The expression of emotion through nonverbal behavior in medical visits

Relationship-centered care reflects both knowing and feeling: the knowledge that physician and patient bring from their respective domains of expertise, and the physician’s and patient’s experience, expression, and perception of emotions during the medical encounter. These processes are conveyed and reciprocated in the care process through verbal and nonverbal communication. We suggest that the emotional context of care is especially related to nonverbal communication and that emotion-related communication skills, including sending and receiving nonverbal messages and emotional self-awareness, are critical elements of high-quality care. Although nonverbal behavior has received far less study than other care processes, the current review argues that it holds significance for the therapeutic relationship and influences important outcomes including satisfaction, adherence, and clinical outcomes of care.     

Non-invasive Assessment of Coronary Flow Velocity Reserve: A New Method Using Transthoracic Doppler Echocardiography

Coronary flow reserve (CFR) has been used toassess coronary microcirculation and epicardial coro-nary stenoses[1— 3 ] . CFR is defined as the ratio ofcoronary flow under maximal coronary vasodilatationto coronary flow under resting conditions[4 ] .Whenthe cross- sectional area of epicardial coronary arteriesis constant,coronary flow velocity (CFV) ratios areequal to volume flow ratios.The most common method used clinically formeasuring CFVR is intracoronary Doppler flow(ICD) analysis re…     

Traumatic infarction of the spinal cord in children

Infarction of the spinal cord in childhood is rarely due to trauma. During a 15-year period (1971 to 1985), eight children were admitted to The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, with a diagnosis of traumatic infarction of the spinal cord. All of these patients had delayed onset of neurological signs varying between 2 hours and 4 days after their initial trauma. No bone abnormalities were seen on plain spine x-ray films. Myelography was carried out in seven of these children and found to be normal in all seven. Six patients who were paraplegic at the time of admission remained permanently paraplegic, but two with incomplete cord signs did show some improvement.