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Being independent the services offered by GPs will vary. There is great debate at the moment on whether or not GPs should be allowed to advertise. I think advertising could improve the standards of many practices and give some people an element of choice, depending on the services offered. The elderly as a client group and carers looking after the old should ask a GP some fundamental questions.
Does the practice use an age/sex register?
This allows the GP to be aware of the elderly population in the practice and develop schemes for their benefit.
Does the practice do its own house calls out of hours?
The elderly especially need continuation of care. The use of deputizing services often means inappropriate measures being taken and poor communication.
How does the practice arrange the special services for elderly people?
Who does the screening?
Is it available if you are under the age of 75?
What does it cover and include?
Does the practice follow up if you miss the first request?
Some GPs offer well woman clinics which may welcome elderly women. I do outpatient clinics in GPs surgeries enabling specialist opinions to be obtained without the necessity of a trip to hospital.
Does the practice offer regular (once every six months or year) visits to the elderly house-bound?
Does the practice regularly review medication and give cards or printouts of drugs being taken?
Many practices by using the age-sex register are able to identify the elderly in their practice and make arrangements for them to be seen regularly.
District nurses are fully qualified nurses who have undergone specialist community nurse training. Their job is a particularly hard yet rewarding one. A group of nurses usually work out of a GP practice, allowing good communication between the two groups of professionals. Their work is extremely varied, from tending to ulcers and wounds, supervising medication, giving injections, helping the frail and sick in and out of bed and generally giving them rehabilitative care and nursing attention. They are also one of the main contact groups giving a kind word, making a quick cup of tea and just being there.
In many areas nurses are being less generalist and more specialists. Thus, there are some nurses who specialize in the advice on and treatment of diabetes. Terminal/palliative care and incontinence are other areas where nurses have become highly skilled specialists involved in all aspects of that particular problem. Some of the less skilled parts of nursing have been given over to other groups such as bathing attendants. This service should be available at least weekly, and more often if there are special problems such as incontinence. Bathing someone involves skills of its own, however, and these attendants perform a very special job.
Access to the nursing services is usually via the GP but direct access can be made through the district nursing headquarters, the telephone number being in the book under Health Authority.
Whatever services visit an elderly person, they and the carer should keep a note of the person’s name and a telephone number where they can be contacted. The services concerned are usually very conscientious and aware of the need that is placed upon them. However, sometimes things go wrong (especially in these times of financial constraint), and then there can be nothing worse than not knowing if a service is going to appear or not. A phone call may solve the problem or at least it should afford a means of communication. If a complaint is justified, never be afraid to contact the manager concerned.
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Why RK Becomes Necessary in Some Situations
Some critics of the radial keratotomy procedure maintain that it is cosmetic surgery, thus relegating it to a lesser role as a method of treatment for the eye. Dr. Michael R. Deitz of Kansas City argues that the benefits RK are first, functional improvement and second (though less important), cosmetic improvement. “Function appears to be far more important to the patients I have treated,” he told the August 1980 Kerato-Refractive Society Symposium on RK. “They’re far more interested in how well they see the world than how well the world sees them.”
Dr. Deitz stressed the importance of unaided good vision in times of emergency. Automobile drivers with high myopia cannot afford to lose their corrective glasses while driving in high-risk situations. Or, in the event of fire while asleep at a hotel, a guest who was nearsighted might he hard pressed to make his way to the exit, Dr. Deitz pointed out.
A Necessary and Beneficial RK
Nickolas Totora of Springfield, Massachusetts lay on the operating table at the Massachusetts General Hospital, the sixty-seventh Boston metropolitan area person to undergo RK through the first quarter of 1984. Within fifteen minutes of the beginning of surgery, 20-year-old Nickolas was up and out of the operating room. He was anxious to “have a look at my new vision.” His left eye had   been   cured   of nearsightedness   only a month   before, and the right eye was the one done now.
“I had begun wearing eyeglasses at the age of two,” the patient said, “and they didn’t do more than act as a crutch. My vision was getting worse. After entering college, my lenses were so thick, I had to put them on before getting out of bed in the morning to see my way clearly to the bathroom. I couldn’t read any of my textbooks without them. Once I was giving a speech to the student body and one of the lenses fell out of its frame. I had to abort the speech. Was I ever embarrassed? That’s when I prevailed on my parents to pay for this double session of operations. I don’t want to wear eyeglasses anymore.”
As he spoke, Nickolas reached for a pair of eyeglass frames in which the left lens had been poked out. He had been using just the right lens for his eyes and seeing normally without the lens for his left. Nickolas pushed against the right lens and popped it out of its frame. “I won’t need these at all anymore,” the young man said.
Looking at the eye first operated on, through a slit lamp, we saw the right radial cuts that had been made in Nickolas’ cornea. They were peripheral to that part of it covering the iris, showing only as faint lines which were minute scars of healing.
After the operation, an antibiotic eye drop is used and the patient is ordinarily patched for twenty-four hours, as mentioned earlier. But this patient declined so much as a bandage for the newly operated eye. The bandage was not put on so as to permit Nickolas the self-testing of his vision after surgery.
His first comment as he covered his corrected left eye and looked at a wall chart out of his newly cured right was, “Oh boy, I can read even the small letters on line 8, D E F. . .”
*48/127/5*

