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Biomedical subjects

L Melin

Publications and source records attributed to L Melin.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources
PubMed1988

Theft reduction in a grocery store through product identification and graphing of losses for employees.

Shoplifting and employee theft constitute a major problem for retailers. Previous research has described techniques for effectively reducing either type of theft but has not addressed the problem of thefts of unspecified origin. In a grocery store we evaluated the effect of identifying for employees frequently stolen products from three groups of items and graphing, twice weekly in the lunchroom, losses for the separate groups. After the products were identified and losses graphed, thefts from the three groups dropped from eight per day to two per day.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1988

Behavioural therapy in the clinical management of tinnitus.

Behavioural therapy was given to reduce discomfort and annoyance associated with severe tinnitus in 75 consecutive patients. Treatment was conducted within the routine clinical management. It included information and discussion about tinnitus, behavioural analysis and relaxation training combined with various cognitive strategies. The method of treatment was thus a form of coping technique. Self-recordings showed significant reductions of 'discomfort from tinnitus' as well as significant elevations in 'general mood' over a 3-month follow-up period. Interview findings indicated strong overall positive effects of treatment, as well as other positive side-effects on complaints such as tension headaches, dizziness, muscle tension and sleep disturbances. Implications for the clinical management of tinnitus sufferers are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Therapist-assisted versus self-help relaxation treatment of chronic headaches in adolescents: a school-based intervention.

This study compared the relative efficacy of a therapist-assisted relaxation treatment programme with a self-help approach and a self-monitoring condition in the treatment of chronic headaches in adolescents within a school setting. The subjects were 46 high school students, 16-18 years of age, who were randomly assigned to the three treatment conditions. The results indicated that the self-help approach was as effective as the therapist-assisted relaxation condition in reducing the students' headache, and that these findings were maintained at a 5-month follow-up evaluation. The results suggest that the self-help relaxation procedure is a potential low-cost alternative treatment to a more traditional therapist-based intervention condition.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

Identification of the promoter of the Bacillus subtilis sdh operon.

The Bacillus subtilis sdhCAB operon contains the structural genes for the three subunits of the membrane bound succinate dehydrogenase complex. An sdh-specific transcript of about 3,450 nucleotides was detected in vegetative bacteria. S1 nuclease mapping experiments showed that the sdh operon is transcribed from a sigma-43 promoter; the transcript starts at a guanosine residue 90 base pairs upstream from the first gene of the operon, sdhC. No sdh transcript was found in B. subtilis carrying the sdh-115 mutation, which decreases expression of the sdh operon by more than 99%. The sdh-115 mutation is a G-to-A transition in the -35 region of the sigma-43 promoter. The sdh operon is sensitive to glucose repression. When the sdh promoter region was used to drive transcription of the cat-86 gene this gene also became glucose repressed.

Bacillus subtilis↗
PubMed1987

Long-term effects of psychological treatment of tinnitus.

Twenty patients with severe tinnitus who had undergone behavioural treatment, including applied relaxation and perceptual restructuring, were re-assessed 9 months after completion of treatment. Among the self-recorded variables, tinnitus loudness, discomfort from tinnitus, depression, and irritation, discomfort from tinnitus was the only variable which was still significantly reduced. As part of the 9-month follow-up assessment, the patients' recall of the loudness and discomfort from their tinnitus was studied. Correlations between original recordings and recall data were low.

Behavior Therapy↗
PubMed1987

Hearing aids and tinnitus--an experimental group study.

From a waiting list consisting of hearing-impaired patients waiting for hearing aids to be fitted, 39 subjects who at interview also stated that they had tinnitus took part in an experimental group study with the aim of investigating the effect of a hearing aid on tinnitus. No subject had any previous experience of hearing aids. The subjects were randomly allocated to a treatment and a waiting list control group. After an initial interview, the routine programme for the fitting of hearing aids started in the treatment group, while the waiting list control group had to wait for 6 weeks before starting the same hearing aid rehabilitation programme. The hearing aids were fitted exclusively for hearing purposes. As expected, the hearing aids improved the hearing capacity, but they did not reduce tinnitus as recorded on a visual analogue scale. According to information obtained at the final interview, there were significant differences in tinnitus between subjects who used their aid for more than 2 hours daily and those who used it for less than 2 hours. However, the results of scaling (pre- and post-fitting) did not support this finding. The discrepancy between the scaling and interview data is probably due to demand characteristics.

Aged↗
PubMed1986

Behavioural treatment of scratching in patients with atopic dermatitis.

A behavioural method of habit reversal, in combination with a hydrocortisone cream, was compared with the use of cream alone in the treatment of 17 patients with atopic dermatitis. The patients were assigned randomly to two groups, one of which received the combination treatment and the other regular ointment treatment. The patients' skin status was assessed before and after treatment, and the patients recorded their scratching during the study. Both groups improved, but the group which received habit-reversal therapy improved significantly more. A strong correlation was found between reduction in scratching and improvement in skin status.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

Treatment of tinnitus by external electrical stimulation.

