and poisonings in Poland" and the bulletin "Vaccinations in Poland in 2023". In 2023, 922 cases of pertussis were recorded. The incidence was 2.45/100,000, which was 150% higher than in 2022. The highest incidence of pertussis occurred in children aged 0-4 years (17.3/100,000), and high in children aged 5-9 years (7.6/100,000). Approximately 45% of cases occurred in people over 15 years of age. In 2023, the number of pertussis cases in Poland increased more than 2.5-fold compared to the previous year, which is due, among other things, to the complete lifting of pandemic restrictions and an increase in social contacts. Pertussis remains a significant public health threat, and waning post-vaccination immunity promotes transmission, especially among adolescents and adults, who can infect infants. W 2023 roku w Polsce odnotowano istotny wzrost liczby zachorowań na krztusiec, co wpisuje się w obserwowany w całej Europie trend nawrotu chorób układu oddechowego po pandemii COVID-19. Wzrost ten jest związany m.in. ze spadkiem odporności populacyjnej, opóźnieniami w szczepieniach oraz trudnościami w diagnostyce, zwłaszcza u dorosłych i młodzieży. Celem pracy była ocena sytuacji epidemiologicznej krztuśca w Polsce w 2023 r. w porównaniu z sytuacją w ubiegłych latach, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem oceny wpływu pandemii COVID-19 oraz oceny stanu zaszczepienia dzieci przeciw krztuścowi. Ocena sytuacji epidemiologicznej krztuśca w Polsce została wykonana na podstawie wyników analizy raportów jednostkowych o zachorowaniach na krztusiec zarejestrowanych w NIZP PZH – PIB w systemie EpiBaza oraz danych z biuletynów rocznych „Choroby zakaźne i zatrucia w Polsce” oraz biuletynu „Szczepienia ochronne w Polsce w 2023 r.”. W 2023 r. zarejestrowano 922 zachorowań na krztusiec. Zapadalność wynosiła 2,45 /100 tys. i była wyższa o 150% w porównaniu z zapadalnością w roku 2022. Najwyższa zapadalność na krztusiec wystąpiła u dzieci w grupie wieku 0-4 lata (17,3/100 tys.), a wysoka u dzieci w wieku 5-9 lat (7,6/100 tys.). Około 45% zachorowań dotyczyło osób powyżej 15 r.ż. W 2023 roku w Polsce liczba zachorowań na krztusiec wzrosła ponad 2,5-krotnie w porównaniu z rokiem poprzednim, co wiąże się m.in. z całkowitym zniesieniem ograniczeń pandemicznych i wzrostem liczby kontaktów społecznych. Krztusiec pozostaje istotnym zagrożeniem zdrowia publicznego, a wygasająca odporność poszczepienna sprzyja transmisji, zwłaszcza wśród młodzieży i dorosłych, którzy mogą zakażać niemowlęta. Najwyższą zapadalność odnotowano wśród dzieci w wieku 0-4 lat. Najbardziej narażone na ciężki przebieg i zgon są niemowlęta poniżej 6 miesiąca życia.
The study shows the evolution of the market for medicines sold in pharmacies following the price revisions published by the Ministry of Health after the reform of the pricing system adopted in December 2013. This is a retrospective study carried out following the crossing of lists of official price review bulletins published on the website of the General Secretariat of the Government and sales data for medicines between 2010 and 2018. Between 2010 and 2018, the total private market for generic and originator medicines recorded an average annual growth of +3% in volume and +3.7% in turnover. Between 2015 and 2018 and after the implementation of the reform, it rose from +1.1% to +3.9%. Once the price revisions were applied, the sales volume of generic medicines recorded an average annual growth of +3.5%, compared to +5.1% for their turnover (2015 and 2018). However, the sales volume of originator medicines recorded negative average annual growth (-0.7%). As for the segment of medicines affected by price reductions, between 2015 and 2018 it experienced negative average annual growth in volume (-0.8%), while its growth in turnover was positive (+3.3%). Following the adoption of the terms of Decree 2-13-852 and the application of the revisions, the private medicines market has seen variable growth.
