[Nonagenarians on an emergency department for internal medicine and cardiology : Comparison of comorbidities, disease course and survival with younger patients].

Background: Little is known about how younger and older hospitalized patients differ with respect to reasons for admission, comorbidities, diagnostics, treatment and intercurrent problems.

Objective: The aim of the study was to compare the previously named characteristics in the clinical profile of patients > 90 years old (nonagenarians) with a control group of patients 70-75 years old admitted to an emergency hospital department for internal medicine and cardiology.

Material And Method: The study included all consecutive nonagenarians and gender-matched control patients who were admitted during 2011.

No Socioeconomic Inequalities in Mortality among Catholic Monks: A Quasi-Experiment Providing Evidence for the Fundamental Cause Theory.

We propose a novel approach to test the fundamental cause theory (FCT) by analyzing the association between socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by the order titles "brothers" and "padres," and mortality in 2,421 German Catholic monks born between 1840 and 1959. This quasi-experiment allows us to study the effect of SES on mortality in a population with largely standardized living conditions. Mortality analyses based on Kaplan-Meier product limit estimation show that there were no statistically significant survival differences between the high and lower SES monks.

Measuring generic health using the minimum european health module: does it work and is it better than self-rated health?

Background: Health is a fundamental aspect of many scientific disciplines and its definition and measurement is the analytical core of many empirical studies. Comprehensive measures of health, however, are typically precluded in survey research due to financial and temporal restrictions. Self-rated health (SRH) as a single indicator of health, on the other hand, exhibits a lack of measurement invariance by age and is biased due to non-health influences.

Rating Health and Rating Change: How Canadians Rate Their Health and Its Changes.

We investigated the contribution of five health domains to self-rated health (SRH) cross-sectionally and longitudinally and whether these contributions differ by gender or age. Employing dominance analyses, we quantified the contributions of functioning, diseases, pain, mental health, and behavior to both SRH at a point in time and for changes in SRH using data from the Canadian National Population Health Survey (NPHS, 1994-2011). Cross-sectionally and longitudinally, functioning was the most important health domain, followed by diseases and pain.

Stroke and embolism in patients with left ventricular hypertrabeculation/noncompaction.

Objectives: Left ventricular hypertrabeculation/noncompaction(LVHT) is characterized by extensive trabeculations. LVHT has been reported to be associated with stroke or embolism(S/E). Aim of the study was to compare characteristics and prognosis of LVHT-patients with and without S/E to identify potential risk factors for S/E.