Maturitas
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The number of agile patients in the 10th decade with a strong need for postoperative mobility will increase in the following decades. The present prospective study sought to prove if very old patients with hip-related fractures are disadvantaged according to incidence of complications, length of ICU and in-hospital stay, and in-hospital mortality. We included 402 patients, age 60 years and older, with hip related fractures. ⋯ Nevertheless, according to multivariate analysis, including the common risk factors, increased age was not an independent risk factor for dying (p=0.132). Patients at an advanced age with hip-related fractures showed neither a prolonged in-hospital nor ICU stay. There was no significant relation of advanced age to number and type of complications.
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The aim of our study was to investigate whether the endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) gene polymorphisms -786T>C, 4a4b, and 894G>T that affect nitric oxide (NO) generation confer a risk for primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) in Korean women. ⋯ Our data suggest that the eNOS -786T/894T haplotype is associated with a decreased POI risk, and we postulate that the eNOS -786T/894T haplotype may confer less risk on POI occurrence by reducing pathologically increased NO generation by eNOS in POI. Further study is warranted to elucidate the effect of the eNOS 894G>T polymorphism and POI occurrence.
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This article surveys the evolution of health at advanced age in nine high-income countries over the last three decades, and the variables that might explain that evolution. Life expectancy at age 65 for males and females is used as summary indicator to conceptualize "health at advanced age." A comparison of the nine countries - Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States - reveals excellent health performance for Japan, which has the greatest proportion of elderly people in the population and also the best health indicators for both males and females; the United States and Denmark perform poorly. ⋯ Experts have considered that these three factors have probably contributed to the poor progress in the health of the elderly in the United States in recent decades. Tobacco consumption appears to be a key influence on the health of the elderly and probably explains to a large extent - with a lag of several decades - the differential evolution of health in these countries.
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To establish if there is any gender difference in associations between chronic pain, impact of pain and pain severity with physical disability. ⋯ There is no gender difference in associations between pain and physical disability among older people. However, psychological distress accounted for more pain-related physical disability in men than in women.
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Original Fried's frailty criteria have not demonstrated their prognostic validity of mortality, disability and mobility loss in European cohorts. ⋯ Fried's frailty criteria are associated with death, incident disability, and mobility impairment in a Spanish cohort of older adults.