Diabetes in the elderly: problems of care and service provision.

Diabetes is common in the elderly and old UK citizens, affecting between 10% and 25%. There is considerable associated morbidity and mortality, with dementia being a common problem. The diabetic elder is also at risk of drug side-effects.

Prevalence of diabetes in care home residents.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of known and undetected diabetes diagnosed either by an elevated fasting baseline sample or by a 2-h post-glucose load sample in a group of residents of care homes in an urban-district setting.

Research Design And Methods: We completed individual interviews with patients and caregivers in 30 care homes (both residential and nursing homes) in two metropolitan districts of Birmingham, West Midlands, U.K.

Universal hearing screening using transient otoacoustic emissions in a community health clinic.

Since 1993, targeted screening of high risk Camden and Islington babies has been carried out in hospital using the transient otoacoustic emission (TEOAE) technique and auditory brainstem responses (ABR). Because targeted screening is difficult to implement, a community pilot study using TEOAE was started in 1995, covering 7% of the resident population. Although uptake has not been above 80%, client satisfaction has been high and numbers requiring more detailed tertiary assessment have been modest (0.