Observational Study Mortality in Treated Primary Aldosteronism: The German Conn's Registry

In comparison with essential hypertension, primary aldosteronism (PA) is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity. To date, no data on mortality have been published. We assessed mortality of patients treated for PA within the German Conn's registry and identified risk factors for adverse outcome in a case-control study. Patients with confirmed PA treated in 3 university centers in Germany since 1994 were included in the analysis. All of the patients were contacted in 2009 and 2010 to verify life status. Subjects from the population-based F3 survey of the Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg served as controls. Final analyses were based on 600 normotensive controls, 600 hypertensive controls, and 300 patients with PA. Kaplan-Meyer survival curves were calculated for both cohorts. Ten-year overall survival was 95% in normotensive controls, 90% in hypertensive controls, and 90% in patients with PA (P value not significant). In multivariate analysis, age (hazard ratio, 1.09 per year [95% CI, 1.03-1.14]), angina pectoris (hazard ratio, 3.6 [95% CI, 1.04-12.04]), and diabetes mellitus (hazard ratio, 2.55 [95% CI, 1.07-6.09]) were associated with an increase in all-cause mortality, whereas hypokalemia (hazard ratio, 0.41 per mmol/L [95% CI, 0.17-0.99]) was associated with reduced mortality. Cardiovascular mortality was the main cause of death in PA (50% versus 34% in hypertensive controls; P<0.05). These data indicate that cardiovascular mortality is increased in patients treated for PA, whereas all-cause mortality is not different from matched hypertensive controls.     

Trends in incidence,tumour sites and tumour stages of oral and pharyngeal cancer in Northern Germany

Purpose  

Oral and pharyngeal cancer is the seventh leading tumour in Europe. In Germany, more than 10,000 new cancer cases are diagnosed each year. This population-based project evaluated the available data to develop a more detailed epidemiological profile of oral and pharyngeal cancer.     

Dysfunctional Facial Emotional Expression and Comprehension in a Patient with Corticobasal Degeneration

Patients with corticobasal degeneration (CBD) frequently develop orofacial apraxia but little is known about CBD's influence on emotional facial processing. We describe a patient who developed a facial apraxia including an impaired ability to voluntarily generate facial expressions with relative sparing of spontaneous emotional faces. Her ability to interpret the facial expressions of others was also severely impaired. Despite these deficits, the patient had normal affect and normal speech, including expressive and receptive emotional prosody. As patients with corticobasal degeneration are known to manifest both orofacial apraxia and visuospatial dysfunction this patient's expressive and receptive deficits may be independent manifestations of the same underlying disease process. Alternatively, these functions may share a common neuroanatomic substrate that degenerates with CBD.