Biomedical subjects

D W Webster

Publications and source records attributed to D W Webster.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed1992

Parents' beliefs about preventing gun injuries to children.

Data were collected from parents bringing children to selected pediatric practices in Maryland using questionnaires and focus group discussions. Gun ownership ranged from 27% in the suburban practice to 53% in the rural practice. Unrealistic perceptions of children's capabilities and behavioral tendencies with regard to guns were common among gun owners. Half of all gun-owning parents believed that active strategies (eg, education, supervision) were the best method of preventing gun injuries to children older than 12 years of age. Nearly all gun owners indicated a willingness to follow their pediatrician's advice about gun storage, but only 19% of the mothers and 10% of the fathers said they would follow advice to remove guns from the home. Among parents who did not have a gun in the home, 40% said they would consider obtaining one if they felt threatened; however, 73% of these parents indicated they would be dissuaded from doing so by a pediatrician's advice about the risks of keeping guns in the home. Results suggested that pediatricians will be most effective if they recommend passive strategies (eg, removing guns from the home or storing guns unloaded and locked) on the basis of children's developmental capabilities and behavioral tendencies and make their recommendations part of general counseling about child safety.

Adult↗

PubMed1990

Metabolic response to exercise in malignant hyperthermia-sensitive patients measured by 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

The currently favored theory of pathogenesis of malignant hyperthermia (MH) implicates an abnormality in skeletal muscle calcium ion transport. During a MH crisis a profound lactic acidosis occurs and in MH-sensitive individuals a delayed recovery of venous lactate has been previously noted postexercise. We have used 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy to follow noninvasively in vivo changes in muscle of intracellular pH and high-energy phosphate metabolites during rest, exercise, and recovery of MH-sensitive subjects. Eleven biopsy-positive MH-sensitive patients have been studied and compared to 26 normal subjects. The MH-sensitive subjects as a group prematurely dropped their intracellular pH during mild aerobic exercise and they demonstrated a marked delay before the recovery of pH after maximal exercise. PCr/(PCr + Pi) ratios also dropped early during exercise but recovered normally. The observed changes in pH and PCr/(PCr + Pi) are consistent with a myopathy in MH-susceptible individuals.

Adenosine Triphosphate↗

PubMed1990

Familial transmission of alcohol use: II. Imitation of and aversion to parent drinking (1960) by adult offspring (1977)--Tecumseh, Michigan.

The "fall-off" effect, when offspring respond to parental high-volume levels by moderating their own drinking, appears highly predictable across generations and is mediated both by subsequent parent drinking level and offspring's perception of problematic intake by their parents. This fall off by adult offspring appears to follow community norms; it occurs, on the average, at the level of daily drinking by fathers, and when the mother approaches daily-drinking levels. An aversion effect holds more to cross-sex parents with problems; thus, both sons and daughters show a nonimitation and fall off to their cross-sex parents who are high-volume problem drinkers. Conversely, however, daughters often imitate a high-drinking father with no problems. For high-drinking mothers, without problems or with problems (numbers are small), daughters' drinking appears "polarized": most (60%) are abstemious, but a higher number than expected (about 35%) show high volume thus imitating the mother's volume, compared to about 17% of the total sample of daughters who were high-volume drinkers. Maximal offspring imitation is strongest for abstemious parents, especially for abstaining parents, and stronger for fathers abstaining than for mothers.

Adult↗

PubMed1989

Familial transmission of alcohol use: I. Parent and adult offspring alcohol use over 17 years--Tecumseh, Michigan.

A sample of 420 three-member sets of father, mother and adult offspring was drawn from a list of respondents from two rounds of a longitudinal health study in Tecumseh, Michigan. Parents' self-reported drinking practices in 1960 were compared with those of their adult offspring 17 years later in 1977. A positive association between the drinking level of parents and their adult offspring was evident; however, this association varied according to: (1) the drinking level of the parent, (2) the gender of the offspring and (3) the gender of the parent. There is a tendency for offspring to drink abstemiously (i.e., abstain or drink low volume) when their parents were life-long abstainers. High-volume drinking by adult offspring was associated with the parents' same drinking pattern, especially among daughters. Throughout the spectrum of drinking, sons' drinking was more similar to fathers' drinking level than to mothers'. The relationship between one parent's drinking and his/her offspring's was dependent upon the drinking status of the other parent. These data support the hypothesis that parents' drinking patterns may influence the drinking patterns of the offspring as adults.

Adult↗

PubMed1987

Effects of child restraint laws on traffic fatalities in eleven states.

Mandatory child restraint laws in 11 states were evaluated for their effect on motor vehicle fatality rates among young children. Data from 1976 through 1983 were analyzed using a monthly time-series design involving 54 months' pre-law and 12 months' post-law data. The 11 states collectively had a mean of 8.8 and a standard deviation of 3.6 fatalities per month among young children. Such small frequency counts resulted in a large proportion of the variation being random. Statistical power analyses found fatality reductions of 20% to 25% following the child restraint laws would be statistically significant. Reductions of such a magnitude were not found for young children. Based on these findings, we recommend that evaluations of highway safety policies focusing on a specific age group within a single state not be limited to analyses of traffic fatalities alone. Studies employing analyses of the larger numbers of crash-induced injuries have identified modest but important casualty reductions not found when analyzing fatalities alone.

Accidents, Traffic↗

PubMed1986

Preventing injuries to children through compulsory automobile safety seat use.

Effects of Michigan's law requiring all young children to be restrained when traveling in automobiles were assessed. Data on all reported residents of the state who were involved in crashes from 1978 through 1983 were examined using times-series analysis methods. Reported restraint use among injured children younger than 4 years of age involved in crashes increased from 12% before to 51% after the law was implemented. More importantly, a 25% decrease in the number of children younger than 4 years injured in crashes was associated with the law. A reduction of this magnitude was repeatedly found, whether analyzing the raw frequency of children injured, the rate of injured children per crashed vehicle, the rate of injured children per vehicle mile traveled, or the proportion of all injured occupants accounted for by young children. The substantial increase in restraint use and decrease in number of children injured appear to be direct results of the law, because similar changes did not occur among any of the comparison age groups. The 25% reduction in the number of young children injured means that an estimated 522 children per year are protected from injury because of Michigan's compulsory child restraint law.

Accidents, Traffic↗