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F Ortiz

Publications and source records attributed to F Ortiz.

43 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
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Barriers to healthcare access for cognitively impaired older Hispanics.

This study describes the development of the Barriers to Healthcare Access Survey (BHAS) used to evaluate seven barrier factors believed to influence healthcare access for elderly Hispanics with memory or cognitive problems. This study further reports the results of the BHAS applied to a community sample of cognitively impaired older Hispanics and their caregivers. The study includes (1) The BHAS's development and procedures to establish instrument validity and reliability; (2) Interviews with the BHAS on 65 cognitively impaired Hispanics who were undergoing full diagnostic assessment for dementia and their caregivers. The most frequently perceived healthcare barriers reported in our study were related to (1) personal beliefs (38%), (2) language proficiency (33%), and (3) economic status (13%). The BHAS possesses the requisite psychometric properties to be an effective instrument for an initial survey of perceived barriers to access health care for low-education, cognitively impaired, elderly Hispanic patients. The findings suggest that perceptions regarding illness, health consequences of aging, and beliefs about the utility of medicine do, in fact, influence healthcare use by older Hispanic patients with dementia. Language proficiency and economic status remain common barriers among elderly Hispanic subgroups, but when these barriers are experienced by the cognitively impaired, serious healthcare implications ensue, especially delay in early diagnosis and treatment.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Study of the DNA content by flow cytometry and proliferation in 281 brain tumors.

In this paper we investigate the distribution of DNA ploidy as well as proliferation rate (S phase of the cell cycle Ki-67 staining) in 281 tumors of the central and peripheral nervous system (87 meningiomas, 75 astrocytomas, 44 nerve sheath tumors, 25 brain metastases, 18 pituitary adenomas, 17 ependymomas, 12 oligodendrogliomas and 3 medulloblastomas) and their correlation with the histopathological grade. Considering all 281 tumors, aneuploidy is the most frequent finding present: 52%. This percentage increases with malignancy: 69% of malignant tumors are aneuploidy. Levels of aneuploidy decrease from brain metastases to pituitary adenoma (92% in brain metastases, 83% in oligodendrogliomas, 59% in nerve sheath tumors, 47% in ependymomas, 40% in astrocytomas, 35% in meningiomas and 33% in pituitary adenomas), but aneuploidy is also found in many benign tumors. With respect to proliferation rate of tumors, S phase above 20% were recorded in the more malignant tumors: brain metastases, oligodendrogliomas, high-grade ependymomas, high grade astrocytomas, and in atypical and malignant meningiomas, but this parameter is not able to distinguish between low and high grade tumors. However, Ki-67 reactivity was equivalent in all histologies with significant differences between low and high grade tumors.

Adenoma↗