Age and ageing
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To explore the relationships between age, reported symptoms and dependency in the last year of life in those dying from cancer and in those dying from other causes. ⋯ Younger cancer patients are more likely than older cancer patients to need help with relieving distressing symptoms. However, some elderly patients were reported to have had very distressing symptoms, and these patients should not be excluded from specialist palliative care services on the basis of their age. Cancer patients did not show increased dependency with age, indicating the importance of community health and social services being appropriate for and accessible by cancer patients of all ages.
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Comparative Study
A simple and efficient urine sampling method for bacteriological examination in elderly women.
to determine how collecting urine voided directly into a container compares with urine obtained by suprapubic aspiration. ⋯ this simple sampling method may not only obviate the need for suprapubic aspiration but also for bladder catheterization in the diagnosis of urinary tract infection in many elderly women.
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to briefly outline the development and validation of the Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) and then to provide evidence for the use of the measure as either a profile of health status scores or a single index figure. ⋯ data from the PDQ-39 can be presented either in profile form or as a single index figure. The profile should be of value in studies aimed at determining the impact of treatment regimes upon particular aspects of functioning and well-being in patients with Parkinson's disease, while the PDSI will provide a summary score of the impact of the illness on functioning and well-being and will be of use in the evaluation of the overall effect of different treatments. Furthermore, the PDSI reduces the number of statistical comparisons and hence the role of chance when exploring data from the PDQ-39.