Transcutaneous electrical stimulation was used in 5 consecutive patients suffering from troublesome tinnitus. The study included three parts. Part one constituted an open trial using the stimulation equipment. During this part, 2 patients reported a reduced subjective tinnitus loudness. These 2 patients proceeded to part two where the effect from the stimulation equipment was compared with the effect from a placebo apparatus in an experimental double-blind trial. One of these 2 patients reported similar effects from active stimulation and placebo, while the other patient reported a constant positive effect from the active stimulation and no effect at all from placebo. The latter patient continued to part three where the effect of the equipment was studied over a 3-month period. Throughout the study, continuous self-recordings of the complaints was used. The results show that the electrical stimulation had a genuine tinnitus-reducing effect in one patient, remaining over a 3-month period, a positive placebo effect in one patient, but no effect in 3 patients. To determine the applicability of this method in the clinical population, carefully designed outcome studies, with appropriate control conditions, are required.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Psychological treatment of tinnitus. An experimental group study.

Twenty-four patients with moderately severe (grade 2) to severe (grade 3) subjective tinnitus participated in an experimental group study. The patients were randomly assigned to a treatment group and a waiting-list control group. Treatment was given with a coping technique and comprised 10 one-hour sessions. Following a corresponding period without treatment, the control group was treated similarly. Daily self-recording of the subjective tinnitus loudness, the discomfort from the tinnitus, depression and irritation was performed before and after treatment. In addition, psychoacoustic measurement was undertaken on three occasions. The treatment group improved significantly more than the waiting-list control group. After treatment of the latter group, combined data of both groups showed statistically significant improvements in all variables. The results show that tinnitus annoyance can be treated by psychological methods.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Tinnitus--incidence and handicap.

A questionnaire investigation, comprising 1091 patients, was conducted at a hearing centre. A majority of patients, 59%, claimed that they were troubled by tinnitus. A strong correlation was found between the laterality of tinnitus and that of subjective hearing loss. Neither a greater degree of hearing loss nor a longer duration of tinnitus was shown to be associated with more severe tinnitus. Among patients with both subjective hearing loss and tinnitus, 23% stated that tinnitus was the greater problem and 38% that their tinnitus and hearing loss were equally troublesome. The corresponding figures for patients with hearing impairment of such a degree that a hearing aid had been fitted were 9% and 41% respectively. Stress symptoms such as headache, tension of facial muscles and sleep disturbances were correlated to tinnitus. Psychosomatic complaints should therefore be taken into account in the treatment of tinnitus. Of patients with tinnitus, 83% were interested in obtaining treatment for their tinnitus. It is postulated that the previously reported predominance of left-sided tinnitus is due to a higher frequency of left-sided hearing impairment. A majority of patients with tinnitus and hearing impairment regarded their tinnitus as the major problem. Efforts towards investigation and treatment of tinnitus might therefore considerably improve the prospects for hearing rehabilitation.

Hearing Aids↗
PubMed1983

An experimental study of covert extinction on smoking cessation.

Twenty-one subjects participated on a volunteer nonpaid basis in a smoking cessation treatment experiment. The subjects were randomly assigned to three groups: one receiving training in covert extinction, one in relaxation, and a waiting list group serving as a control group. Behavioral (number of cigarettes smoked), physiological (pulse rate during treatment sessions) and cognitive (craving for cigarettes) assessments were made during and between sessions. Analysis of variance showed the time variable to be significant for number of cigarettes. Tukey's HSD tests showed a significant decrease in smoking after treatment for all three groups, and also for the two treatment groups until the follow-up occasion, although smoking had returned to a higher level (though not the initial one) after one month. There were also significant differences between the control group and both treatment groups with regards to pulse rate changes in treatment sessions. There was no significant change in craving, although a tendency pointed in the same direction for pulse rates. A tentative conclusion is that covert extinction is not a specific effective treatment method surpassing other nonspecific treatment procedures.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

The effect of auditory stimulation on epileptogenic electroencephalographic activity.

A 24-year-old man with epilepsia generalisata secundaria had a frequency of 5.70 seizures daily and an EEG epileptic activity of 5-15 s/min. Auditory stimulation was administered contingent on epileptogenic activity during daily experimental periods. In comparison to control base-line periods this first resulted in a reduction of seizure duration and thereafter in a reduction in seizure frequency. In a control experiment in which auditory stimulation was provided randomly there was no similar reduction of seizure duration or frequency. At the termination of the experiment the patient's seizure frequency had dropped to 2.66 per day.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1981

The effects of rearranging ward routines on communication and eating behaviors of psychogeriatric patients.

Several aspects of ward routine were changed to study the effects of environmental manipulation on the behavior of 21 psychogeriatric patients. Furniture was rearranged to be more conductive to conversation (i.e., grouped around tables instead of along corridor walls), and mealtime routines were changed to allow patients more time to eat, more freedom in choosing the composition of the meal, and more pleasant surroundings. Patients were divided into experimental and control groups, and data were collected on the frequency of verbal and tactile communication and degree of skill in eating behavior. Following baseline, environmental changes were introduced across behaviors. Results show that the frequency of communication increased for the experimental group, as compared to both baseline and the control group. Eating behavior also improved significantly for the experimental group. The study shows that minor changes in the physical environment can promote therapeutic change in the behavior of patients diagnosed as senile dementia.

Aged↗