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Head and neck cancers are multi-factorial diseases that can affect many sides of people's life and are due to a lot of risk factors. According to their characteristics, the treatment can be surgical, use of radiation or chemotherapy. The use of a surgical treatment can lead to surgical infections that are a main theme in medicine. At the University hospital of Naples “Federico II”, two antibiotics were employed to tackle the issue of the infections and they are compared in this paper to find which one implies the lowest length of hospital stay (LOS) and the reduction of infections.

The Six Sigma methodology and its problem-solving strategy DMAIC (define, measure, analyse, improve, control), already employed in the healthcare sector, were used as a tool of a health technology assessment between two drugs. In this paper the DMAIC roadmap is used to compare the Ceftriaxone (administered to a group of 48 patients) and the association of Cefazolin plus Clindamycin (administered to a group of 45 patients).

The results show that the LOS of patients treated with Ceftriaxone is lower than those who were treated with the association of Cefazolin plus Clindamycin, the difference is about 41%. Moreover, a lower number of complications and infections was found in patients who received Ceftriaxone. Finally, a greater number of antibiotic shifts was needed by patients treated with Cefazolin plus Clindamycin.

While the paper enhances clearly the advantages for patients' outcomes regarding the LOS and the number of complications, it did not analyse the costs of the two antibiotics.

Employing the Ceftriaxone would allow the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery to obtain lower LOS and a limited number of complications/infections for recovered patients, consequently reducing the hospitalization costs.

There is a double value in this paper: first of all, the comparison between the two antibiotics gives an answer to one of the main issues in medicine that is the reduction of hospital-acquired infections; secondly, the Six Sigma through its DMAIC cycle can be employed also to compare two biomedical technologies as a tool of health technology assessment studies.

Resurgent interest in the life and work of the Italian Cambridge economist Piero Sraffa is leading to New Directions in Sraffa Scholarship. This chapter introduces readers to some of these developments. First and perhaps foremost is the fact that as of September 2016 Sraffa’s archival material has been uploaded onto the website of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge University, as digital colour images; this chapter introduces readers to the history of these events. This history provides sharp relief on the extant debates over the role of the archival material in leading to the final publication of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, and readers are provided a brief sketch of these matters. The varied nature of Sraffa scholarship is demonstrated by the different aspects of Sraffa’s intellectual legacy which are developed and discussed in the various entries of our Symposium. The conclusion is reached that we are on the cusp of an exciting phase change of tremendous potential in Sraffa scholarship.