Showing papers in "Journal of Clinical Epidemiology in 1992"

TL;DR: It is concluded that the adapted comorbidity index will be useful in studies of disease outcome and resource use employing administrative databases.

TL;DR: Heuristic suggestions for variance imputation based on partial variance information are provided and a key idea is to use separate sources of incomplete information to help choose a better variance estimate.

TL;DR: There is need for more methodologically sound studies that incorporate head-to-head comparisons of health care providers and significant others as proxy raters and employ well-validated quality-of-life measures and employ a longitudinal design in order to examine the effect of changes in patients' health status over time on the ability of proxies to provide valid quality- of-life assessments.

TL;DR: It is suggested that the impact of being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness may influence preferences to participate, and the majority of patients and members of the public wanted their physician and family to share responsibility for decision making if they were too ill to participate.

TL;DR: It is concluded that scoring automated pharmacy data can provide a stable measure of chronic disease status that, after controlling for health care utilization, is associated with physician-rated disease severity, patient-rated health status, and predicts subsequent mortality and hospitalization rates.

TL;DR: This new index provides a reliable method to assess drug therapy appropriateness and may be applicable as a quality of care outcome measure in health services research and in institutional quality assurance programs.

TL;DR: It is concluded that while it is possible to incorporate the effect of variation of quality of individual trials into overviews, this issue requires more study.

TL;DR: The results suggest that this revised version of the WHO/Rose Questionnaire on intermittent claudication should be adopted for use in future epidemiological surveys of peripheral vascular disease.

TL;DR: To study the prevalence of carpal tunnel syndrome in the general population and the value of brachialgia paraesthetica nocturna (BPN) in diagnosing CTS, an age and sex stratified random sample of 715 subjects was taken from the population register of Maastricht and surrounding villages between September 1983 and July 1985.

TL;DR: This work has shown that a simple formulation of requirements for evaluative instruments as reproducibility, validity, and responsiveness can simplify and clarify the understanding and teaching of issues in health status measurement.

TL;DR: The results suggest that family caregivers of elderly persons with dementia might benefit from careful monitoring of their health status, and from greater access to specialized support services.

TL;DR: There was no relationship of BDI scores with pregnancy outcome in the adolescents or adults, but among the adult gravidas the risk of a poor outcome rose 5-7% for each point the BDI total score increased, and physiological mechanisms associated with symptoms of depression might contribute to an increased risk of poor outcomes.

TL;DR: In 58 subjects with stable asthma, good short term test-retest reliability was demonstrated and weak correlations in the expected direction were seen with three medical markers of asthma severity, supporting the construct validity of the questionnaire and emphasizing that quality of life represents a separate dimension of asthma.

TL;DR: This method of assessing medications was easy to use and provided estimates of exposure to drugs that may affect risk of cardiovascular disease and the prevalence of post-menopausal estrogen use differed significantly among the four clinical centers.

TL;DR: Social network measures were strong predictors of both cause-specific and all-cause mortality among persons who had incident cases of IHD, cancer, and stroke, and suggest that social networks may be more effective in supporting recovery after illness has occurred than in preventing the incidence of new disease.

TL;DR: Overall, blood pressure was reduced by physical activity in both hypertensive and normotensive persons and in some studies blood pressure reduction occurred in the presence of weight gain.

TL;DR: Current knowledge regarding the etiology and natural history of LEAD from an epidemiologic viewpoint is summarized, delineating areas in which additional research is needed.

TL;DR: It is suggested that computerized Medicare files can be used for rapid and economical fracture ascertainment among persons greater than or equal to 65 years of age, however, further work is needed to obtain better estimates of sensitivity.

TL;DR: It is found that patient well-being was substantially higher as evaluated by the Sickness Impact Profile compared to the other five methods, and the cost effectiveness of in-center hemodialysis varied from $34,893 to $45,254 per quality-adjusted life-year saved according to the Sicks Impact Profile and standard-gamble technique respectively.

TL;DR: This manuscript reviews specific types of bias which are common at each of the three stages at which bias can be injected into a meta-analysis, finding studies, selection of the identified studies for theMeta-analysis and extraction of data from the selected studies.

TL;DR: The albumin-early mortality association suggests that serum albumin levels are a predictor for subclinical disease in the healthy elderly, independent of health status.

TL;DR: The medical and psychological consequences of terrorism were assessed through an epidemiologic survey of 254 survivors of terrorist attacks in France between 1982 and 1987, suggesting the need for including psychiatric assistance in the initial care of TA victims, especially severely injured ones.

TL;DR: Physical, radiographic, and laboratory data did not add significantly to explanation of work disabilities status beyond the demographic and functional variables and disease duration, despite the fact that receipt of disability payments was used as the criterion for work disability status.

TL;DR: A comparison between relatives of demented persons living at home and in institutions, showed that the relatives of institutionalized subjects were less frequently spouses and had more problems with their physical health, but both groups had similar subjective feeling of stress.

TL;DR: A new disease-specific quality of life questionnaire was validated in a pilot study to characterize the natural history of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), and six of twelve question domains were retained on the basis of their responsiveness to change, reproducibility, internal consistency, and validity.

TL;DR: Hypoalbuminemia and lower serum albumin were independently associated with anemia, recent diagnosis of cancer, two or more limitations in activities of daily living, residence in a nursing home, heavy cigarette smoking, and older age.

TL;DR: It is concluded that premenstrual distress is a discrete mood disorder, affecting women aged 25-35 years, with probable ovulatory cycles, and vulnerable to stress; and that the risk of affective symptoms attributable to the pre menstrual state was one percent.

TL;DR: Using data from a population-based study of peripheral arterial disease, the authors demonstrated empirically that this method may be useful for obtaining smoothed estimates of sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values.