ABSTRACT
Acute gastroenteritis is a common infectious disease syndrome, causing a combination of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. There are more than 350 million cases of acute gastroenteritis in the United States annually and 48 million of these cases are caused by foodborne bacteria. Traveler's diarrhea affects more than half of people traveling from developed countries to developing countries. In adult and pediatric patients, the prevalence of Clostridium difficile is increasing. Contact precautions, public health education, and prudent use of antibiotics are necessary goals in decreasing the prevalence of Clostridium difficle. Preventing dehydration or providing appropriate rehydration is the primary supportive treatment of acute gastroenteritis.
Subject(s)
Anti-Infective Agents/therapeutic use , Gastroenteritis/therapy , Primary Health Care , Anti-Infective Agents/administration & dosage , Anti-Infective Agents/adverse effects , Diagnosis, Differential , Diarrhea/therapy , Fluid Therapy , Foodborne Diseases/microbiology , Foodborne Diseases/therapy , Gastroenteritis/microbiology , Gastroenteritis/physiopathology , Humans , Travel , United States/epidemiology , Vomiting/therapyABSTRACT
In the treatment of substance use disorders, it is advantageous to identify patients with comorbid (nonsubstance) psychiatric disorders because treating comorbid disorders improves outcome. Because accurate psychiatric diagnosis is time-consuming, there is a need for strategies to screen for these comorbid conditions. This study used receiver operating characteristic analysis to investigate a symptom checklist (revised Symptom Checklist 90 [SCL-90-R]) as a screening instrument for comorbid conditions diagnosed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV in 171 primarily military personnel with alcohol use disorders. Several approaches to applying receiver operating characteristic analysis to this problem are demonstrated. Although these results require replication in other populations, the SCL-90-R performed well in predicting comorbid conditions, with an area under the curve of 0.88 for current and 0.85 for lifetime comorbid diagnoses. Self-report symptom checklists such as the SCL-90-R may be useful in screening substance rehabilitation patients for more detailed psychiatric assessment and may prove clinically useful in the assessment of alcoholic patients.
