Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Vascular Medicine, Diabetes and Endocrinology, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
The first children's hospital in Sweden (Kronprinsessan Lovisa's Children's Hospital) was established in Stockholm in 1854. In 1885 it was divided into a medical and a surgical department. This constituted the birth of pediatric surgery in Sweden. Pediatric surgery has been included in undergraduate teaching programs since 1945. A personal Associate Professorate in Pediatric Urology was instituted at the Karolinska Medical School in Stockholm for N. O. Ericsson in the late fifties. Upon his retirement in 1976 this personal chair was converted into an established Professorship in Pediatric Surgery. Pediatric surgery has been recognized as a specialty by our Medical Association since 1947. A survey of the Annual Reports from the Lovisa Hospital from 1885 to 1969 shows three phases in the development of our specialty in Sweden. The first stage extends from 1885 to 1932. During this period the disease pattern was dominated by septic and tuberculous infections, by empyemas, and by ENT diseases. Few cases of congenital malformations were reported. The bulk of general surgery in childhood was performed in the departments of general surgery. The second stage (1932-1945) was characterized by a decreasing incidence of tuberculous infections, by a successive transfer of orthopedic and ENT patients to the Departments of Orthopedic and ENT surgery respectively. During this period, a marked increase occurred in the volume of malformation surgery. This was due to the centralized treatment of congenital anomalies. The third stage started in 1945. The war had ended and we became acquainted with the dramatic development of pediatric surgery in other countries, in particular in the USA. The main advance was the possibility of opening the chest for repair of congenital anomalies of the heart and the great vessels, of the esophagus, and of the diaphragm. Soon afterwards, rectosigmoidectomy was introduced for the treatment of Hirschsprung's disease. In 1952, a second department of pediatric surgery was opened in Stockholm as a part of a new Children's Clinic at the Karolinska University Hospital. The major part of general surgery from the Stockholm area and all of the cardiovascular surgery stayed with the "Lovisa Hospital", while the major part of neonatal surgery and specific abdominal surgery was performed at the Karolinska Hospital. In order to improve the rather underdeveloped situation of pediatric urology, N. O. Ericsson was appointed to the post of Associate Head of the Karolinska Department, soon bringing this field to the frontlines of international standards. This historical review ends with some of the author's personal memories from the last 50 years.
Influenza poses a continuing public health threat in epidemic and pandemic seasons. The 1951 influenza epidemic (A/H1N1) caused an unusually high death toll in England; in particular, weekly deaths in Liverpool even surpassed those of the 1918 pandemic. We further quantified the death rate of the 1951 epidemic in 3 countries. In England and Canada, we found that excess death rates from pneumonia and influenza and all causes were substantially higher for the 1951 epidemic than for the 1957 and 1968 pandemics (by > or =50%). The age-specific pattern of deaths in 1951 was consistent with that of other interpandemic seasons; no age shift to younger age groups, reminiscent of pandemics, occurred in the death rate. In contrast to England and Canada, the 1951 epidemic was not particularly severe in the United States. Why this epidemic was so severe in some areas but not others remains unknown and highlights major gaps in our understanding of interpandemic influenza.
The purpose of this study was to conduct a comparison, using qualitative analytic methodology, of perceptions concerning abortion among health care providers and administrators, along with politicians and anti-abortion activists (total n = 75) in Great Britain, Sweden, The Netherlands, and the United States. In none of these countries was there consensus about abortion prior to legalization, and, in all countries, public discussion continues to be present. In general, after legalization of abortion has no longer made it a volatile issue European countries have refocused their energy into providing family planning services, education, and more straightforward access to abortion compared with similar activities in the United States.
Various indicators of health have been shown to be associated with traffic crash involvement. As general health is also related to absence from work, the latter variable may be more strongly related to crashes, especially for professional drivers.
Bus driver absence from work was analyzed in association with their crash records. Two British samples and one Swedish sample were used.
One of the British samples yielded fair correlations between crash record and absence, while for the other the effect was restricted to the first three months of driving. The Swedish data had effects in the expected direction but these were not significant.
The use of an indirect, overall measurement of health, may be a viable method for predicting the traffic crash involvement for professional drivers, although replications are needed in larger samples and other populations.
