Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation
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Arch Phys Med Rehabil · Nov 1985
Comparative StudyChronic pain in spinal cord injury: comparison between inpatients and outpatients.
Chronic pain is a common clinical finding in spinal cord injury (SCI), with a reported incidence of between 45% and 90%. This figure was obtained by using nonstandardized pain evaluation and for mostly inpatient populations. Because of the shortcomings of previous investigations and the wide range of reported incidence, a study was conducted using self-rating pain measurement, an activity check list, and a drug-use rating scale. ⋯ Statistical analysis showed an incidence of chronic pain and decreased activity of 60% among inpatients and of 16.6% in outpatients. The drug-use rating scale was also significantly higher among inpatients while outpatients had a higher level of physical activity than inpatients. Whether these differences are causally related to the patient's hospitalization is difficult to determine.
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In a retrospective study of 277 adult patients consecutively hospitalized for burns over a five-year period (1975-1979) patients' characteristics, circumstances of burn injury and prevalence of established predisposing factors were determined. The average age was 44.5 years, 78% were black and 62% were men. Average extent of burn was 19.7% body surface area. ⋯ The most common predisposing factors were alcohol and drug abuse, physical and mental illness and advanced age. Mortality rate was 12.6%. This study emphasizes the urgent need for effective burn prevention programs in which all health professionals should play an important role.
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Arch Phys Med Rehabil · Nov 1985
Synoviorthesis with colloidal 32P chromic phosphate for hemophilic arthropathy: clinical follow-up.
Thirty-one synoviortheses were performed in 22 joints of 14 hemophilic patients (aged 12 to 28 years) with chronic synovitis and for whom "conventional treatments" were considered ineffective. Except for patients with inhibitors, conventional treatments included three to six months of adequate prophylactic therapy with the missing coagulation factors, intensive physiotherapy and, when indicated, antiinflammatory agents and orthosis. Colloidal 32P chromic phosphate was injected intraarticularly in doses of 1.0 mCi for knees and of 0.5 mCi for the other joints. ⋯ However, in three of the four patients synoviorthesis had to be repeated after two to four years for recurrence of synovitis. Extraarticular escape of radioactivity was monitored 62 times for 17 synoviortheses in 12 patients; extraarticular counts never exceeded 4% of the intraarticular counts. Chromosome aberrations were found not to be increased after treatment in the seven patients in whom adequate analysis could be done.