ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Depression is the most common mood disorder in the elderly. Internationally, most studies have found the prevalence of depression in the elderly population to range from appoximately 13% to 18%. In 2010 it is estimated that persons over 60 years of age made up 10% of the population of Trinidad and Tobago. The ageing population faces many complex issues such as chronic illness, disability, loneliness, isolation and adverse socio-economic circumstances that may contribute to depression. Locally, no studies have been done that investigate the depression specifically in the elderly. This study aims to establish preliminary data on this topic for the elderly population of Trinidad. METHODS This was a cross sectional descriptive study of patients over age 60, attending four health centres in Trinidad (Arima, St. Joseph, Freeport and Couva). Convenience sampling was used and participants completed a demographic questionaire and the Zung self rating depression scale. Data was analyzed using SPSS for Windows version 10.0 and the Chi-square test was used to determine statistically significant associations. RESULTS: There were 348 participants consisting of 200 females (57.4%) and 148 males (42.6%). Those 60-79 years made up 90.8%, while the remaining 9.1% were 80 years or older. Indo-Trinidadians made up 60.1%, Afro-Trinidadians 31.2% and mixed or others made up 8.7%. The prevalence of depression in this elderly population was found to be 17.2%. Depression was found to be associated with level of education (p=0.016). No association was found between gender (p=0.470), marital status (p=0.066), ethnicity (p=0.742)....... CONCLUSION: The prevalence of depression found in this population (17.2%), its association with level of education is comparable to that found in other elderly population internationally. Depression is intertwined with social and economic well being and self-perceived health and is an important consideration when caring for the elderly in Trinidad.
Subject(s)
DepressionABSTRACT
The objective of this work was to develop and then validate a stereotactic fiduciary marker system for tumor xenografts in rodents which could be used to co-register magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), PET, tissue histology, autoradiography, and measurements from physiologic probes. A Teflon fiduciary template has been designed which allows the precise insertion of small hollow Teflon rods (0.71 mm diameter) into a tumor. These rods can be visualized by MRI and PET as well as by histology and autoradiography on tissue sections. The methodology has been applied and tested on a rigid phantom, on tissue phantom material, and finally on tumor bearing mice. Image registration has been performed between the MRI and PET images for the rigid Teflon phantom and among MRI, digitized microscopy images of tissue histology, and autoradiograms for both tissue phantom and tumor-bearing mice. A registration accuracy, expressed as the average Euclidean distance between the centers of three fiduciary markers among the registered image sets, of 0.2 +/- 0.06 mm was achieved between MRI and microPET image sets of a rigid Teflon phantom. The fiduciary template allows digitized tissue sections to be co-registered with three-dimensional MRI images with an average accuracy of 0.21 and 0.25 mm for the tissue phantoms and tumor xenografts, respectively. Between histology and autoradiograms, it was 0.19 and 0.21 mm for tissue phantoms and tumor xenografts, respectively. The fiduciary marker system provides a coordinate system with which to correlate information from multiple image types, on a voxel-by-voxel basis, with sub-millimeter accuracy--even among imaging modalities with widely disparate spatial resolution and in the absence of identifiable anatomic landmarks.
