More articles from Contributions
- Circadian rhythms and migraine
Migraine onset was found to parallel that of myocardial infarction and changes in platelet aggregability, plasma cortisol, and plasma catecholamines.
- Acute tubulointerstitial nephritis
This condition should be suspected in patients with new azotemia who do not exhibit prerenal factors, features typical of acute tubular necrosis or a glomerular process, or evidence of obstructive uropathy.
- Stereotactic biopsy of nonneoplastic lesions in adults
Stereotactic biopsy is useful in identifying non-neoplastic intracranial lesions when the diagnosis was unclear by conventional means. An accompanying commentary puts the results in perspective.
- Consent to treatment with zidovudine among HIV-infected patients
A high percentage of HIV-infected patients, both asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic, are consenting to zidovudine therapy, despite the risk for serious adverse effects associated with this agent.
- Quality of life assessment by patients with inflammatory bowel disease
Patients evaluated their quality of life on a questionnaire designed to more accurately reflect treatment outcome and to act as a tool for quality assurance assessment.
- Demographics of long-term ventilator-dependent patients outside the intensive care unit
The ICU is the traditional setting for long-term ventilator care, but the demand for more cost-effective use of ICU beds has hospitals looking at other settings.
- Atrial natriuretic factor and catecholamine levels during exercise in patients with and without coronary artery disease
In coronary artery disease, exercise-induced myocardial ischemia does not produce further release of ANF, suggesting that the cause of ANF release is not ischemia itself, but left ventricular dysfunction leading to increases in intracardiac pressures.
- Perioperative blood transfusion and survival of breast cancer patients after modified radical mastectomy
Does perioperative blood transfusion compromise longterm survival in cancer patients? Although a firm link is not yet established, early findings and current knowledge of transfusion-associated risks advise caution.
- Severity of illness: APACHE II analysis of an ICU population
Reporting ICU outcome using APACHE II computer program criteria allows more meaningful comparisons of ICU outcome data, and enables the standardization of quality assurance programs.
- Signal-averaged electrocardiography for detection of ventricular tachycardia using fast Fourier transform filtering on a standard ECG cart
This new means of generating signal-averaged ECG data compares favorably with bidirectional Butterworth filter or finite impulse response filtering techniques in predicting the inducibility of ventricular tachycardia in the electrophysiology lab.