Involvement and Autonomy of Minors in Medical Settings: Perceptions of Children Undergoing Surgery and Parents.

Informed consent presupposes competence and represents a formal decision by an informed person who has the legal capacity to accept medical action or participate in research. Our aim was to analyze the perceptions of minors and their parents about the age at which they consider that a minor is competent for making health decisions. A descriptive observational study was carried out in 302 minors between 12 and 17 years of age undergoing elective surgery, and 302 parents (range 30 to 62 years).

[Prevalence of auditory neuropathy: prospective study in a tertiary-care center].

Objective: The primary goal of this study is to determine the frequency of onset of this disorder in our infant population. Its clinical importance is due, among other reasons, to the fact that idiopathic cases constitute false negatives in the auditory screening programmes based on the performance of otoacoustic emissions to all newborn children and brainstem auditory evoked response only to those presenting these risk factors, for which reason another goal is to establish the prevalence of these pure cases and the diagnostic delay they cause.

Patients And Method: Prospective study of all newborn children at the Virgen de la Arrixaca Mother and Child Hospital (Murcia, Spain) in the period between June 1, 2000 and June 30, 2006.

[Lemierre's syndrome. An unusual variant].

Lemierre's syndrome or postanginal septicaemia is described in the literature as an unusual complication of oropharyngeal infection. In most cases the syndrome is caused by Fusobacterium necrophorum. This disease usually occurs in young healthy individuals with an oropharyngeal infection, implying high fever, cervical tumefaction, and cervical pain, frequently associated with septic lung embolization.