OBJECTIVES This report describes ambulatory care visits to hospital emergency departments in the United States. Statistics are presented on selected patient and visit characteristics. METHODS The data presented in this report were collected from the 1997 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). NHAMCS is part of the ambulatory care component of the National Health Care Surve...

California’s HOV system comprises 1,171 lane-miles, with 803 miles in the South and 366 in the North. This study analyzes peak period traffic data from hundreds of loop detectors over many months in order to evaluate the system’s effectiveness. The study finds: (1) HOV lanes are underutilized: 81% of HOV detectors measure flows below 1,400 vehicles per hour (vph); (2) Many HOV lanes suffer degr...

Turner’s syndrome is the most common sex chromosomal abnormality in females, affecting an estimated 3 percent of all females conceived. However, the frequency among live born female infants is only 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2500, and as many as 15% of spontaneous miscarriages have a 45,X karyotype. It is estimated that only 1 in 100 embryos with 45, X karyotype survive to term. More than half of all pa...

In this issue of the JABFP Eaton et all describe differences in self-reported cholesterol testing, counseling, and treatment among US medical specialists in 1991. Data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS)2 showed that family physicians (23.5 percent) and cardiologists (13.1 percent) reported performing cholesterol testing much less often during annual health examinations tha...

INTRODUCTION Optimal patient care varies considerably from place to place and is influenced by scientific as well as social developments. The purpose of this study was to investigate awareness and pertinent issues regarding informed consent among hospitalised patients and to determine lapses, in order to improve the standard of care. METHODS A questionnaire-based cross-sectional survey was co...

Diarrheogenic Escherichia coli isolates from 45 (73%) of 62 hospitalized patients were resistant to common antimicrobial drugs. Sixty-two percent were multidrug resistant, and >70% were resistant to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and ampicillin. Ciprofloxacin and cefotaxime were uniformly active. Effective and safe oral agents are needed to treat children with bacterial diarrhea.

Forty-five isolates of gentamicin resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa were evaluated for gentamicin-carbenicillin synergy. Only 9 percent (4/45) showed synergy. Of nine isolates with demonstrable zones around a gentamicin disc (8 to 12 mm), none showed a synergistic response. Effective treatment of gentamicin resistant Ps. aeruginosa with gentamicin and carbenicillin should not be assumed without ...

PURPOSE To compare various pulse sequences in terms of percent contrast and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) for detection of focal multiple myeloma lesions and to assess the dependence of lesion conspicuity on the bone marrow plasma cell percent (BMPC%). MATERIALS AND METHODS Sagittal T1-weighted FSE, fat-suppressed T2-weighted FSE (FS- T2 FSE), fast STIR and iterative decomposition of water an...

A prospective study of 132 patients with severe cornmunity-acquired pneumonia (CAP) treated in the ICU was carried out to determine the causative agents, the value of the clinical, biological, and radiologic features in predicting the etiology, and to define prognostic factors. The study group included 98 men and 34 women (mean age: 58 ± 18 years). The most frequent underlying condition was COP...

INTRODUCTION The follow-up of chimerism status after allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is essential to predict successful engraftment to assess the development of graft-versus-host disease, graft rejection and disease relapse. Analysis of short tandem repeats (STR) via polymerase chain reaction is frequently used for chimerism determination. However, most commercially-a...