To find functional capacity of elderly patients by using the Katz Index, which measures the "Basic Activities of Daily Life". To examine how reliable the Katz Index is in the Primary Care field.
...Descriptive crossover study. Assessment of the measuring instrument's internal consistency and reliability, using a test-retest method. SITE. Otero Health Area, in Oviedo.
This was a random sample, ordered by age and gender, of people over 65 who used the Otero Health centre.
The elderly population made up 12.86% of our base Health Area. The Katz Index showed that 81.6% of the elderly in the sample were independent in all their functions. A significant age difference was found. Internal consistency was measured by Cronbach's Alpha and was 0.8612 for nurses and 0.8362 for doctors. The correlation coefficient within Sperman's estimated observer was r = 0.936074. Kappa was 0.8436 (p < 0.0000) for the different observers, i.e. nurses or doctors.
Most of the elderly patients in our base Health area possess full functional capacity, at the level of the routine activities of their daily life. The Katz Index is a reliable method of evaluating elderly peoples' functional capacity, at the Primary Care level. It can be used by any professional in the health team.
Results obtained by isolation and intestinal sterilization in prevention of infections in 42 patients with malignant diseases are shown. A substantial decrease of infection is observed, as compared ...with a control group of 33 patients with similar disease, treated in normal hospital conditions. The problem of intestinal sterilization is discussed and literature on this subject revised.
Two-hundred-fifty-eight patients who had cardiac surgery with extracorporeal circulation were studied to determine the frequency and significance of conduction disturbances. Fifty-eight (34%) ...developed new postoperative conduction defects. Seventeen patients developed new conduction alterations after coronary artery bypass graft. The most common disturbance was transient bifascicular block (right bundle branch block and anterior subdivision block of the left bundle branch of His) (p less than 0.01). After valvular surgery twenty-one patients developed conduction defects. Of those the most common disturbance was high degree AV block (57%). The authors found no relation between the AV block and the number of valves operated on or type of valvular surgery. After congenital heart surgery, twenty patients developed conduction defects. The most common defect was high degree AV block. The frequency of complete heart block was higher after the closure of atrial septal defects (P less than 0.01). None of the conduction defects were related to the amount of time the patient was exposed to extracorporeal circulation or to postoperative myocardial infarction. All conduction defects were transient except complete heart block in some patients with ventricular septal defect surgery. In this study there were no hemodynamic complications or mortality associated with the conduction disturbances.