For this Special Collection we invited experts in the area of mathematical and computational biology to share their views on the major problems in their areas of interest and their recent research results - focusing on the development of state-of-the-art modeling approaches and computational techniques applied to problems in the life sciences - and to present their vision of the new directions needed for addressing unsolved problems. Papers in this Special Collection address mathematical and computational problems in several areas of the life sciences, including theoretical neuroscience, cancer modeling, and cell and developmental systems. With respect to methodologies, these papers cover dynamical systems, differential equations, stochastic processes, and modern computational techniques, all with an emphasis on techniques in modern modeling and computational methodologies. This Special Collection is jointly hosted by the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology and the Journal of Mathematical Biology.
The unsatisfactory percentage for ThinPrep Pap Tests (TPPT) at our institution reached the 75th percentile (2.7%) benchmark established by the College of American Pathologists (CAP). Our aim was to identify outliers by analysis of data, provide education and feedback, and establish a system to monitor outcomes. The laboratory information system (LIS) was queried for TPPT cases diagnosed as 'Non-diagnostic' between April and June 2022. Two hundred and thirty-two cases were identified and reviewed by 2 cytopathologists and 1 cytotechnologist to identify limiting factors, including cellularity, blood, lubricant, inflammation, and mucus. The percentage of unsatisfactory TPPT was evaluated for both clinicians and clinics and stratified into peer groups based on total TPPT collected. The two clinics with the highest unsatisfactory percentage in a peer group of > 500 TPPT collected were identified. A LIS report was created to improve efficiency in future data collection. Low cellularity was a limiting factor in 100% of cases, blood in 51.7% (n = 120), lubricant in 18.5% (n = 43), inflammation in 13.8% (n = 32), and mucus in 3.9% (n = 9), with multiple factors possible per case. Twenty clinics collected > 500 TPPT for FY2022. Two clinics (1 resident-led clinic) had an unsatisfactory percentage > 3%, for which to target interventions. Clinic 1 had an unsatisfactory percentage of 6.1% (62/1018), and clinic 2 was 3.5% (21/608). To address limiting factors, a laboratory bulletin with best practices for TPPT collection and a list of Hologic TPPT approved lubricants was sent to each clinic. Statistics of unsatisfactory TPPT were provided. The highest unsatisfactory TPPT clinics received Hologic educational materials and an educational session. The resolution of laboratory quality issues requires investigations, often laborious in nature. In an era of staffing shortages, an effective LIS is essential to efficiently investigate and resolve quality variances. TPPT data via LIS reports were reviewed at 3 months and 1-year post-intervention implementation to evaluate outcomes.
Jacoby et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 638-644, 2003) reported that, in Stroop tasks, stimuli that more frequently involve targets combined with a congruent distractor (e.g., the word RED in the color red) produce larger Stroop effects than stimuli that more frequently involve targets combined with an incongruent distractor (e.g., RED in green). This pattern suggests that adaptive control can be item-specific in addition to item-nonspecific, and reactive in addition to proactive (although this conclusion has been challenged). This adaptive-control process has often been assumed to be driven by the conflict associated with incongruent stimuli; however, the typical experimental manipulations investigating this issue allow the facilitation associated with congruent stimuli to also play a role. Here, we modified those manipulations in order to focus exclusively on conflict, removing any impact of congruency facilitation, by contrasting targets presented with either neutral (letter strings) or incongruent distractors. Neutral stimuli were presented more frequently than incongruent ones in the Mostly-Neutral (MN) condition and vice versa in the Mostly-Incongruent (MI) condition. Paralleling the original pattern, Stroop interference was larger in the MN condition, suggesting that item-specific conflict frequency can be used to adapt attention accordingly. Importantly, this effect was replicated after experimentally controlling for stimulus frequency, a confound that was found to explain part, but not all, of the general pattern. These results support Jacoby et al.'s claims that (a) control can be adapted in an item-specific fashion and (b) conflict plays a key role in that process.
