Role of general practitioners in the care of disabled young adults.

Services for handicapped children end when these patients become young adults. In the Exeter Health Authority district 383 disabled young adults were interviewed about their unmet needs. Many wished for advice and counselling.

Inquiries into perinatal and early childhood deaths in a health care district.

A controlled study was made of stillbirths and deaths of children under 2 years of age born to families residing within the boundaries of the Exeter District Health Authority between 1 October 1980 and 30 September 1981. The study was concerned primarily with methodology and feasibility; the numbers involved were, with few exceptions, too small to permit significant conclusions to be drawn. In practice, the design and implementation of the project proved to be effective.

Umbilical cord serum creatine kinase BB in the diagnosis of brain damage in the newborn: problems in interpretation.

Raised values of creatine kinase BB (CKBB) in umbilical cord serum were obtained with some normal babies and those with fetal distress. Further investigation showed that the umbilical artery and vein tissue contain high CKBB activity, indicating that some cord blood samples may not solely reflect CKBB liberated from the brain.

'Complete 5p' trisomy: 1 case and 19 translocation carriers in 6 generations.

A description is given of a female infant with multiple malformations and mental retardation who died at 31 months. Cytogenetic studies indicate trisomy of the complete short arm of chromosome 5, resulting from the unbalanced segregation of a balanced translocation in the mother whose karyotype was interpreted as 46,XX,t(5; 15)(p11; p12). The karyotype of the proband was designated 46,XX, der(5)t(5; 15)(p11; p12)mat.

Exeter project for handicapped children.

A project in Exeter has tried to increase the contribution of the paediatric department of a district general hospital to the long-term care, support, and treatment of handicapped children and their families. They include an infant care unit, day units for handicapped children, and holiday projects, and are based on close links with the educational and social services. The availability of such a family support unit may diminish the strain on the families of handicapped children and help them to maintain normal family and social relationships.

Outbreak of meningococcal disease in Devon.

In a recent outbreak of 31 cases of meningococcal disease in Devon there were six deaths. Several patients had an unusual rash as the presenting feature and there was an unusually high incidence of complications, affecting the central nervous system, joints, and the heart among other sites.