Cardiac damage in athlete's heart: When the “supernormal” heart fails!

Intense exercise may cause heart remodeling to compensate increases in blood pressure or volume by increasing muscle mass. Cardiac changes do not involve only the left ventricle, but all heart chambers. Physiological cardiac modeling in athletes is associated with normal or enhanced cardiac function, but recent studies have documented decrements in left ventricular function during intense exercise and the release of cardiac markers of necrosis in athlete's blood of uncertain significance. Furthermore, cardiac remodeling may predispose athletes to heart disease and result in electrical remodeling, responsible for arrhythmias. Athlete's heart is a physiological condition and does not require a specific treatment. In some conditions, it is important to differentiate the physiological adaptations from pathological conditions, such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, arrhythmogenic dysplasia of the right ventricle, and non-compaction myocardium, for the greater risk of sudden cardiac death of these conditions. Moreover, some drugs and performance-enhancing drugs can cause structural alterations and arrhythmias, therefore, their use should be excluded.     

When I’m 64: Effects of an interdisciplinary gerontology course on first-year undergraduates’ perceptions of aging

One challenge for gerontology is getting more students interested in aging at an earlier point in their academic career. This study evaluated the impact of an interdisciplinary course on aging designed for first-year undergraduate students. The course aimed to expand students’ appreciation of the personal and professional relevance of aging issues, with the goal of expanding their aging-related curricular and career interests. Main outcome variables of the study included knowledge of older adults and aging, attitudes toward older adults, and anxiety about personal aging. Participants included an intervention group enrolled in the course and a control group not enrolled in the course. Compared to baseline, at the end of the semester students in the class had more knowledge about aging and more positive explicit attitudes toward older adults, but their implicit attitudes toward older adults and anxiety about aging did not change. Control students showed no changes. These findings suggest that objective knowledge of aging and explicit attitudes improve with curricular intervention, but implicit attitudes and anxiety might be more difficult to change. Gerontology education is a complex undertaking whose diverse goals must be clearly articulated in order to guide curricular interventions and incite curiosity among young undergraduate students.     

What to Do When a Smoker's CT Scan Is “Normal”?: Implications for Lung Cancer Screening

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States and around the world. There are > 90 million current and ex-smokers in the United States who are at increased risk of lung cancer. The published data from the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) suggest that yearly screening with low-dose thoracic CT scan in heavy smokers can reduce lung cancer mortality by 20% and all-cause mortality by 7%. However, to implement this program nationwide using the NLST inclusion and exclusion criteria would be extremely expensive, with CT scan costs alone > $2 billion per annum. In this article, we offer a possible low-cost strategy to risk-stratify smokers on the basis of spirometry measurements and emphysema scoring by radiologists on CT scans.     

Is there such thing as “Reversible Dementia” (RD)?

RD is an extremely important problem for the practice of geriatricians. Rationale for this review had come from our question: could we increase and improve the cognitive function of our patients by treating some of "internal medicine" diseases at our hospital. Our clinical experience is telling us that it might be so. We administered the mini mental state examination (MMSE) test on 77 patients to check, if there is a relation between mental state and physical health. Patients were treated with appropriate cardiological, pulmonological and other needed therapies. Results indicate that recovering from the main disease increases the MMSE scores. This leads to the conclusion that successful treatment of patients can be followed and also confirmed by the results of the MMSE test. We have also observed that damaged physical health can inflict cognitive functions, no matter how old a person is.     

“Estoy viejo” [I’m old]: Internalized Ageism as Self-Referential, Negative, Ageist Speech in the Republic of Panama

Ageism is a form of discrimination that anyone may experience at some point in life (Palmore 2004). Yet ageism is rarely the focus of behavioral research (Nelson 2005). Age can be understood as a social construct that reflects social norms (Lemus and Exposito 2005). Based on our review of the published literature, there were two studies on perceptions of aging among Latina/os in the United States (Beyene et al. 2002; Sarkisian et al. 2006). These studies investigated perceptions and expectations of aging among older Latina/o adults rather than direct experiences of ageism. It is important to note that Latina/os are not a homogenous group and that there are within-group differences. For this reason, this study explored internalized, negative ageism specifically in the Republic of Panama. Although Panama has unique characteristics, it also reflects Central American culture and therefore should provide initial insights regarding Central American self-referential, negative, ageist talk, which we labeled ??Estoy viejo.?? Flanagan??s Critical Incident Technique was used to access and understand participants?? (ages 18?C65) negative ageist talk (n?=?159). Participants who reported engaging in ??Estoy viejo.?? (46.3?% of those sampled) were significantly younger than participants who did not (p?<?.05). One potential explanation is that younger participants may have been more influenced by North American culture and its strongly negative ageist stereotypes than older participants, who may have identified primarily with Central American culture.