Fetal heart rate surveillance is a standard component of intrapartum care. The fetal heart rate can be evaluated using intermittent auscultation or electronic fetal monitoring. Research that has compared these 2 strategies found them to be equivalent with respect to long-term neonatal outcomes. The purpose of this clinical bulletin by the American College of Nurse-Midwives is to review evidence for the use of intermittent auscultation and provide recommendations for intermittent auscultation technique, interpretation, and documentation.
Marine debris has become a serious global environmental issue due to its increasing impacts on marine ecosystems, biodiversity, and human health. Large amounts of waste enter the oceans each year from a wide range of sources, originating from both land-based and marine activities. Ocean circulation allows marine debris to spread across national boundaries. Addressing marine debris therefore requires coordinated global actions supported by strong scientific evidence. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of marine debris research based on 1679 English-language journal articles indexed in the Scopus database from 2004 to 2024. Data were analysed using bibliometric mapping techniques with VOSviewer to examine publication trends, leading journals and authors, contributing countries, collaboration networks, and keyword co-occurrence patterns. The result show a significant increase in publication output after 2017, indicating growing global attention, particularly toward plastic pollution. Environmental Science is the dominant subject area, with Marine Pollution Bulletin identified as the most productive journal. The United States, Australia, and United Kingdom emerged as the leading contributors, supported by strong international collaboration networks. Keyword analysis reveals that plastic debris and microplastics remain the central research themes, along with emerging opportunities from advanced technologies, including remote sensing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and citizen science. These findings highlight the need for interdisciplinary approaches and strengthen international collaboration to enhance monitoring, management, and mitigation strategies for marine debris.
In a highly influential study across a wide breadth of literature, Kornell and Bjork (Psychological Science, 19[6], 585-592, 2008) showed that learning is enhanced by presenting exemplars (paintings) of to-be-learned categories (artists) in an interleaved sequence (e.g., A1, B1, C1 … A2, B2,, C2 …) rather than a blocked sequence (e.g., A1, A2, A3 … B1, B2, B3 …). However, this study, and nearly all direct replications, used an identification procedure that confounds memory abilities with response biases (i.e., one's criteria for using certain response choices); any interleaving effect assessed through an identification task may be an overestimate or, indeed, an underestimate of the effect (Hautus et al., Detection Theory, 2021). To address this, we conducted a direct replication: online, N = 288; t(287) = 8.08, p < 0.001, dz = 0.48, 96% CI [0.36, 0.59]-for the first time to our knowledge-accompanied by measures of differential learning and response biases across learned categories (which were substantial, with participants using some response categories at a rate several times higher than others). We then conducted a critical conceptual replication, changing the task from identification ("Which artist painted this?") to n-alternative forced-choice ("Which of these was painted by [e.g.] Seurat?"), the gold standard of memory tests (Brady et al., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30, 2023). Reassuringly, the 2AFC experiment showed an interleaving effect comparable to our direct replication: online, N = 276; t(275) = 7.19, p < .001, dz = 0.43, 95% CI [0.32, 0.55]. Put together, this study showcases the challenges of interpretation facing any identification paradigm, illustrates a straightforward method to address them, and puts the interleaving effect on firmer footing.
