Predictive value of geriatric assessment for patients older than 70 years, treated with chemotherapy.

Introduction: Comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) gives useful information on the functional status of older cancer patients. However, its meaning for a proper selection of elderly patients before chemotherapy and, even more important, the influence of chemotherapy on the outcome of geriatric assessment is unknown.

Methods: 202 cancer patients, for whom an indication for chemotherapy was made by the medical oncologist, underwent a GA before start of chemotherapy by Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly (IQCODE), Groningen Frailty Index (GFI) and Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE).

Serum markers of brain-cell damage and C-reactive protein are unaffected by electroconvulsive therapy.

The effects of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) on serum levels of the acute-phase reactant C-reactive protein (CRP) and intracellular enzymes such as alkaline phosphatase (ALP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and creatine kinase (CK), have received little attention. If brain cells are damaged, CK-BB, LDH and AST levels are expected to show (minor) elevations. We measured serum levels of prolactin, AST, ALT, LDH, ALP, CK and CRP before and 5 min, 30 min, 4 h, 1 day, 2 days, and 3 days after ECT in 15 consecutive patients (eight women and seven men; mean 53.

Psychotic symptoms in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting and heart valve operation.

Objective: Delirium on internal medicine and surgical wards of the general hospital is associated with several predisposing and precipitating factors as well as adverse outcomes. Whether psychosis, the symptom of delirium that may be recognized most promptly, is similarly associated with these factors and outcomes is largely unknown.

Methods: Eight thousand one hundred and thirty-nine consecutive patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting and/or heart valve operation were screened for preoperative predisposing factors and postoperative psychotic symptoms between January 1999 and July 2004.

The sex difference of plasma homovanillic acid is unaffected by cross-sex hormone administration in transsexual subjects.

There is a close relationship between the brain and the endocrine system. The brain expresses receptors for sex steroids and is capable of metabolizing these hormones. We explored (1) sex differences in homovanillic acid (HVA), a metabolite of the neurotransmitter dopamine, and (2) the effects of cross-sex steroid administration in transsexual subjects.

Predictors for the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy: chart review of a naturalistic study.

Background: Several variables have been suggested that can predict the efficacy of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) in patients suffering from depression. The results of studies into these predictors for ECT efficacy are not consistent.

Method: In a retrospective chart review of patients suffering from major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder according to DSM-IV criteria who have been given ECT in a psychiatric hospital in the Netherlands, predictors for ECT efficacy were explored.