Environmental Transformations Enhancing Dignity in an Acute Psychiatric Ward: Outcome of a User-Driven Service Design Project.

Objectives: The goal of the current project was to enhance the feeling of dignity for patients in the seclusion unit in an acute psychiatric ward through environmental design changes and to evaluate the effect of the refurbishment.

Background: Treating people with dignity is essential in all health-related work and important for our mental health. Hospital architecture and design signal values that can promote dignity.

Impaired synaptic function is linked to cognition in Parkinson's disease.

Objective: Cognitive impairment is frequent in Parkinson's disease, but the underlying mechanisms are insufficiently understood. Because cortical metabolism is reduced in Parkinson's disease and closely associated with cognitive impairment, and CSF amyloid- species are reduced and correlate with neuropsychological performance in Parkinson's disease, and amyloid- release to interstitial fluid may be related to synaptic activity; we hypothesize that synapse dysfunction links cortical hypometabolism, reduced CSF amyloid- and presynaptic deposits of -synuclein. We expect a correlation between hypometabolism, CSF amyloid-, and the synapse related-markers CSF neurogranin and -synuclein.

Detecting At-Risk Alzheimer's Disease Cases.

While APOEɛ4 is the major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), amyloid dysmetabolism is an initial or early event predicting clinical disease and is an important focus for secondary intervention trials. To improve identification of cases with increased AD risk, we evaluated recruitment procedures using pathological CSF concentrations of Aβ42 (pAβ) and APOEɛ4 as risk markers in a multi-center study in Norway. In total, 490 subjects aged 40-80 y were included after response to advertisements and media coverage or memory clinics referrals.

Femoral versus Multiple Nerve Blocks for Analgesia after Total Knee Arthroplasty.

Background: The PROSPECT (Procedure-Specific Postoperative Pain Management) Group recommended a single injection femoral nerve block in 2008 as a guideline for analgesia after total knee arthroplasty. Other authors have recommended the addition of sciatic and obturator nerve blocks. The lateral femoral cutaneous nerve is also involved in pain syndrome following total knee arthroplasty.