Lancet
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Survival and causes of death were studied in 1087 Italian patients with thalassaemia major who were born on or after Jan 1, 1960. At the age of 15 years, the Kaplan-Meier estimate of survival after the first decade of life was 80.6% for subjects born in 1960-64, 84.2% for those born in 1965-69, and 96.9% for those born in 1970-74. ⋯ Overall survival from birth for patients born in 1970-74 was 97.4% at 10 years, and 94.4% at 15 years. The most common cause of death was heart disease, followed by infection, liver disease, and malignancy.
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To establish the effect of pain relief on maternal temperature during labour forty patients who went into spontaneous labour with a single fetus, had a normal temperature (less than 37.5 degrees C), and had no clinical evidence of infection were investigated prospectively. They were divided into two comparable groups--one receiving pethidine and the other epidural analgesia. Both groups had much the same temperatures at the beginning of labour and before any analgesic administration. ⋯ This rise was not related to any clinical evidence of infection. Patients receiving epidural analgesia during labour are at increased risk of developing pyrexia. This pyrexia may be the result of vascular and thermoregulatory modifications induced by epidural analgesia.