Obesity, knee osteoarthritis, and polypathology: factors favoring weight loss in older people.

Aim: We aimed to explore the meaning of obesity in elderly persons with knee osteoarthritis (KO) and to determine the factors that encourage or discourage weight loss.

Background: Various studies have demonstrated that body mass index is related to KO and that weight loss improves symptoms and functional capacity. However, dietary habits are difficult to modify and most education programs are ineffective.

Measuring Outcomes: Pain and Quality of Life 48 Months After Acute Postoperative Total Knee Prosthetic Joint Infection.

Background: Measuring HRQOL is simple, inexpensive, permits the health status to be measured over time, and is useful to compare or initiate treatments and evaluate results, facilitating homogenization in patient inclusion.

Objectives: To evaluate disease-specific and generic HRQOL and influence of associated factors in patients undergoing open debridement for acute postsurgical knee prosthetic joint infection after TKR at 12 and 48 months after completing antibiotic treatment and considered cured of infection.

Methods: Health-related quality-of-life measures were administered at baseline (WOMAC) and 12 and 48 months (WOMAC and SF-36) in patients with prosthesis retention, no symptoms of infection, and CRP (≤ 1 mg/dL).

Study protocol of effectiveness of a biopsychosocial multidisciplinary intervention in the evolution of non-specific sub-acute low back pain in the working population: cluster randomised trial.

Background: Non-specific low back pain is a common cause for consultation with the general practitioner, generating increased health and social costs. This study will analyse the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary intervention to reduce disability, severity of pain, anxiety and depression, to improve quality of life and to reduce the incidence of chronic low back pain in the working population with non-specific low back pain, compared to usual clinical care.

Methods/design: A Cluster randomised clinical trial will be conducted in 38 Primary Health Care Centres located in Barcelona, Spain and its surrounding areas.

[Characterization of patients with rheumatoid arthritis according to the health care level].

Objective: To characterize rheumatoid arthritis patients seen in Rheumatology Units at different health care levels.

Material And Methods: Questionnaire and clinical examination of rheumatoid arthritis patients seen as outpatients in Rheumatology Units from Primary Care, county Hospitals and Reference Hospitals. Demographic, social, labour and disease data were collected.

[Health indicators: the health status of the population attended to by a at home care program].

The authors describe health indicators in their functional, social, mental and cognitive dimensions for patients included in an at home care program by means of an observational study of prevalences; these patients are part of the 12,000 patients included in the "Health at Home" Program run by the Primary Health Care Teams of the Catalonian Health Institute in the city of Barcelona. Information was obtained on 517 subjects. In spite of the fact that half of these patients have poor results recorded in their files under health indicators, only one fourth of these patients had a complete geriatric evaluation.