Present status of allergic diseases in rural area in Nagano prefecture. Statistical investigation of patients who visited department of allergy, Saku Central Hospital from 1977 to 1983 / 日本農村医学会雑誌

A statistical investigation was carried out into about 3, 000 patients who visited our department from 1977 to 1983. The results were as follows:<BR>1. Allergic rhinitis and bronchial asthma were the most important allergic diseases in the rural area.<BR>2. The number of patients with allergic rhinitis especially caused by pollen (so called “pollinosis”) was markedly increased in recent years.<BR>3. Japanese cedar, orchard grass and mugwort were the most important causative agents of pollinosis in this area.<BR>4. The number of patients of each pollinosis was largely changed by climate or other unknown factors in each year.<BR>5. The number of patients of bronchial asthma caused by molds' spores gradually decreased.<BR>6. An occupational pear and apple pollinosis caused by artificial pollination was considered to be the most inportant allergic disease due to farm work. Further investigations are required on this problem.

The Prognosis of Low Birth Weight Infants in Our Rural Hospital / 日本農村医学会雑誌

We have established NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) in our hospital and concentrated our efforts on improving the contents of medical treatment since 1976 in order to accomplish a regionalization of neonatal medical treatment in our district.<BR>Thereafter, the mortality rate of low birth weight infants at different weight have decreased markedly. During this period, we have gathered information by means of questinnaire concerning the prognosis of low birth weight (below 2, 000 g) infants whowere admitted in our hospital in the preimprovement period of five years (1971 through 1975, Group 1; N =110) and in the post-improvement period of five years (1976 through 1980, Group 2; N = 96).<BR>The results were as follows:<BR>1, In terms of height and weight, both groups revealed to be no less than those of normal infants.<BR>2. The occurrence of cerebral palsy in Group 2 (2.2%) decreased to below one third of Group 1 (7.5%).<BR>3. There were two infants with blindness resulting from retrolental fibloplasia in Group 1 and one in Group 2.<BR>4. As regards the occurrence rate of epilepsy, there were two children with it in Group 1 (1.98%) and one in Group 2 (1.1%), whereas four children in Group 1 had episodes of afebrile convulsion.<BR>5. Five (5.4%) of 92 grade-school pupils in Group 1 were attending a clss for handicapped.<BR>From these results, it may be concluded that the improvement of neonatal medical treatment brought about a decrease of death rate of low birth weight infants and the improvement of theirprognosis as well.