The use of absence records for the identification of at risk drivers would seem to be a simple and useful method for companies with major fleets, and it also shows the importance of promoting employee health and well being at work as a potential method of reducing the cost, not only of absenteeism, but also of crashes in company vehicles.
Outbreaks of food-borne listeriosis have often involved strains of serotype 4b. Examination of multiple isolates from three different outbreaks revealed that ca. 11 to 29% of each epidemic population consisted of strains which were negative with the serotype-specific monoclonal antibody c74.22, lacked galactose from the teichoic acid of the cell wall, and were resistant to the serotype 4b-specific phage 2671.
Notes
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The hypothesis that it is the variability of a person's identity--as opposed to the particular combinations of identities--that produces stress during the acculturation process was examined. Two hundred ninety-five native Anglophone students at the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, provided demographic data and completed the following measures: the Beck Depression Inventory (Beck & Beck, 1972), Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (1965), the Situated Identity Measure (Clément & Noels, 1992), and the Psychological Stress Measure (Lemyre, Tessier, & Fillion, 1990). Results of ANOVAs contrasting level of identification and variability of identification indicated that an exclusively Anglophone identity was related to a higher level of depression, lower self-esteem, and a higher level of stress than the other modes of acculturation, but only when the variability in identity with the English group was high. Thus, the participants who identified strongly with the English group but were not committed to this identity experienced more psychological adjustment problems.
Dep. of Biological Sciences, Advanced Environmental Research Institute, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76201, USA. Electronic address: brianne.soulen@unt.edu.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are highly lipophilic components of brominated flame retardants that are environmentally persistent and bioaccumulate. PBDEs are taken up from the gastrointestinal tract and accumulate mainly in fat depots and liver tissues. Seal species inhabiting Arctic and sub-Arctic regions can have upwards of 30% of their body mass composed of blubber. When those blubber stores are mobilized for energy, stored toxicants are also released into circulation. Most studies reporting accumulation of PBDEs in seals have focused on harbor and grey seals with few examining harp and hooded seals. In this study, PBDEs concentrations were analyzed in seal blubber from 21 stranded harp and 9 stranded hooded seals sampled along the northeast coast of the U.S. (1999-2010). A PBDE congener profile was determined for each individual. The results show that both species of seals are accumulating PBDEs with BDE-47 being the dominant congener. Mean ?PBDE concentrations in harp seals were 70.55?±?33.59?ng/g ww and for hooded seals 94.28?±?42.65?ng/g ww. The results of this study are consistent with previous studies reporting a decrease in bioaccumulation with an increase in bromination. For both species, BDE-47 represented the highest percentage of the ?PBDEs, composing over 50% of the ?PBDEs in harp seals. When compared to stranding condition code, animals found alive had overall higher PBDE concentrations than those found in a state of moderate decomposition. This difference could be due to decreased blubber levels in the decomposed animals or potential degradation of the compounds in the blubber. Almost all seals used in this study were yearlings which is the most likely age class to strand. Yearling seals are at a crucial stage of development, especially of their immune system, which can be impacted by high levels of contaminants like PBDEs and increase the susceptibility to disease.
BACKGROUND: Atrophy of the medial part of the temporal lobe is seen in Alzheimer's disease (AD). We studied the usefulness of CT scan measurements of the medial temporal lobe (MTL) in elderly with suspected dementia. METHODS: MTL measurements were done with callipers by three raters, blinded to the diagnosis and to each other, on scans from 110 subjects with suspected dementia from a memory clinic in Oslo, Norway and 36 participants included in the OPTIMA study, Oxford, England. RESULTS: The correlation between the MTL and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was very low, and there was a marked overlap between Alzheimer and cognitively unimpaired subjects. The inter-rater reliability was lower on the Norwegian than on the OPTIMA scans (R = 0.48 vs R = 0.68), but this was partly explained by larger MTL readings (4.5 mm after adjustment for age, gender and MMSE sumscore) on the OPTIMA scans as the reliability was confounded by MTL width and was higher at larger MTLs. A wider scan width (3 mm vs 2 mm in the OPTIMA scans) can also contribute to differences in reliability. CONCLUSIONS: The published threshold values regarding the CT scan MTL measurements for the diagnosis of AD may be invalid when applied by other radiology departments without a local standardisation and validation.
