The Auckland Breast Cancer Register: a special project of the Auckland Breast Cancer Study Group.

Aims: The Auckland Breast Cancer Register (ABCR) has been established in response to the need for a comprehensive database of breast cancer cases from the Auckland area.

Methods: The database records patient demographics, diagnosis, treatment options, prognosis and long-term outcome (annual follow up). Data from 1204 cases, recorded between June 2000 and June 2002 are reported.

Management of violence in the workplace: a New Zealand survey.

Objective: To estimate the rate of adverse events to staff, to survey the use of various preventative measures, and to assess any association between these factors and the reported event rate.

Method: An anonymous postal nation-wide survey of violence reported to managers of psychiatric units in New Zealand.

Results: The mean rate of adverse event per 100 full time equivalent staff was 16.

Cerebral protection by lidocaine during cardiac operations.

Background: Lidocaine improves outcome in animal brain injury models. Cardiac operations often cause postoperative neuropsychological (NP) impairment. We investigated cerebral protection by lidocaine in cardiac surgical patients.

Effects of nicotine on perceptual speed.

Two experiments investigating the effects of nicotine on performance in the inspection time (IT) procedure are reported. Experiment 1 compared ITs in smoking (0.8 mg nicotine cigarette), sham-smoking, and no-smoking conditions.

Smoking and Raven IQ.

Nicotine has recently been shown to enhance measures of information processing speed including the decision time (DT) component of simple and choice reaction time and the string length measure of evoked potential waveform complexity. Both (DT and string length) have been previously demonstrated to correlate with performance on standard intelligence tests (IQ). We therefore hypothesised that nicotine is acting to improve intellectual performance on the elementary information processing correlates of IQ.