Non-EEA doctors in EEA countries: doctors or cleaners?

Background: Migration of non-EEA doctors to EEA-countries has become a common phenomenon. As coordination within the EEA has not yet been established, every EEA-country is re-inventing the wheel of assessment of foreign medical degrees and developing additional programmes for non-EEA doctors. There is hardly any knowledge about assessment procedures in other EEA-countries.

Is the distinction between superficial pressure ulcers and moisture lesions justifiable? A clinical-pathologic study.

Objective: Pressure ulcers are classified into 4 distinct stages, which allows comparisons between institutions and even countries. Recently, attempts have been made to single out so-called moisture lesions from the early stages of pressure ulcer lesions as a distinct entity.

Methods: To investigate the justification for this development, 14 histopathologic samples from patients with both incontinence and pressure ulcer lesions were studied in an attempt to delineate differences in the pathophysiology and histopathology.

Pressure ulcer risk in hip fracture patients.

Hip fracture patients have a high risk of pressure ulcers (PU). We followed 121 hip fracture patients for the development of pressure ulcers and evaluated a risk assessment tool for sensitivity and specificity. More than half of the patients presented with PU, mostly stage I.

A randomised, double-blind assessment of the effect of nutritional supplementation on the prevention of pressure ulcers in hip-fracture patients.

Background & Aims: Malnutrition is a risk factor for development of pressure ulcers (PU). Nutritional supplementation may thus reduce the incidence of PU. We investigated the effect of nutritional supplementation on incidence of PU in hip-fracture patients at risk of developing PU.

Prospective cohort study of routine use of risk assessment scales for prediction of pressure ulcers.

Objective: To evaluate whether risk assessment scales can be used to identify patients who are likely to get pressure ulcers.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Setting: Two large hospitals in the Netherlands.

A historical overview of pressure ulcer literature of the past 35 years.

This article discusses a study of publications on pressure ulcers from 1965 to 1999 using the information available in Medline. Results show that .06% of all articles relate to pressure ulcers.

Pressure-induced skin lesions in pigs: reperfusion injury and the effects of vitamin E.

The pathogenesis of the development of pressure ulcers is still unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of ischaemia and reperfusion in pressure-induced tissue necrosis in the trochanteric region in pigs. Pressure application was achieved with a newly developed computer-controlled pressure device.

['Decubitus' guideline of the Dutch College of Family Practitioners: response from internal medicine].

The guideline on pressure ulcers by the Dutch College of General Practitioners is good in the aspects of simplicity and giving very practical advice. It can be used as a guideline for prevention as well as treatment of pressure ulcers. Some aspects, however, are insufficiently dealt with.

The development of a national registration form to measure the prevalence of pressure ulcers in The Netherlands.

To gain insight into the prevalence of pressure ulcers in Dutch healthcare institutions, a national registration form to measure the prevalence of pressure ulcers annually in different healthcare settings was developed based on a literature study and responses from a Delphi panel. The reliability and the feasibility of the form devised were tested in a pilot study conducted in a university hospital, a nursing home, and in a home healthcare setting. Interrater reliability of the grading system varied between the institutions from 0.

Risk-assessment tools in the prevention of pressure ulcers.

Some screening tools exist for assessing increased risk of the development of pressure ulcers, but none of these tools has undergone actual testing for validity and predictive value. This is important in clinical practice because the combination of high sensitivity and rather low specificity implies that the number of patients at increased risk is overestimated and thus overtreated (i.e.

Extracellular and intracellular magnesium concentrations in asthmatic patients.

Magnesium deficiency is associated with increased contractility of smooth muscle cells. Since contractility of bronchial smooth muscle is important in patients with asthma, magnesium deficiency could negatively influence the clinical condition. We wanted to assess whether magnesium deficiency exists in patients with asthma.

[Revision consensus prevention and treatment decubitus].

The text of the Consensus Meetings Prevention and Treatment of Decubitus (pressure sores; 1985 and 1986 respectively) was adapted to current insights into pathogenesis and treatment. This adaptation was important since the costs of the prevention and treatment of decubitus are enormous and decubitus tends to occur more often since the population is growing older. The so called anti-decubitus devices were grouped in 3 categories: 1.

[The costs of decubitus].

In this article the costs of prevention and treatment of decubitus (bed sores) are calculated and an analysis is made of the structure of these costs. Using documented figures on the prevalence of decubitus in hospitals and nursing homes and of prices related to decubitus prevention and treatment as made in a hospital (University Hospital Utrecht, the Netherlands) in which decubitus is treated according to a strict protocol, total costs were calculated by extrapolation. Prevention of decubitus costs Dfl.

Hypokalaemia in hypertensive patients treated with diuretics: no increase in cardiac arrhythmias.

Hypokalaemia is a risk factor for the development of cardiac arrhythmias, at least in patients with a cardiac disease, but it is not known whether this applies to subjects with normal hearts. In the present study, 8 young patients with essential hypertension were treated with chlorthalidone for 12 wk followed by a combination of chlorthalidone (50 mg/day) and triamterene (100 mg/day) for 6 wk. This protocol was chosen in order to create different phases in the intra- and extracellular potassium concentrations.