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Query: UMLS:C0018799 (heart disease)
 34,133 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Cardiac syncopes appeared in four heavily trained male patients without a history of cerebral or heart disease. Three were young athletes participating in competitive sport, one had trained intensively for years after poliomyelitis complicated by paraplegia. On admission all patients had sinus bradycardia; one had second degree atrioventricular (AV) block at rest, and one had transient sinoatrial (SA) block. His bundle studies demonstrated prolonged recovery time of the SA node (SAN) in two, prolonged atrio-His interval in three, and appearance of second degree AV block at abnormally low pacing rates in two. Refractory periods of the AV node (AVN), determined in three, tended to reach the upper limit of the normal range. The dysfunction of SAN and AVN was temporarily abolished in all patients by 1 mg of atropine i.v., and disappeared during exercise test, which was done by the three young athletes. The patient with paraplegia and one of the young athletes, who had second degree AV block at rest, were given atropine, 0.5 mg six times a day, and all three active sportsmen reduced training activity considerably. After 6--12 months all patients were re-examined. None had cerebral symptoms or other complaints. They were in regular sinus rhythm and in excellent physical condition.
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PMID:Cerebral attacks due to excessive vagal tone in heavily trained persons. A clinical and electrophysiologic study. 71 61

Ethiopia is a country of 45 million people in northeast Africa. With a stagnant, agriculture-based economy and a per capita gross national product of $110 in 1984, it is one of the world's poorest nations. 70% of the children are mildly to severely malnourished, and 25.7% of children born alive die before the age of 5. Life expectancy is 41 years. The population is growing at the rate of 2.9%/year, but only 2% of the people use birth control. After the 1974 revolution, the socialist government nationalized land and created 20,000 peasant associations and kebeles (urban dwellers' associations), which are the units of local government. The government has set ambitious goals for development in all sectors, including health, but famine, near famine, forced resettlement programs, and civil war have prevented any real progress from being made. The government's approach to health care is based on an emphasis on primary health care and expansion of rural health services, but the Ministry of Health is allocated only 3.5% of the national budget. Ethiopia has 3 medical schools -- at Addis Ababa, Gondar, and the Jimma Institute of Health Sciences. Physicians are government employees but also engage in private practice. A major problem is that a large proportion of medical graduates emigrate. Ethiopia has 87 hospitals with 11,296 beds, which comes to 1 bed per 3734 people. There are 1949 health stations and 141 health centers, but many have no physician, and attrition among health workers is high due to lack of ministerial support. Health care is often dispensed legally or illegally by pharmacists. Overall, there is 1 physician for 57,876 people, but in the southwest and west central Ethiopia 1 physician serves between 200,000 and 300,000 people. In rural areas, where 90% of the population lives, 85% live at least 3 days by foot from a rural health unit. Immunization of 1-year olds against tuberculosis, diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, poliomyelitis, and measles is 11, 6, 6, and 12% respectively. Infectious diseases dominate the medical scene in Ethiopia. In 1984, tuberculosis accounted for 11.2% of hospital admissions and 12.2% of deaths. The leading cause of childhood mortality in 1984 was diarrhea (45%). Malaria, trypanosomiasis, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, and meningococcal meningitis are endemic. Intestinal parasitism is rampant, and the nationwide prevalence of leprosy is 3/1000. Venereal diseases were the 9th most common cause of hospital outpatient visits in 1984, but AIDS is rare. The leading noninfectious diseases are rheumatic and syphilitic heart disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hepatoma, and elephantiasis. Ethiopia has the highest number of cases of nonfilarial elephantiasis -- an estimated 350,000 cases -- in the world. Aside from a large influx of money, the most necessary changes to improve the health system are lowering the salaries of doctors and nurses, reorienting physician training toward primary health care, increasing the quality of existing health services, more efficient management, and better coordination between the Ministry of Health and the voluntary organizations.
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PMID:Health and medical care in Ethiopia. 271 Jan 85

