Palliative treatment at home for patients with haematological disorders.

Supportive treatment of patients with haematological disorders mainly takes the form of transfusions of blood and platelets, and sometimes palliative chemotherapy is given. Most patients are treated in hospital or at the outpatient clinic. However, it is often difficult for the patients to arrange to come to the hospital, as they need transport by ambulance or taxi and sometimes a relative to help them.

[Trends and traditions in Scandinavian general medicine].

Recent decades have witnessed radical changes both in the workload and in the job description of general practitioners (GPs) in the Nordic countries, and the trend continues. Owing to social changes, particularly the deterioration in health care economy, the GPs will in the future be required to deal with increasing numbers of patients as well as increasingly severe categories of diseases, previously treated at hospital departments and clinics. This will entail increased demands in terms both of the further education of GPs and of the equipment available to them.

Respiratory distress following major trauma. Predictive value of blood coagulation tests.

We have evaluated the use of laboratory parameters to predict the risk of adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) at an early stage after major trauma. Patients with lung contusion were excluded. Five of 29 patients fulfilled our criteria of ARDS, i.

Value of blood coagulation tests in ischemic cerebral disease.

80 patients with transitory ischemic attacks (TIA) and 30 patients with cerebral infarction (CI) were investigated regarding hemostatic disturbances to evaluate selected coagulation test methods for routine laboratory use. The patients were studied a few days after the first appearance of symptoms and at defined times subsequently. The study included measurements of circulating platelet aggregates; platelet adhesiveness, factor-VIII-related antigen (VIIIR:Ag), fibrinolytic activity after venous stasis, alpha-2-antiplasmin activity, and antithrombin III activity.