In 2023 there was a significant increase in the number of syphilis cases in Poland, more than 50% new cases were reported compare to previous year. There is still a problem with the clinical differentiation of reported cases, i.e. new infections, reinfections, and residual positive serological tests confirming the presence of antibodies against Treponema pallidum in previously successfully treated individuals. The aim of the study was to assess the epidemiological situation of syphilis cases in Poland in 2023 in comparison to previous years. Analysis of the epidemiological situation was based on case-based data from reports of newly detected syphilis cases received from doctors and laboratories and registered in 2023 year. Additionally aggregated data from MZ-56 reports on infectious diseases, infections and poisoning from 2017 to 2019 sent from Sanitary Inspections to NIPH NIH - NRI was used. Also, data about treatment patients in dermatology/venereology clinics in 2020-2023 reported on MZ-14 forms and published in the NIPH NIH - NRI bulletins were used. In 2023, in Poland, 2,968 syphilis cases were reported (diagnosis rate was 7.89 per 100,000 population), including 130 cases among non-Polish citizens. The most often syphilis cases were detected among people below 30 years old (37.1%) and among men (88.1%). In 2023, early syphilis (ICD-10 code: A51) consisted 36.0% of all cases reported to surveillance (1,068 cases) and other syphilis and undetermined (ICD-10 code: A53) consisted 60.6% (1,799 cases). In 2023, the number of reported syphilis cases increased more than by half compared to the previous year. The percentage of cases of early syphilis (the most infectious), which probably occurred in a short period of time, also remains high, what can influence on transmission this infection in population and lead to increase in the number of new cases. W 2023 roku nastąpił znaczny wzrost liczby przypadków kiły w Polsce, zgłoszono o ponad 50% więcej przypadków niż w roku poprzednim. Nadal pozostaje problemem rozróżnienie kliniczne zgłaszanych przypadków tj. nowych zakażeń, reinfekcji, oraz pozostałości dodatnich testów serologicznych potwierdzających obecność przeciwciał w kierunku Treponema pallidum u osób wcześniej skutecznie leczonych. Celem pracy była ocena sytuacji epidemiologicznej kiły w Polsce w roku 2023 w porównaniu z poprzednimi latami. Ocenę sytuacji epidemiologicznej przeprowadzono na podstawie zgłoszeń przypadków kiły zarejestrowanych w roku 2023 pochodzących od lekarzy i z laboratoriów. Wykorzystano również zagregowane dane ze sprawozdań o zachorowaniach na choroby zakaźne, zakażeniach i zatruciach MZ-56 (meldunki dwutygodniowe, kwartalne, roczne) za lata 2017-2019 przekazane przez Państwową Inspekcję Sanitarną do NIZP PZH – PIB oraz dane ze sprawozdań MZ-14 o leczonych w poradniach skórno-wenerologicznych, publikowane w biuletynach NIZP PZH – PIB za lata 2020-2023. W 2023 roku w Polsce zgłoszono 2 968 przypadków kiły (wskaźnik rozpoznań 7,89 na 100 000 mieszkańców), w tym 130 u obcokrajowców. Najwięcej przypadków stwierdzono u osób poniżej 30 r.ż. (37,1%) oraz mężczyzn (88,1%). W 2023 roku kiła wczesna (ICD-10: A51) stanowiła 36,0% wszystkich rozpoznań kiły zgłoszonych do nadzoru (1 068 przypadków), a kiła inna i nieokreślona (ICD-10: A53) 60,6% (1 799 przypadków). W 2023 roku liczba zgłoszeń przypadków kiły zwiększyła się o ponad połowę w porównaniu z poprzednim rokiem. Na wysokim poziomie pozostawał również odsetek przypadków kiły wczesnej (najbardziej zakaźnej), co może mieć wpływ na rozprzestrzenianie się zakażeń w populacji i wzrost liczby nowych przypadków.