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Playing with hair is a common activity for children and adults alike. There is considerable pleasure to be had from brushing, combing, twirling and curling hair. For many it is a self-comforting activity. In young children it is occasionally associated with thumb-sucking, and is also transient. In some children this leads to actually pulling hair out. This is not common, but it is distressing to parents when it does occur.

Cause

While there is uncertainty as to the exact reason why some children pull out their hair, in the majority of cases it is associated with stress, anxiety or other underlying psychological causes. It is seen more commonly in children who are mentally retarded, and those who are institutionalised. Sometimes there is an underlying scalp condition which can cause irritation and itchiness, and may make the hair more brittle.

Clinical features

There is wide variation in the clinical features. Most of these children continually twist and play with their hair, as if by habit. Some pull out single strands, others pull out whole clumps of hair. There is no predictable pattern with respect to frequency or duration. In many children there is other evidence of anxiety or depression, such as sleep problems, erratic appetite, social or school difficulties, and so on.

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Body image-is like home base on the love map. Take a good, long look in the mirror, naked if you have the courage, and describe out loud how your body looks and feels. If you really have courage, try this with your partner standing by your side.

“There we stood,” said the wife. “It was surprising. We didn’t get past the hair on our heads. We looked at our own, each other’s,

and talked about it. Maybe it was just safer to talk about that, but I never realized he felt his was too thin. I have always felt mine was too thin. It has bothered me for years.”

How we think we look is a key in our love map, a type of legend and scale for interpreting the map and for reading other persons’ maps, for we tend to pick partners that we perceive as maybe just a few steps up from our own place on the body market. Even children rapidly develop good or poor body images, which sometimes sentence them to the sidelines at dances and to a loneliness that is based on a hypercritical, usually unrealistic self-appraisal.

I have three hundred slides of the work of major artists. These are all nude paintings, and I have my patients pick the one painting they feel most resembles them. This assignment is usually fun and sometimes most enlightening, especially when I also have them select a slide that most resembles their partner. Looking at and discussing these pictures usually helps defuse the anxiety over the body-image issue and teaches about the wide range of human appearance and the perceptions of that appearance.

I help my patients discuss feelings about their genitals and other erotic zones. Most men seem to feel that penises come in one size, too small. Women seldom talk much about genital appearance, but describe their breasts in two sizes, too big or too small. It is helpful to break down the barriers that exist between the body generally and the erotic zones specifically, integrating both into a sensuous gestalt.

When I lectured on this concept of the sensuous gestalt, one woman told me after the lecture that she thought “sensuous hole” might be a better term. She added, “After all, I think I have what I call a ‘grand opening.’ Let me tell you, women do not have penis envy; men might have vaginal awe.” Even in her humor, you can see the anxiety we have about perhaps the least important element of the sexual system, the genitalia.

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We Australians are a race of sun-worshippers and rush to expose our bodies to the warmth of the sun as we lie on the beach, around a home pool or even working in the garden.

But, for most of us, sun tanning presents a hazard. Our genes are derived from ancestors who lived in northern Europe and had fair skin.

Genetically, we have not had long enough living in this different climate to develop a darker skin color. Those of us who are naturally more olive skinned or who come from Southern Europe have better protection but we all need to exercise care.

Ultraviolet rays from the sun stimulate the pigment-producing cells in the skin to produce melanin which leads to tanning, but fairer skin contains little pigment and its ability to produce it under the stimulation of ultraviolet light is limited. These rays can damage the skin and cause both acute and chronic changes.

Ultraviolet or UV rays can penetrate cloud layers and so affect the skin even on overcast days. They can be reflected from water or sand and sneak up on you even as you cringe under a beach umbrella.

