[Evaluation of the use of the 10th percentile of weight for age as a cut point for detection of children under nutritional risk].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the use of the 10th percentile of weight for age as a cut off point for detection of children under nutritional risk, especially for programs of alimentary supplementation. METHODS: 841 children with age between 10 days and 60 months were studied in a primary health care center located in the periphery of Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. It was a cross-sectional study that included age, sex, weight and height, later computing the z scores of weight for age, height for age and weight for height, on the basis of the data of the NCHS.

Growth of exclusively breast-fed infants from a poor urban population.

The growth of two groups of infants were evaluated, one of them exclusively breast-fed (105 infants) and the other exclusively bottle-fed (61 infants), and compared with one another and with international standards (NCHS). All infants were evaluated by anthropometry at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 months of age. A fourth order polynomial was adopted for each infant and for each anthropometric measurement in order to estimate individual growth, and the 5th, 50th and 95th percentiles for weight and length were obtained.

Clinical course of Chagas' heart disease: a comparison with dilated cardiomyopathy.

This investigation was carried out to compare the clinical course of patients with chronic Chagas' heart disease with that of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy. A total of 125 patients (75 chagasic and 50 nonchagasic) prospectively followed up at the Cardiomyopathy clinic of Santa Casa Hospital from January 1990 to June 1993 entered the study. Patients underwent clinical history, physical examination, serological tests, resting electrocardiogram, chest X-ray and two-dimensional echocardiography.

[Clinical course of patients treated with partial left ventriculectomy].

Objective: To assess the efficacy of partial left ventriculectomy as a treatment for patients with end-stage heart failure.

Methods: From February to June 1995, 7 patients with end-stage heart failure underwent partial left ventriculectomy. Subsequently, patients underwent clinical evaluation every 2 months, and 2-dimensional echocardiography at the 6th and 12th months after cardiac surgery.

[Consumption of psychoactive substances by school-age adolescents of Ribeirão Preto, SP (Brazil). II--Distribution of consumption by social levels].

Introduction: Many of the epidemiological studies on the consumption of legal and illegal psychoactive substances have included the evaluation of the influence of social context on the levels of prevalence of this consumption using indirect social indicators such as family income, and educational and housing levels in an attempt to identify individuals or groups in different social contexts. The present study investigates the distribution of consumption of psychoactive substances according to social class in a sample of teenage pupils in Ribeirão Preto, SP, Southeastern Brazil.

Material And Method: A self-applicable questionnaire duly adapted and submitted to a reliability test was applied to a proportional sample of 1,025 teenagers enrolled in the 8th, 9th, 10th and 12th grades in public and private city schools.