The total population of 11,865 children of compulsory school age resident on the Isle of Wight was studied to determine the prevalence of epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and other neurological disorders. With the use of reliable methods, children selected from screening of the total population were individually studied by means of parental interviews and questionaries, neurological examination and psychiatric assessment of each child, information from school teachers, and perusal of the records of hospitals and other agencies. The association between organic brain dysfunction and psychiatric disorder was studied by comparing the findings in the children with epilepsy or with lesions above the brain stem (cerebral palsy and similar disorders) with those in (1) a random sample of the general population, (2) children with lesions below the brain stem (for example, muscular dystrophy or paralyses following poliomyelitis), and (3) children with other chronic physical handicaps not involving the nervous system (for example, asthma, heart disease, or diabetes).Psychiatric disorders in children with neuro-epileptic conditions were five times as common as in the general population and three times as common as in children with chronic physical handicaps not involving the brain. It was concluded, on the basis of a study of factors associated with psychiatric disorder, that the high rate of psychiatric disorder in the neuro-epileptic children was due to the presence of organic brain dysfunction rather than just the existence of a physical handicap (though this also played a part). However, organic brain dysfunction was not associated with any specific type of disorder. Within the neuro-epileptic group the neurological features and the type of fit, intellectual/educational factors, and socio-familial factors all interacted in the development of psychiatric disorder.
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PMID:Organic brain dysfunction and child psychiatric disorder. 423 74

International cooperation and widespread use of trivalent oral poliovaccine has almost eliminated paralytic poliomyelitis from developed countries and is now dramatically decreasing the disease in developing countries. The remarkable results are based on the strategies recommended by the World Health Organization, which include national mass campaigns for administering oral polio vaccine to all children younger than 5 years of age, enhanced surveillance to find patients with acute flaccid paralysis, creating a network of laboratories for viral diagnosis, and targeted immunization to populations in endemic areas. Another remarkable advance in clinical and research fields of enterovirus infections is the development of molecular genetic technologies such as polymerase chain reaction and in situ hybridization assays. A cloned enterovirus complementary DNA prepared from the highly conserved 5' region of the enterovirus genome can be used for rapid and sensitive group-specific diagnosis of enterovirus infections. This complementary DNA is currently being used to study the molecular mechanisms in the pathogenesis of enteroviral heart disease; lesions in acute and chronic myocarditis and even in end-stage dilated cardiomyopathy may be associated with replication of enteroviruses.
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PMID:Enterovirus infections in children. 772 98

UNICEF decided to achieve the 1977 World Health Organization objective Health For All By The Year 2000 through primary health care, utilizing growth monitoring, oral rehydration therapy, breast-feeding, immunization, family planning, and education of women. Since the 1960s BCG (bacillus Calmette-Guerin) vaccination, DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) and OPV (oral polio vaccine) have been available in Sri Lanka. The expanded program of immunization has almost eliminated diphtheria, pertussis, neonatal tetanus, and poliomyelitis. Tuberculous meningitis, bone and joint tuberculosis, measles, and miliary tuberculosis have become very rare. Among other vaccine-preventable diseases, mumps is the commonest cause of aseptic meningitis and viral encephalitis in children. Maternal rubella in the first trimester causes abortion or gross teratogenic effects including congenital heart disease. Safe vaccines may be used to prevent mumps and rubella. In recent years there has been a resurgence of measles in North America among school children, and presently a 2nd dose of vaccine is recommended for children. Japanese B encephalitis has a mortality rate of over 30% and half the survivors have residual brain damage. The Ministry of Health has immunized susceptible children in some of the prevalent areas. This vaccine also gives partial protection against dengue hemorrhagic fever. In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan hepatitis B vaccine is part of the national immunization schedule because of the common occurrence of primary hepatoma of the liver. At present this vaccine is recommended for health workers in Sri Lanka. Meningococcal meningitis occurs in some Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia, thus Haj pilgrims are advised to be vaccinated against it before the pilgrimage. In Sri Lanka beta-thalassemia major is prevalent, and as most of these patients are subjected to splenectomy, pneumococcal vaccine should be given to them. Currently research work is being carried out for development of vaccines against rotavirus, streptococcal, and hepatitis A infection.
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PMID:Improving child survival through immunisation. 814 30

In the panoply of armaments against viral infections, both drugs and vaccines have been employed. Numerous vaccines have enjoyed spectacular success in either eradicating or controlling various viral diseases, whereas there are still few, effective anti-viral drugs. Coxsackie B viruses are agents of human inflammatory heart disease and may trigger events leading to a failing heart. We believe that enteroviral heart disease could be controlled or eradicated through the use of vaccines, in much the same manner as poliovirus-induced poliomyelitis has been controlled through vaccination. We present here preliminary data which deal with an approach to the development of enterovirus vaccines and the use of a chimeric coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) vaccine in a murine model of CVB3-induced inflammatory heart disease.
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PMID:Can recombinant DNA technology provide useful vaccines against viruses which induce heart disease? 868 83

