Hurricane Elena and Pinellas County, Florida: some lessons learned from the largest evacuation of nursing home patients in history.

Prior planning for and problems associated with the evacuation of 1,860 nursing home patients in Pinellas County, Florida, due to Hurricane Elena in 1985 were studied through questionnaires administered to nursing home administrators and public documents. The most serious problems were transporting patients to shelters in a timely fashion, delayed passage of recalled staff through police checkpoints, and staff burnout.

Preoperative localization of parathyroid adenomas.

Patients with primary hyperparathyroidism have a parathyroid adenoma approximately 80% of the time. Preoperative localization of parathyroid adenomas has been significantly improved by the utilization of high resolution (high frequency) real-time ultrasound. This technique was accurate in 14 (78%) of the 18 cases in our series.