LLMs are increasingly applied in clinical medicine, but their performance in protocol-driven fields like anesthesiology remains underexplored. Obstetric anesthesia demands timely and accurate decision-making, where adherence to established guidelines is essential. This study investigates how prompting strategies and model architectures influence LLM performance in a high-stakes clinical domain. To evaluate the performance of four Large Language Models (LLMs)—ChatGPT-4o, ChatGPT-4o-mini, DeepSeek-V3, and DeepSeek-R1—in answering guideline-based questions in obstetric anesthesia using three distinct prompting strategies. Eleven clinical questions derived from the 2019 ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 209 were posed to each model using three prompting strategies: Isolated Prompting (IP), Batch Prompting (BP), and Contextual Isolated Prompting (CIP). Responses were rated across four clinical dimensions (Accuracy, Overconclusiveness, Supplementary Value, and Completeness) using a 5-point Likert scale, and assessed for readability using Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL). Statistical analyses included ANOVA and post hoc comparisons. No significant differences were found across models for Accuracy, Overconclusiveness, or Completeness (p > 0.05). However, Supplementary Value differed significantly (p = 0.008), with ChatGPT-4o under CIP outperforming DeepSeek-V3 under IP (p = 0.021). ChatGPT-4o demonstrated the highest overall readability (lowest FKGL), while ChatGPT-4o-mini’s readability improved significantly under CIP. DeepSeek-V3 under BP outperformed R1 under IP in FKGL scores (p = 0.0294). LLMs demonstrate comparable core clinical accuracy in obstetric anesthesia tasks, with ChatGPT-4o offering the most readable and context-rich responses. Prompting strategy, especially CIP, enhances response quality. These findings support the potential of LLMs as clinical aids, contingent on thoughtful prompt design and domain validation. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-50276-w.
The Stroop interference effect - slower color naming on incongruent trials (e.g., GREEN printed in red) compared to neutral trials (e.g., PRESS printed in red) - is widely regarded as a hallmark of selective attention failure. We (Curtis et al., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 32, 1328-1336, 2025) have previously argued that the integrated nature of the Stroop stimulus is a main factor contributing towards the robustness of this interference, which shows a characteristic positively sloped delta plot pattern. Here, we tested this claim by directly comparing the standard, integrated Stroop task with the primed Stroop task, in which the word and color are separated temporally (e.g., GREEN in monochrome followed by XXXX in red). Participants completed randomly intermixed standard (integrated) and primed Stroop trials: In Experiment 1, the prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) was 550 ms; and in Experiment 2, it was 250 ms. In the standard task, interference was large and increased across quantiles, replicating the classic delta plot pattern. In contrast, interference in the primed Stroop task was smaller and remained constant across the RT distribution - producing a flat delta slope, with both long and short SOAs. We take these results as support for our claim that the robustness of Stroop interference stems from the perceptual integration of word and color into a single visual object, and when this integration is broken as in the primed Stroop task, the resulting interference effect reflects a qualitatively different mechanism; thus, the effect in the primed Stroop task is not a "Stroop effect."
The proteome is defined as the total protein complement of a genome-whether that genome is associated with an individual cell, tissue, or organism (Wasinger et al., Electrophoresis 16:1090-1094, 1995). Proteomics refers to the application of technologies to characterize the proteome. The term "proteome" was coined by researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia, in a paper published in 1995 (Wasinger et al., Electrophoresis 16:1090-1094, 1995). But did proteomics really begin in 1995 or were researchers doing proteomic research long before? As a PhD student, I would tell people that my field of expertise was protein science, as I was involved in determining the three-dimensional structures of proteins using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. As my career evolved to using mass spectrometry (MS) to analyze complex mixtures of proteins, my field of expertise was proteomics. While still studying proteins, what had changed was the number of proteins I was analyzing per experiment. In a nutshell, proteomics is simply the large-scale study of proteins. While protein scientists have been studying proteins for almost 200 years (Mulder, Bulletin des Sciences Physiques et Naturelles en Néerlande 104, 1838), proteomics has increased the throughput and the ability to characterize proteins in the context of other proteins within their environment. While well-known for its high-throughput ability to identify and quantitate proteins, proteomics encompasses several different facets of protein characterization including such things as structure, function, protein-protein interactions, posttranslational modifications, and protein quantitation. Data acquired under any of these broad categories can be applied to greater understand something part of the cell system.
