Medical unfitness for work at sea: causes and incidence rate over a 12-year period in France.

Background: The purposes of the study were first to determine the incidence rate of medical unfitness for work at sea among French seafarers, second to identify the conditions (diseases or accidents) causing such incapacity so as to set up prevention measures where possible and third to ascertain whether there were any overrepresentations of diseases according to category of unfit seafarers (fishers, merchant seafarers, shellfish farmers and professional sailors).

Methods: An exhaustive, observational, descriptive, retrospective epidemiological and nosological study was carried out based on the medical coding of files stored in the Aesculapius® national database, which registers all medical data regarding seafarers presenting at the French seafarers' health services. The increasing rate of permanent medical unfitness for work at sea was calculated in relation to the annual number of registered seafarers.

[Articular chondrocalcinosis. Association with B15 antigen].

Antigens of HLA loci A, B and DR were determined in 35 elderly patients with primary articular chondrocalcinosis and compared with a control population. The B15 antigen was present in 13 out of 35 patients, i.e.

[Articular chondrocalcinosis in elderly patients and parathyroid hormone levels].

Serum parathyroid hormone was assayed in 16 elderly patients with primary, roentgenographically proved, articular chondrocalcinosis. Mean value, i.e.

[Heparin osteoporosis : histomorphometric analysis of bone biopsy. One case (author's transl)].

Following a 7-month treatment with heparin, a young pregnant woman with a history of multiple phlebites complicated by pulmonary infarction developed osteoporosis with multiple compression fractures of the vertebrae. Histomorphometric analysis of a transiliac bone biopsy showed severe osteoporosis with rarefaction of the spongy bone, considerable increase of osteoclasts and fall in osteoblasts. The cortex was not atrophic and was the seat of active reconstruction.