This essay considers the consequences of childhood experiences with family illness on future adult sensibilities. Novelist and memoirist Mary Gordon describes her father's early death from heart disease and her childhood responsibilities toward her mother who was chronically ill with polio. She examines the relations between the ill body and the rituals and teachings of Catholicism and, by implication, all religious imagings of the body. By detailing her current caregiving responsibilities toward her mother, who is now homebound with Alzheimer disease, she scrutinizes the responses of the healthy toward the ill. She cites passages from her own novels--The Other Side, The Shadow Man, and Spending--in which characters' bodies fail and sicken. By examining these retrospective and prospective experiences with other people's ailments, Gordon exhorts medical students and doctors to tend to the bodies in their care with skill, with vision, and with words. She joins fellow writer Joseph Conrad in his task: "by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel; it is, before all, to make you see."
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PMID:Words, art, body and memory: readings from a writer. 1053 31

The fiftieth anniversary of the ACC and the end of the twentieth century are arbitrary points in time, yet they seem to coincide with a true watershed. The last 50 years have brought a rush of new techniques and understandings that have, for the first time, given cardiovascular specialists real tools to prevent and fight cardiovascular disease. Only now, for the first time, has science begun to understand exactly what happens when plaque forms in an artery, when heart muscle fibers cross-link and weaken, when an atrial chamber fibrillates, and when heart muscle cells die en masse after a heart attack. We are beginning to track down the actual chemical, mechanical, and electrical pathways by which the heart is damaged or dies. When we can interfere with those pathways and stop the chain of events, we will have defeated heart disease. Imagination is rapid, but progress is often both uncertain and slow because of the many constraints of cost, regulation, and time needed to test and evaluate new developments. Yet we can now foresee a future in which medical science might actually defeat cardiovascular disease the way it has defeated polio, smallpox, and other serious scourges of the past.
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PMID:Technological advances and the next 50 years of cardiology. 1075 73

Putative risk factors accelerating mild cognitive decline and dementia were correlated with repeated measures of cerebral atrophy, CT, densitometry, perfusions, and cognitive testing among neurologically and cognitively normative aging volunteers. A total of 224 normative subjects at increased risk for cognitive decline were admitted to the study. Mean entry age was 59.5 +/- 15.8 years. Mean follow-up is 5.8 +/- 3.3 years. At follow-up, 22 developed mild cognitive impairment (41 CCSE >/= -3), 19 became demented-8 with Vascular type (VAD), 11 with Alzheimer's type (DAT)-and 183 remain cognitively unchanged. Cerebral atrophy, tissue densities, and perfusions were measured by Xe-CT. After age 60, cerebral atrophy, ventricular enlargement, and polio- and leuko-araiosis geometrically increased as perfusions declined. Risk factors accelerating perfusional decline, cerebral atrophy, polio-araiosis, and leuko-araiosis were: transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), hypertension, smoking, hyperlipidemia, and male gender. At age 71.5 +/- 11.9, mild cognitive impairment began accelerated by TIAs, hypertension and heart disease. Leuko-araiosis began before cognitive decline. TIAs, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia correlated with VAD. Excessive cortical perfusional decrease, gray and white matter hypodensities, and cerebral atrophy correlate with cognitive decline.
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PMID:Risk factors for cerebral hypoperfusion, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia. 1086 1

An obstetric handbook was created in comic strip form in cooperation with the Ministry of Health in the region of Segou, Mali, for training of traditional midwives living far from community health centers. The drawings illustrate pregnancies at risk that the midwife should be able to identify in order to advise women to stay near the health facility before onset of labor. Drawings indicate pregnancies that are at risk because of the following: small stature, limping as a result of polio or sciatic paralysis, high parity, prior cesarean delivery, heart disease, overly large uterus, or prior stillbirth. Serious complications requiring referral to a health service are also illustrated and include severe anemia, genital bleeding, and signs of toxemia and edema. The midwife should accompany the woman during transport.
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PMID:[Obstetrical handbook in comic strip form]. 1229 24


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