This study investigated interword spacing effects on eye movement during Arabic reading, focusing on the distinctive orthographic system of Arabic text. Research on Roman-script languages (e.g., English) concluded that interword spacing facilitates word identification and sentence comprehension (Rayner et al. in Vision Research 38:1129–1144, 1998, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0042-6989(97)00274-5 ; Slattery et al. in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 22:406–422, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000104 ), whereas studies on other languages could not replicate these results (Bai et al. in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 34:1277–1287, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.34.5.1277 ). While written Arabic uses interword spaces between words, we showed that manipulating interword spaces did not inhibit reading-related eye movements. However, we found a significant influence of interword spacing on saccadic programming. Overall, the lack of an ‘interword spacing effect’ in Arabic led us to postulate that Arabic orthography might have an important role in guiding saccades despite the absence of interword spacing. Our conclusions are also in line with the proposal that there is an independent level of abstract letter representation of Arabic which encodes allographs and letter positions (e.g., Carreiras et al. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 19:685–690, 2012, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-012-0260-8 ).
Public awareness and interest significantly influence research priorities and healthcare advancements. This study investigates the relationship between public interest, represented by Google Trends Relative Search Volume (RSV), and cardiothoracic research outputs over 21 years (2004 - 2024). A total of 26 conditions/surgeries representing eight topics of general cardiothoracic interest were identified from a review of various social media pages, society webpages, and hospital information bulletins. Data on the conditions were collected from Google Trends and PubMed®. RSV values were calculated annually, and publication counts were extracted for each condition. The study used R (v4.3.3) for all statistical analyses and predictive models. Trauma-related conditions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) demonstrated increasing RSV and publication trends, with strong positive correlations (e.g., ECMO: r = 0.88, P < 0.0001). Conditions such as congenital cardiac anomalies (e.g., tetralogy of Fallot: r = -0.74, P < 0.0001) showed a negative correlation, with declining RSV despite ongoing research. Multiple regression revealed a significant positive relationship between RSV and publication counts when conditions were controlled (slope = 16.68, R2 = 0.8081, P < 0.0001). Feature importance analysis showed that "Condition" had a slightly greater influence than RSV on publication trends. The study demonstrates variability between public interest and research output across cardiothoracic conditions. While some conditions, such as trauma-related cases and ECMO, show alignment between public awareness and publication activity, others, including congenital anomalies, exhibit divergence.
Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) is increasing utilised in respiratory medicine as it enables immediate detection of pathologic processes without radiation, and it increases safety for pleural procedures. With increasing use of thoracic ultrasound, its potential as a vector for transmission of pathogens must be considered. Anecdotally, there is a relative dearth of education regarding appropriate cleaning practices in many short POCUS curricula. Using a previously accepted survey instrument with adjustment to reflect up to date guidelines, we surveyed a range of respiratory medicine practitioners from 01 August 2024 to 30 November 2024 regarding their use of POCUS and their knowledge and practice regarding appropriate cleaning procedures. The survey instrument was distributed electronically to the majority of Australian teaching hospitals and advertised in national society bulletins, and included a combination of yes/no, Likert Scale and free text questions. Data collection was anonymous through the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) Platform. There were 66 respondents, with the majority being respiratory medicine trainees or specialists (19 and 41 respectively). Most practitioners have been using POCUS for at least 1-2 years, and respondents are generally using it from 2 to 3 times/week to 2-3 times/month. 81 % have participated in a formal education program regarding POCUS. Approximately two thirds (62 %) have never received education regarding how to clean an ultrasound machine. There was a broad range of answers regarding which parts of a machine to clean after a simple POCUS scan, with most identifying an appropriate cleaning product. Concerningly, 21 % and 3 % believe that high concentration alcohol solutions or high temperature sterilisation is appropriate for cleaning ultrasound probes. Lack of knowledge and inability to find the right materials were the most commonly cited reasons for failure to clean a POCUS device after a scan. Whilst many receive formal training on the use of ultrasound, education and knowledge of appropriate procedures for ultrasound machine cleaning appears to be lacking. There is a need for greater awareness of available machine cleaning guidelines to reduce the risk of ultrasonography as a vector for healthcare-associated pathogen transmission.