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Prolapse may occur at any age and even in women who have never borne children.

But it is far more common in those who have had several pregnancies and in those past the menopause.

Some women are prepared to tolerate the discomforts, but most are aware of the medical care available and seek treatment.

The female pelvic organs are held in place by a number of structures. Ligaments of the womb are attached to the side walls of the pelvis and form a sling to support the uterus.

Two main muscles stretch across the lower pelvis and offer support and a thick piece of tissue sits just under the skin between the opening of the vagina and the rectum.

A prolapse is like a hernia of the female genital organs. Three main problems usually occur together, but there may be a combination of two or one only.

There is descent of the womb; the bladder may fall backwards through the lax front wall of the vagina; the rectum may fall forwards through the lax back wall.

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The body contains a system of special glands called the endocrines. These are scattered throughout the body, from the head to the pelvis. They produce important chemicals called hormones. All play a vital part in keeping the body healthy. If too little or too much hormone is produced, then symptoms develop.

Some of these conditions are fairly common, whilst others are rare and will never be seen by the average parent. Some are readily and successfully treated, whilst others are extremely difficult to diagnose and even more difficult to successfully treat.

Many children with symptoms may be referred by family doctors to special centres, usually located in large hospitals, where special investigations may be carried out to help decide the diagnosis; also, facilities are available there to treat the patients. As some of these conditions may continue for a long time, getting linked to a major centre is often the best idea. So, if your family doctor finds your child’s symptoms puzzling and suggests referral to a centre of this nature, go along with this suggestion. In the long run it will be to everyone’s advantage, child and parent, and for the doctor also, who wants the best for the patient.

The endocrine glands that will be discussed here include the pituitary gland, in the brain, which stimulates the activity of other endocrine glands. In the neck are the thyroid gland and the parathyroid glands, located near the back of the thyroids.

The pancreas is situated in the abdominal cavity and is responsible for diabetes, if diseased. The gonads are the sex organs (ovaries in females, testes in males), and these are responsible for some conditions which need care and attention. The adrenal glands are small organs sitting on top of the kidneys; disorders of these are rare but serious.

Phenylketonuria (P.K.U.) is not really related to the endocrines but is included in this section. It is an inherited disease which can now be detected at birth and readily and successfully treated. Early detection of P.K.U. in Australian babies in the past few years is one of the major forward steps in neo-natal care. The results are now strikingly successful—once, a missed diagnosis was responsible for serious forms of mental retardation which could be lifelong.

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Rubella is a common, simple infectious disease which is widespread amongst children. It is produced by a virus, and the symptoms are a fine skin rash and swelling and tenderness of the glands around the neck. It spreads from person to person by droplet infection (the germs cling to microscopic drops coughed, breathed or sneezed into the air by an infected person).

The time from infection until the onset of symptoms (the incubation period) is usually between two and three weeks. There is a lapse of a few days (the prodromal period) from the start of symptoms until the typical rash sets in. During this time there are minor symptoms: the child may feel slightly off-colour and notice that the glands in the neck are a bit tender. Frequently, especially in younger children, these may be completely overlooked.

Finally the rash appears. This is usually a faint, very fine stippling that starts on the face and rapidly spreads on to the trunk and limbs. Within two to three days, and often sooner, it vanishes. Occasionally the temperature is raised, but generally this is only mild. In some instances, especially in epidemics, there may not even be a noticeable rash, just the glandular swelling. In some epidemics, as many as 40 per cent of cases may be rash-free. In some cases, a fine rash may be present but last only a few hours.

The chief concern of rubella is the amazing capacity of the virus to cross the maternal-placental barriers in pregnant women. This is vitally important during the first trimester (first three months); during this time, vital organs are developing in the foetus. The virus can interfere with their normal development, and cause serious and severe congenital abnormalities in the baby. These will vary according to the time of infection. But the heart, eyes, ears and brain may be adversely affected. This can cause blindness, deafness (in varying degrees up to total deafness), mental retardation and major heart defects. The liver and spleen may be affected, interfering with the blood system of the infant. Rubella infection occurring during the first month of pregnancy may incur a 50 per cent chance of serious defects. This falls to a 10 per cent risk by the third month.

So great are the potential hazards that rubella during early pregnancy is now a well-established indication for a legal termination of the pregnancy should the mother desire this. In fact, the majority of obstetricians would now specifically recommend it.

