[Education of the hypertensive patient: are educational booklets useful?]. / L'educazione del paziente iperteso: sono utili gli opuscoli informativi?

A good level of knowledge about hypertension can improve patients' compliance to treatment so achieve better therapeutic results. The aim of our study was to evaluate the degree of knowledge about their disease in hypertensives followed in a hospital out-patient unit; and whether an informative booklet could increase this awareness. The patients were presented a questionnaire on the following items: 1. their interest in health news as presented by the mass-media and their judgement on physicians' willingness to provide information about hypertension; 2. the health hazards of being hypertensive; 3. the importance of a family history of hypertension; 4. life style and blood pressure; 5. the reasons for treating hypertension and the length of treatment. Upon completion of the questionnaire, the patients were handed out a booklet in which these same topics were analyzed. At the next follow-up visit, they were invited to answer a set of questions quite similar to the first ones, but presented in a different verbal form. 200 patients completed the first questionnaire; 159, both of them. Basically, they show a high degree of correct knowledge about their disease, giving between 77% and 94% of correct answers to the different questions. After the booklet, for most of the questions the percentage of correct answers remains the same; when it does change, this is usually for the worse. Simply handing out a booklet doesn't help patients to better understand their disease. On the contrary it may have an opposite effect, inducing some degree of confusion.

[Initial epidemiological data on the clinical effects in health workers employed in the manual lifting of patients in wards]. / Primi dati epidemiologici sugli effetti clinici negli operatori sanitari addetti alla movimentazione manuale di pazienti nei reparti di degenza.

An investigation was carried out by teams from various centres coordinated by the EPM (Ergonomics of Posture and Movement) Research Unit on 54 different hospitals in various regions of northern and central Italy. The teams examined a total of 3341 health workers whose job involved manual handling of patients (553 male and 2788 females, 1568 working in hospitals and 1773 in geriatric residences). Numerous meetings were held to ensure that the methods of assessing the exposure indexes and spinal impairment were identical in the various teams. The final data were processed centrally at the EPM Research Unit. The sample analyzed may be considered as representative of the situation in hospitals in Italy, at least for northern and central Italy. The mean age was 36 years, mean length of service in the department 6 years and mean length of job duration not exceeding 10 years; staff turnover was high. Physical examination revealed that 8.4% of the workers had had at least one episode of acute low back pain in the previous 12 months: i.e., 4 times the values of the reference groups. Also in the case of clinical-functional spondyloarthropathies of the lumbosacral spine, in the females there was a significantly higher prevalence than in the reference groups. All disorders were more severe in sectors more at risk, i.e., old peoples homes, rehabilitation centres, orthopaedic and surgical departments, and in any case higher in old peoples homes and geriatric residences. The initial data concerning the ratio between presence of spinal disease and risk index were also positive.

[The hypoglycemic reactions in diabetic patients in the emergency room. Which patients are going to be hospitalized?]. / Reazioni ipoglicemiche in pazienti diabetici nell'ambito di un pronto soccorso. Quali pazienti vengono ospedalizzati?

In one year, a retrospective study in a casualty department identified 67 hypoglycemic episodes occurring to adult diabetic patients: 40 insulin-treated, 20 oral antidiabetic-treated, 7 with unrecorded treatment. All the oral antidiabetic-treated patients were on glibenclamide and the mean dose was 6.5 mg/day: 35.7% of the patients admitted to the medical ward were discharged without antidiabetic drug prescription, suggesting that previous treatment had been unnecessary. Thirty one of the subjects had to be admitted to the medical ward: they were significantly older, mainly on oral antidiabetic treatment and their glucose blood levels were significantly lower than those of the patients treated in the casualty department and sent home. The subjects were admitted mainly because of associated disease, late complications of the diabetic status or home care shortage.