Specialist nurses to evaluate elderly in-patients referred to a department of geriatric medicine.

Background: Increasing numbers of elderly patients are admitted to hospital. Ensuring that they are given appropriate and timely access to the range of hospital and community medical, rehabilitation and social care facilities has become more difficult due to the complexity of management options now available, and limited senior medical staff time.

Methods: We established a scheme in which specialist nurses made first assessments of all inter-departmental referrals to a hospital department of geriatric medicine.

The wing of madness: the illness of Vincent van Gogh.

This paper briefly describes some aspects of Vincent van Gogh's life and attitudes. It discusses absinthe and several psychodynamic factors that may have contributed to his psychotic episodes at Arles, when he cut off his ear. It discusses Vincent's descriptions of his illness, especially at Saint Rémy de Provence and concludes that he probably suffered from partial complex seizures (temporal lobe epilepsy) with manic depressive mood swings aggravated by absinthe, brandy, nicotine and turpentine.

Post-operative urinary retention in women: management by intermittent catheterization.

We have investigated the value of intermittent catheterization in the management of post-operative urinary retention occurring in elderly women after operative fixation of lower limb fracture. Eleven patients, aged 70-86, underwent intermittent catheterization two or three times daily for between 9 and 40 days as inpatients, and one patient continued intermittent self-catheterization at home for 3 months after discharge. Ten patients became continent.

Effects of a week's beta-adrenoceptor blockade with atenolol and metoprolol CR/ZOK on the response to exercise in healthy women aged 50 to 70 years.

12 healthy women with a mean age of 60 years (range 50-70 years) were treated with 50 mg atenolol or 100 mg metoprolol CR/ZOK or placebo for 1 week in a double-blind, randomized, cross-over study. Laboratory measurements of the cardiovascular responses to exercise were made 2-4 hours after and again 24 hours after the last tablet. Blood pressure and heart rate at rest were reduced equally by the two beta-adrenoceptor antagonists.