Treatment

Generally little or no treatment is necessary. If symptoms are present which cause discomfort, they may be treated symptomatically, along the same lines as for ordinary measles. Rest, fluids, simple adequate foods, analgesics and antipyretics (mixtures for relieving pain and reducing temperatures) are occasionally required, but these are usually minimal.

If there is rubella in the home, it is important that warning be given to any women known to be pregnant who have recently visited the family. It is important that pregnant women keep away from the infected person. Being highly infectious, the risks of contracting the disease are high, especially if the woman has not previously had rubella or has not been immunized. If contact has been made, she should contact her own obstetrician without delay. Special tests are available that will indicate her own degree of protection against rubella, and appropriate steps may then be taken.

Rubella vaccination is readily available at present in this and most Western countries. This is usually given to schoolgirls in the 12-14 age group. Every girl should be vaccinated. One single injection is all that is required.

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Professor John Yudkin of the University of London, England, one of the world’s leading nutritionists, has given a hard blow to the theory that the amount of fat in a diet is connected with heart disease. Dr. Yudkin has demonstrated by his studies of two groups of heart patients in a London hospital in 1964 that the excessive consumption of sugar, not of fat, is the prime cause of the epidemic increase of heart disease in civilized countries. Quoting studies made by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, he has shown that sugar consumption has increased in countries with the highest prevalence of heart disease even faster than has fat consumption. In 1966 he and his associates repeated the studies under rigid scientific control and came to the same conclusion: “the person taking a lot of sugar has a greatly increased chance of developing myocardial infarction.”

One of the greatest authorities on the sugar vis-a-vis heart topic is M. O. Bruker, M.D., medical director at Eben-Ezers Hospital in Lemgo, Germany. For several decades he has conducted extensive studies on thousands of patients to determine the effect of sugar on their health. He has become convinced that the excessive consumption of white sugar is a major causative factor not only in arteriosclerosis and heart disease, but also in such diseases as caries, digestive disorders, liver and gallbladder diseases, obesity, and even cancer.

Findings of an American physician, Benjamin P. Sandler, M.D., are corroborative to the findings of many European doctors on sugar and heart disease. He also believes that sugar and starches in the diet, not fat, are responsible for the great increase in heart disease. He claims that heart attacks are caused by an oxygen deficiency in the tissues—which is caused by low blood sugar—which is caused by over-consumption of sugar and starches.

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After her last baby was born, Mrs. Andersson didn’t seem to be able to recover her strength. She was always tired and listless. She could hardly lift her hands. Then came the pain in her arms and hands which led to a visit to a doctor and a dreadful diagnosis-rheumatoid arthritis!

The doctor prescribed drugs and ordered her to stay in bed with warm packs around the affected joints. The warm packs seemed to relieve the pain in the hands, but now it moved to the elbows and the shoulders. Then her legs and feet started to ache. The drugs relieved the pain, but as soon as she was without the pills, the pain returned with increased strength.

After four weeks in bed with increasing disability and pain, which became more and mote unbearable, she was sent by her doctor to Spenshults Rheumatic Hospital, one of the most modern medical rheumatic clinics in Sweden. She stayed there six weeks. She didn’t receive many treatments except drugs and rest in bed, plus a typical hospital diet, mostly meat, coffee and desserts.

She felt a little better when she returned home, but soon the stiffness and pain reappeared. She was unable to take care of her home and children. She felt discouraged and hopeless.

One day, her nurse brought her a magazine with an article on the Brandal Clinic and biological medicine. After she had finished reading it, she immediately went to the telephone and made a reservation.

She went to Brandal on October 20, 1957. Her condition on arrival was very bad. She could not go up the stairs to her room. She could not dress or undress herself. She was helpless and felt terrible pain with the slightest movement.

The program of treatments at Brandal started with the traditional fast on vegetable broth and carrot juice. Among the other treatments were alternating hot and cold showers, a dry brush massage, and enemas morning and evening. “After one week of fasting I felt so much better that I wanted to continue,” said Mrs. Andersson. After the first week she could go up and down the stairs and take short walks outside.

After 20 days of fasting, and one week on a special lacto-vege-tarian diet, as described earlier in this chapter, and other biological treatments at Brandal, Mrs. Andersson returned to her home—completely free from her arthritis.

While having a check-up five years later, Mrs. Andersson said, “I am as healthy as anyone could wish to be. I don’t remember feeling so well and being so limber and flexible since I was a young girl.”

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