The role of gerontological advanced practice nurses in geriatric care.

GAPNs have a significant role to play in the care of older people. They provide focused health screening, counseling, crisis intervention, and comprehensive care to this population. They serve as important advocates in directing appropriate utilization of resources and making referrals that promote continuity of care geared to the needs of older adults. GAPNs provide essential educational services to older clients, their families, and other nursing and health care professionals involved in their care. They are innovators in the field of gerontological nursing and geriatric care and initiate or collaborate in research aimed at improving the health status of older persons. GAPNs are true providers of geriatric care, with great potential for serving an increasingly aging society.

Predictors of general activity 8 weeks after cardiac surgery.

In this secondary analysis, the influence of mood states and self-efficacy beliefs on recovery of general activities 8 weeks after cardiac surgery were investigated. Study data were taken from a randomized clinical trial with 156 subjects who were either in an efficacy enhancement nursing care group (n = 75) or in a routine care group (n = 81). It was found that self-efficacy beliefs at time of hospitalization regarding ability to resume general activities after discharge, measured tension/anxiety at 4 weeks after surgery, and experimental group status explained 21% of the variation in self-reported recovery at 8 weeks.

The TPR-MET oncogenic rearrangement is present and expressed in human gastric carcinoma and precursor lesions.

The TPR-MET oncogenic rearrangement was originally observed in an in vitro transformed human osteosarcoma cell line. Recently, we detected the expression of this rearrangement at very low levels in several cell lines derived from human tumors of nonhematopoietic origin using a highly sensitive method based on polymerase chain reaction amplification of the transcript. We report here the results of analysis of TPR-MET expression in cell lines derived from human gastric tumors and 22 biopsy samples of human gastric mucosa showing cancer or precursor lesions. The rearranged RNA was expressed in all four cell lines as well as in biopsy samples from 12 of the 22 patients. Overexpression of TPR-MET RNA in superficial gastritis lesions with hyperplasia of glandular neck cells suggests the possible involvement of this oncogene at an early stage of gastric tumorigenesis. Analysis of gastric biopsy samples for RAS gene mutations showed base substitutions occurring in the codon 12 region of Ki- and Ha-RAS genes in four cases, including two precursor lesions.