São Paulo medical journal = Revista paulista de medicina
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An almost 50% prevalence of psychiatric disorders among cancer patients has prompted a series of studies on consultation-liaison psychiatry. Nonetheless, there are few reports on the epidemiological factors involving comorbidity between cancer and psychiatric disorders. ⋯ A younger and mainly male population of non-surgical oncological cases was referred to the consultation-liaison psychiatric service during its first year of activity. The psychiatric disorder prevalence was higher than expected, and consisted predominantly of mood disorders. We detected a priority group, namely the reevaluated patients, who deserved special attention throughout the psychiatric interventions.
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One of the main difficulties in adequately treating the pain of neonatal patients is the scarcity of validated pain evaluation methods for this population. ⋯ The results strengthen the reliability of the Neonatal Facial Coding System for bedside pain assessment in preterm neonates.
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Although the benefits of antenatal corticosteroids have been widely demonstrated in other countries, there are few studies among Brazilian newborn infants. ⋯ Antenatal corticosteroids were effective in the reduction of morbidity and mortality among premature newborns in the population studied, and therefore their use should be stimulated within our environment.
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The high-complexity features of intensive care unit services and the clinical situation of patients themselves render correct prognosis fundamentally important not only for patients, their families and physicians, but also for hospital administrators, fund-providers and controllers. Prognostic indices have been developed for estimating hospital mortality rates for hospitalized patients, based on demographic, physiological and clinical data. ⋯ APACHE II was useful for stratifying these patients. The illness severity and death rate among clinical patients were higher than those recorded for surgical patients. Despite the stratification ability of the APACHE II system, it lacked accuracy in predicting death rates. The recorded death rate was higher than the predicted rate.
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Iron deficiency and heterozygous beta-thalassemia are important causes of hypochromic-microcytic anemia. Two laboratory parameters are suggested for the differentiation of such anemia. High-fluorescence reticulocyte counts and soluble transferrin receptor levels were determined in iron-deficiency anemia patients (n = 49) and heterozygous beta-thalassemia patients (n = 43). There was no significant difference in high-fluorescence reticulocyte and soluble transferrin receptor values between the two groups, but a correlation was observed between high-fluorescence reticulocytes and soluble transferrin receptors in iron-deficiency anemia, probably due to increased receptor synthesis as a response to decreased iron content in erythrocytes.