Benchmarking retirement: a best practices decision.

Making the decision to retire from active practice is a complex process with very strong psychological overtones. Successful retirement demands preplanning, and financial preplanning must begin very early in the career to achieve the time value of money. Psychological preparation requires recognition that retirement is inevitable, and an avenue of change for yourself and your spouse should be identified, anticipated, and refined over time.

Spinal instability due to malignant disease. Treatment by segmental spinal stabilization.

Seven patients with a malignant tumor were treated for spinal instability with Luque-rod fixation either with or without bone-grafting. The stabilization was successful in all patients, including five who died as a result of the tumor between six and eighteen months postoperatively. Two patients were still alive at an average of twenty-two months after operation.

Survey of ocular cataracts in radium dial workers.

A survey of the medical records of 813 female radium dial workers first exposed to radium before 1930 yielded reports of 119 cataracts in the group whose radium body burden had been measured at least once. After dividing the subjects into high and low dose groups, the data were analyzed according to latency (time between first employment and first diagnosis of cataract), duration of employment and age at first exposure. Duration of employment and age at employment showed no significant correlation with dose.

Leukaemia incidence in the U.S. dial workers.

Late biological effects of radium deposited in the human skeleton have manifested themselves unequivocally as osteogenic sarcomas or carcinomas of the mastoid air cells or paranasal sinuses. On the basis of current estimated risk factors, it might be expected that an excess of certain other malignancies could occur in a population of the size of the group exposed to radium (some 3500 cases located, which more than 2000 have measured 226Ra and 228Ra burdens), compared with the incidence in the population at large. An increased incidence of breast cancer has already been reported in female dial workers and it was related to the initial radium intake.

The fractured femur: acute emergency care treatment.

The most effective emergency care for a fractured femur is the use of a mechanical type traction splint such as developed by Hare and described herein. After general emergency care guidelines using a well-designed properly applied device will lead to significant decrease in pain, marked decrease in morbidity and mortality, and general improvement in the level of the care of the injured athlete.J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 1979;1(1):53-58.