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G Scalia

Publications and source records attributed to G Scalia.

40 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
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The leisure time and the third age: the experience of a geriatric day hospital.

Leisure time represents an important part of the so-called 'successful aging' and contributes to overcome the problems related to the reduction of the social roles, favoring a better subjective adaptation to old age. In this work we observed the elderly population frequenting our Day Hospital, by estimating the affective sphere (geriatric depression scale, GDS), the autosufficiency (activity of daily living, ADL; and instrumental activity of daily living, IADL) and the schooling years in correlation with the type and length of leisure time activities during the day. These data have been compared with those of the national statistics (ISTAT). The analyses revealed a very wide diffusion of the utilization of mass media and a large interindividual differentiation of the modes of using leisure time. The correlations between the indices of affectivity and autosufficiency show an effect on the types of leisure time activities, while the scholarity of the subjects has no influence on it. These results suggest considering leisure time as an indispensable part of the relational life of elderly subjects, having an important 'valency' for the affective sphere and the individual expectations and needs.

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The prevalence of various arrhythmias in normotensive and hypertensive elderly patients.

The prevalence of the most frequent arrhythmias was studied in a geriatric day hospital. Patients older than 65 years have been considered, of them 118 were normotensive and 56 hypertensive subjects. Comparison of the two groups revealed no statistically significant difference either in the frequency of occurrence or in the type of arrhythmias. Dividing the hypertensive patients in the Lown's classes, only those of class 3 or over displayed a considerably higher frequency of arrhythmias than the normotensive subjects. The results demonstrate the age-dependent increase of the prevalence of arrhythmias in general, and the increased occurrence of complex ventricular types in the hypertensive subjects.

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Echocardiographic studies on elderly patients with white coat hypertension to evaluate cardiac organ damages.

This case-control study was aimed at evaluating the distribution of some echocardiographic signs of cardiac organ damages in elderly patients with white coat hypertension (WCH), as compared with a normotensive group of elderly. Correlations between the signs of cardiac organ damages and the clinical and ambulatory blood pressure parameters (obtained by means of a 24-h monitoring) have also been evaluated. The first screening covered 258 elderly subjects of both sexes, aged from 65 to 82 years, with clinical diagnosis of hypertension (systolic and diastolic blood pressures being higher than 160 and 95 mmHg, respectively). Of this group, 116 subjects remained in the final pool, and their echocardiographic parameters were compared with 33 normotensive (N) subjects. Out of the 116 clinically hypertensive patients, 29 (25%) displayed WCH, according to the established criteria. Variance analyses on the ranks followed by Dunn's test revealed no statistically significant differences between the N and WCH groups, while the hypertensive group (H) proved to be significantly different from both the N and the WCH groups. In addition to the descriptive statistics, an analysis of correlations between the pressure variables and the echocardiographic parameters has also been performed by means of a forward-stepwise multiple linear regression method. The models generated by this regression analysis covered only the ambulatory diurnal systolic pressure, and the clinical diastolic pressure in most of the cases of the echocardiographic parameters, taken as independent variables. In all these cases, the standardizecl correlation coefficient of the diurnal systolic pressure was always higher than that of the clinical diastolic pressure, indicating that the echocardiographic parameters depend more strongly on the first than on the second pressure value.

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