The decision to employ collapse therapy in any of its forms is a grave one, and it must only be made after repeated radiological examination and as the result of careful consultation between physician and surgeon. The importance of general sanatorium measures, diet, and more especially, prolonged bed rest, cannot be over-emphasized but there are many cases in which the anatomical and pathologic...

ALMOST 30 years ago, we began to utilize prolonged bed rest in the treatment of persistent cardiac dilatation and intractable congestive heart failure due to myocardial degeneration. This approach was chosen because of a recognition of the limited efficacy of available therapy. It was applied in selected patients. During subsequent years various theoretic considerations (fig. 1) reinforced our ...

Venous function may be altered by bed rest deconditioning. Yet the contribution of altered venous compliance to the orthostatic intolerance observed after bed rest is uncertain. The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of 18 days of bed rest on leg and arm (respectively large and small change in gravitational gradients and use patterns) venous properties. We hypothesized that the magn...

OBJECTIVE To explore the practices of Canadian obstetricians, family physicians, and midwives in recommending bed rest or activity restriction for women at risk for preterm birth (PTB) and to assess the decisional conflict experienced by care providers when they recommend these therapies. METHODS A self-administered mail survey of prenatal care providers was carried out using Dillman's Tailor...

Historians of medicine are often gloomily familiar with clinicians’ incursions into their intellectual arena. We physicians offer hagiographic biographies of obscure nineteenthcentury medical figures, triumphalist narratives of medical progress and – the most heinous offence – retrospective diagnosis of ailments afflicting historical characters. But clinicians have also offered some excellent i...

OBJECTIVES 1) To reassess the prevalence of migraine in the United States; 2) to assess patterns of migraine treatment in the population; and 3) to contrast current patterns of preventive treatment use with recommendations for use from an expert headache panel. METHODS A validated self-administered headache questionnaire was mailed to 120,000 US households, representative of the US population...

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure the changes in the volume (and fluid content) of the lumbar intervertebral discs (L1-L2, L2-L3, L3-L4, L4-L5) in five normal subjects. For each subject, MRI scans were taken at the end of a normal day and again on the following morning (after a night's bed rest). Ten further scans were taken during an 8-h protocol consisting of alternate peri...

Bed rest is associated with a loss of protein from the weight-bearing muscle. The objectives of this study are to determine whether increasing dietary branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) during bed rest improves the anabolic response after bed rest. The study consisted of a 1-day ambulatory period, 14 days of bed rest, and a 4-day recovery period. During bed rest, dietary intake was supplemented...

High-protein and acidogenic diets induce hypercalciuria. Foods or supplements with excess sulfur-containing amino acids increase endogenous sulfuric acid production and therefore have the potential to increase calcium excretion and alter bone metabolism. In this study, effects of an amino acid/carbohydrate supplement on bone resorption were examined during bed rest. Thirteen subjects were divid...

The impact of prolonged bed rest on the cervical and upper thoracic spine is unknown. In the 2nd Berlin BedRest Study (BBR2-2), 24 male subjects underwent 60-day bed rest and performed either no exercise, resistive exercise, or resistive exercise with whole body vibration. Subjects were followed for 2 yr after bed rest. On axial cervical magnetic resonance images from the skull to T3, the volum...