Uterine perforation during sterilization by laparoscopy and minilaparotomy.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to I Chi.
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Little is known of the incidence, predictors or outcomes of luteal phase pregnancies (LPPs) in women presenting for voluntary interval female sterilization. A series of 37 LPPs was identified from a large multicenter female sterilization data set. Each LPP case was matched with two nonpregnant (NP) controls for clinic, operator, surgical approach, tubal occlusion technique and date of surgery. The LPP cases did not have a distinct demographic or clinical profile, but were generally more fecund than NP controls. LPPs were further compared with a second unmatched group consisting of 123 true sterilization failures (TSFs), pregnancies conceived after sterilization. Women with LPPs were more likely to have their pregnancies confirmed and/or terminated in the second trimester than were women with TSFs. The majority of LPPs were carried to term; the majority of TSFs ended in induced abortion. There were 12 ruptured ectopic pregnancies among the TSFs and none among the LPPs. Programmatic implications of the results are discussed.
Six centers participated in comparative studies of female sterilization conducted by the international Fertility Research Program. The incidence of technical failures (or failed attempts) was compared between patients sterilized with the tubal ring and those sterilized with other tubal occlusion techniques. The tubal ring was associated with a higher failure rate than electrocoagulation, the Rocket clip, or the modified Pomeroy technique. Of 1,035 tubal ring sterilizations, there were 38 technical failures. Reasons given by the operators for the failures, by frequency of occurrence, were surgical complications, conditions preexisting in the patients, and problems with the instruments. Most of these failures were remedied by changing to other techniques. In two patients, the procedure was completed by changing the approach from laparoscopy to laparotomy. In five others, sterilization was not completed. Case-control analysis was performed and three risk factors were delineated: obesity, prior use of an intrauterine contraceptive device and previous abdominal operations.
Women were used as their own controls in the comparison of presterilization and poststerilization menstrual patterns. Five parameters were studied: regularity of cycle length, duration and amount of flow and incidence of dysmenorrhea and intermenstrual bleeding. Three parameters in the electrocoagulation group (regularity of cycle length and duration and amount of flow) and one parameter in the tubal ring group(duration of flow) showed significant changes after sterilization. However, by controlling for the effect of previous contraceptive methods used, no significant menstrual pattern changes following sterilization were discerned in either technique group.
It is important to establish valid field measures of lower body strength in the elderly, and to provide representative normative values that are culturally specific in order to help health professionals in the risk assessment of this group. A sample of 1,038 elderly Hong Kong Chinese undertook a 30-sec chair stand test (30CST), with a subsample of 143 completing isometric measures of maximal hip flexion and knee extension, plus a habitual physical activity questionnaire. The 30CST was significantly, yet only weakly, correlated with the isometric strength measures (r approximately 0.3-0.4), but accurately discriminated between levels of habitual physical activity and across ages in decades. The normative values generated provide useful data for health screening in this elderly Hong Kong population, but do not compare well with their healthier US counterparts.
Because of the rising percentage of elderly in the population and the cost of health care expenditures, interest has increased in preventive health care services for the aging. Although the effectiveness of such programs is still being discussed by policy makers, the number of preventive health programs for the elderly is increasing. One of the oldest and largest preventive health programs for the elderly in the United States, the California Preventive Health Care for the Aging Program (PHCAP) is analyzed. The typical PHCAP participant was white, female, between 70 and 79 years of age, and living in an urban area. More than half (59 percent) of the PHCAP participants had some kind of private medical insurance in addition to Medicare coverage. Seventy-seven percent of the participants had seen a physician within the previous year. The most frequently reported chronic conditions were arthritis (31 percent), hypertension (24 percent), cardiovascular problems (13 percent), and vision and hearing problems (18 and 11 percent). Twenty-seven percent of the population were hypertensive; 7 percent of these had moderate to severe hypertension. Eighty percent of the participants were identified as having at least one problem; 40 percent were referred to a physician. Frequently, public health programs need to be evaluated without the benefit of a controlled trial design. This analysis of a statewide preventive health care program for the aging, PHCAP, shows the program's effectiveness in detecting a large number of health problems and making extensive referrals to other health professionals, particularly physicians. These findings should be useful to health practitioners and policy makers developing similar statewide programs for the elderly.
Control of hypertension is increasingly being recognized as a significant component of any preventive health care program for the elderly because of the high prevalence of hypertension in this group and its impact on health, particularly cardiovascular diseases. This study evaluates the hypertension screening component in one of the oldest and largest health promotion programs for the elderly in the United States, the Preventive Health Care for the Aging Program (PHCAP) in California. Our findings show that 26.7% of PHCAP participants had hypertensive readings on examination. Of these, 20% had mild hypertension, 5.6% moderate hypertension, and 1.1% severe hypertension. Urban participants were more likely than rural participants to have hypertension. Of those with severe hypertension, living alone was a significant factor when controlling for other variables. Overall, 40.2% of the hypertensive patients were not aware of their hypertension, and whites and Hispanics were less aware than blacks of their hypertensive status. Men were also less aware than women. These findings suggest ways to improve hypertension control programs for healthy elderly people who are self-referred to community-based preventive health care programs.