"They heard our voice!" patient engagement councils in community-based primary care practices: a participatory action research pilot study.

Background: Patient engagement could improve the quality of primary care practices. However, we know little about effective patient engagement strategies. We aimed to assess the acceptability and feasibility of embedding advisory councils of clinicians, managers, patients and caregivers to conduct patient-oriented quality improvement projects in primary care practices.

How to engage patients in research and quality improvement in community-based primary care settings: protocol for a participatory action research pilot study.

Plain English Summary: Making primary care clinics more patient-centered is key to improving patients' experience of care. If patients themselves were engaged in helping define priorities and suggesting quality improvements in the clinic, care would respond better to their needs. However, patient engagement is a new phenomenon, particularly in community based primary care clinics.

The relation of birth weight and gestational age to biological, occupational and socioeconomic factors.

The data of the 2,040 single births, born during 1987 at the "Saint Antoine" Hospital in Paris, were analysed in order to identify the impact of various biological, occupational, and socioeconomic factors on gestational age and birth weight. Birth weight is associated with the height of the mother and the weight gained during pregnancy. It is lower for mothers with preeclampsia during the current or previous pregnancies or with urogenital infections during the current pregnancy and for mothers with one or more induced abortions.

Cardiac arrhythmias during the combined use of intravenous aminophylline and terbutaline in status asthmaticus.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate prospectively the occurrence of cardiac arrhythmias during the combined therapy with intravenous aminophylline and terbutaline in 29 consecutive patients with status asthmaticus. The 24-hour Holter recordings were performed during continuous intravenous infusions of aminophylline (0.56 +/- 0.

Epidemiologic investigation of respiratory effects related to environmental exposure to asbestos inside insulated buildings.

The respiratory effects of environmental pollution by asbestos inside university buildings were studied by comparing radiographic, clinical, and functional parameters among three groups of workers with different levels of exposure. Eight hundred and twenty-eight (828) people who worked for at least 15 yr in asbestos-insulated buildings and who were without known occupational exposure to asbestos (environmentally exposed group [EE]) were compared to a group of 252 workers with occupational exposure (occupationally exposed group [OE]), used as positive control; and to a group of 350 people with no known exposure to asbestos (nonexposed group [NE]), within the same university. After adjustment for confounding variables, no differences could be seen between groups EE and NE.

[French legislation concerning vibration-induced disease and vinyl chloride poisoning].

Discussion is limited to an analysis of texts directly concerned with safety, hygiene and the industrial physician. After a review of features related to poisoning with the vinyl chloride monomer, the problems of vibration-induced angioneurotic disorders are outlined. Medical prevention and technique and then compensation for these occupational nuisances are then described.

[Respiratory pathology induced by inhalation of hair lacquer].

On the basis of a critical analysis of the literature, the authors review the various respiratory lesions imputed to the inhalation of hair lacquers. Pulmonary thesaurismosis is alleged to result from accumulation in the pulmonary parenchyma of non-biodegradable macro-molecules, such as PVP. Only isolated cases have been published and the true existence of this disease remains to be confirmed, in the absence of convincing epidemiological data as well as the lack of experimental reproducibility.

[Is annual X-ray examination of the chest still justified in industrial medicine?].

Between 1975 and 1979, 137.526 annual X-ray examinations of the chest were performed among the employees of a large Paris administration. Fifty-four cases of tuberculosis, 28 cases of sarcoidosis, 10 cases of bronchial carcinoma and 26 miscellaneous chest diseases were detected.