Hospital utilization and increasing old age in the user of care?]

Data are presented on hospital stay for the population 65 years-old and over, measured in percentage over the total for Spain, for the 1978 to 1988 period, by gender, for each province and autonomous region (Comunidad Autónoma). The country's total for the last available year was 35%. Except in Baleares and Murcia, the proportion of hospital stays increased in all Regions, especially in Navarra, where it increased from 23% to 51%. After adjusting for age, the increase in the proportion of hospital stays in the study population was due to an increase in utilization per person. The proportion, which was 13.3% in 1978, raised to 23.8% in 1988, with an adjusted value of 21.3%.     

Artifacts due to stimulus correlated motion in functional imaging of the brain

To assess the effect of stimulus correlated motion on the appearance of functional magnetic resonance images, conventional visual and motor protocols were each performed by four normal volunteers and an image co-registration technique was used to retrospectively monitor subject motion. In three studies synthetic data sets were constructed from single baseline images using the positional information obtained from the co-registration procedure. Cumulative difference images were then created from both the synthetic and functional image sets. Stimulus correlated motion was detected in all eight studies and the synthetic cumulative difference images showed striking similarities to the equivalent functional images in each case.     

INVASIVE MUCORMYCOSIS WITH GASTRIC INVOLVEMENT IN A PATIENT WITH SEVERE ATHEROMATOUS VASCULAR DISEASE

Gastric mucormycosis involvement is a rare condition that usually occurs in inmunocompromised patients and frequently has a fatal outcome. We report the case of a 73‐year‐old woman admitted to the intensive care unit with severe bleeding after an acute pulmonary disease. Upper endoscopy disclosed wide and deep necrotic ulcers in the body and fundus of the stomach and greenish exudates with the antrum and the duodenum undamaged. Autopsy revealed an invasive mucormycosis and a severe atheromatosis. Several predisposing factors for mucormycosis infection have been reported until now. We postulate that ischemic gastritis could be a predisposing factor for colonization of zygomycete.     

Relationship between Mandarin speech reception thresholds and pure-tone thresholds in the geriatric population.

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: In the geriatric population, the reliability of pure-tone threshold (PTT) is sometimes poorer than that in young adults because of various reasons. This study assessed the relationship between Mandarin speech reception thresholds (SRTs) and PTTs in the aged and developed SRT as a measure for corroborating PTT. METHODS: This prospective study enrolled 46 consecutive subjects over 60 years of age. The results of SRT and PTT were collected from one ear randomly selected from each subject. Simple linear and multiple regressions were used to determine the correlation and linear regression coefficients between SRTs and PTTs at various frequencies. RESULTS: In the simple regression analysis, the correlation coefficient was highest at 1000 Hz (r = 0.949) and 500 Hz (r = 0.922), followed by 250 Hz (r = 0.850) and 2000 Hz (r = 0.792). In the multiple regression model with SRT as the dependent variable and PTTs as predictor variables, the resultant multiple correlation coefficient R was 0.967, while R2 was 0.936. In this model, PTTs at the frequencies of 500 Hz and 1000 Hz contributed significantly to the variance in SRTs with p values of 0.029 and < 0.001, respectively. These results demonstrated that the Mandarin SRT is strongly associated with PTTs at the frequencies of 500 Hz and 1000 Hz. CONCLUSION: This study established the agreement between Mandarin SRTs and PTTs in the low tone area of speech frequencies in the geriatric population. In clinical settings, SRT test can be rapidly and easily performed and is relatively inexpensive. It is a vital indicator of the accuracy of PTT measurement.     

Influence of hospital characteristics on operative death and survival of patients after major cancer surgery in Ontario.

BACKGROUND: There is a lack of information from Canadian hospitals on the role of hospital characteristics such as procedure volume and teaching status on the survival of patients who undergo major cancer resection. Therefore, we chose to study these relationships using data from patients treated in Ontario hospitals. METHODS: We used the Ontario Cancer Registry from calendar years 1990-2000 to obtain data on patients who underwent surgery for breast, colon, lung or esophageal cancer or who underwent major liver surgery related to a cancer diagnosis between 1990 and 1995 in order to assess the influence of volume of procedures and teaching status of hospitals on in-hospital death rate and long-term survival. For each disease site and before observing patient outcomes data, volume cut-off points were selected to create volume groups with similar numbers of patients. Teaching hospitals were those directly affiliated with a medical school. Logistic regression and proportional hazards models were used to consider the clustering of data at the hospital level and to assess operative death and long-term survival. We also used 4 measures to gauge the degree of procedure regionalization across the province including (1) the number of hospitals performing a procedure; (2) the percentage of patients treated in teaching hospitals; (3) the percentage of rural patients treated in higher volume procedure hospitals; and (4) median distances travelled by patients to receive care. RESULTS: The number of patients in our cohorts who underwent resection of the breast, colon, lung, esophagus or liver was 14 346, 8398, 2698, 629 and 362, respectively. Surgery in a high-volume versus a low-volume hospital did not have a statistically significant influence on the odds of operative death for patients who underwent colon, liver, lung or esophageal cancer resection. The risk of long-term death was increased in low-volume versus high-volume hospitals for patients who underwent resection of the breast (hazard ratio [HR] 1.2, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1.0-1.4, p < 0.05), lung (HR 1.3, 95% CI 1.1-1.6, p < 0.01) and liver (HR 1.7, 95% CI 1.0-2.7, p = 0.04). There were no significant differences in the odds of operative (in-hospital) death or risk of long-term death among patients treated in teaching compared with nonteaching hospitals. There was more regionalization of liver, lung and esophageal operations versus breast and colon operations. CONCLUSIONS: Increased hospital procedure volume correlated with improved longterm survival for patients in Ontario who underwent some, but not all, cancer resections, whereas hospital teaching status had no significant impact on patient outcomes. Across the province, further regionalization of care may help improve the quality of some cancer procedures.     

Tendon reconstruction for postburn boutonnière deformity.

A surgical procedure in which a tendon graft is used to reconstruct the hood of the proximal interphalangeal joint for the correction of the postburn boutonnière deformity is described. The intent is to use the potential of the lateral bands for simultaneous extension of the interphalangeal joints, avoiding their excessive palmar displacement. The technique has been employed in 22 fingers with satisfactory results, except in the small finger.     

Central nervous system and cardiac manifestations of hydrochlorothiazide overdosage; treatment with hemodialysis

A patient with end-stage renal failure inadvertently received high-dose hydrochlorothiazide as treatment for hypertension, resulting in CNS and cardiac toxicity. These toxic manifestations were successfully treated with hemodialysis. A hydrochlorothiazide dialysance of 62.5 mL/min was demonstrated. The possibility of hydrochlorothiazide toxicity should be considered in any patient with renal insufficiency who exhibits unexplained arrhythmias or symptoms related to the CNS.