The ROVIGO study (risk of vascular complications: impact of genetics in old people): protocol, study design, and preliminary results of the initial survey : cardiovascular epidemiology in the elderly.

Background: The epidemiology of cardiovascular risk (CV) in the elderly is far from being defined, and the reasons why some subjects retain a healthy body while growing old while others are affected by different diseases or die prematurely are still unknown.

Aims: To compare the CV risk pattern in two elderly cohorts living in North-East Italy.

Materials And Methods: The Risk Of Vascular complications: Impact of Genetics in Old people (ROVIGO) study is a population-based study including 580 unrelated elderly subjects representative of general population living in Rovigo in the Veneto region.

Differences in the intellectual profile of children with intellectual vs. learning disability.

The WISC-IV was used to compare the intellectual profile of two groups of children, one with specific learning disorders (SLDs), the other with intellectual disabilities (ID), with a view to identifying which of the four main factor indexes and two additional indexes can distinguish between the groups. We collected information on WISC-IV scores for 267 children (Mage=10.61 [SD=2.

Construction and validation of an ecological version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test applied to an elderly population.

The goal of this project was to construct and validate an ecological version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) aimed at the elderly. This was accomplished by replacing the geometric stimuli of the traditional version with stimuli belonging to the semantic category of transport vehicles, and by elimination of the color yellow. The results showed the ecological WCST version was preferred over the traditional version and older people felt less tired during test performance.

Difference in mortality after hip fracture is associated with postdischarge prescription of antithrombotic prophylaxis: a case-control study.

This study was undertaken to determine whether a prolongation of pharmaceutical antithrombotic prophylaxis beyond hospitalization for hip fracture is associated with a reduced mortality rate. One hundred seventy-nine cases with hip fracture (patients older than 50 years of age) admitted to local general hospitals in 1999 who received postdischarge prescription of any antithrombotic agent (heparin, oral anticoagulants, antiplatelet drugs) and 179 age- and sex-matched patients with hip fracture who did not were included. Postdischarge mortality was assessed at 90 days.