Biomedical subjects

María Carolina Vairo

Publications and source records attributed to María Carolina Vairo.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

[QEEG and brain mapping. Historial develoment, clinical practices and epistemological issues].

Although it has been more than two decades since brain mapping was introduced in medicine, its scientific value and clinical practice have not been proved. This paper makes an overview about the historical development of brain mapping, its usefulness in psychiatry and lays epistemological issues concerning the role of technology in medical settings. Both historical and technological development of qEEG gives us the opportunity to think about complexity between ethics, science, technology and medicine.

Brain↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Dementia, suicide attempts and suicide. A case study].

The prevalence of suicide or attempts to suicide in patients with any sort of dementia has not been sharply established. The only figures found through a bibliographic search on Medline belong to a paper by Larson (13) dated 1963, who points out that only 0,8 per cent of men and 0,3 per cent of women suffering dementia commit suicide. Although persons over 65 years old are less than the 13 per cent of the world total population, they actually commit between the 17 per cent and the 25 per cent of all the suicides. Usually it was claimed that people with dementia do not commit suicide, on one hand, because of the failure in the executive abilities and in the capability to carry it on, and due to the lost of insight, on the other, both of them acting as protective factors. The aim of this article is to analyse the five clinical cases of patients with dementia that were hospitalized in a psychiatric service of a general hospital after trying to commit suicide, and then compare these cases with other four cases of patients with dementia that commit suicide reported in the international literature.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[A comparative study of suicide notes in over 65 years old patients (preliminary data)].

OBJECTIVE: To determine, in older suicide attempt inpatients, differences between leaving a suicide note and not leaving it as regards age, sex, marital status, religion, living alone, level of education, present psychiatric treatment, severity of suicidal attempt, previous suicidal arousal, afterwards suicidal arousal, suicidal ideation, hopelessness, depression, dementia, narcissistic personality disorder, physical pain, previous suicide attempt, familiar history of suicide or suicide attempt. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This is a comparative, prospective, observational, transversal, single blind study. RESULTS: We studied 31 patients. Statistical significant associations were found between leaving a suicide note and hopelessness (p=0.03;OR=8.57;IC=1.19-95.33) and severe suicide attempt (p=0.022;OR=8.40;IC=1.28-63.88). DISCUSSION: Although associations between writing suicide notes and hopelessness have not been reported, our results are not surprising because, on one side, the severity of the suicide attempt is more related to hopelessness than to any other depressive parameter and, on the other side, leaving a suicide note is associated to severe suicide attempts. Finally, to feel hopeless and to leave a suicide note are associated to severe suicide attempts.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Suicidal behavior in adolescents. Risk factors (bibliography review and descriptive-analytical study)].

UNLABELLED: In the United States suicide is the third cause of death among adolescents. Suicidal behavior has increased a hundred percent over the last three decades; it is one of the most frequent psychiatric emergencies and the first cause of admission among inpatients between 15 and 24 years. OBJECTIVE: This paper is divided in two parts. The first one is made up of a review about risk factors for suicidal behavior in adolescents. The objective of the second part study is to estimate the frequency of risk factors for suicidal behavior in a sample of inpatients and to correlate them with high lethality suicidal attempts. METHOD: This is a retrospective, observational, descriptive, analytic transversal study based on information from 23 medical records. Variables were processed by bivariated analysis; relative risk was obtained considering high lethality suicidal attempt as dependent variable. RESULTS: Statistically significant relationships were found between high lethality suicidal attempt and no Axe II diagnosis and with the appearance of hopelessness. DISCUSSION: Suicidal attempts in adolescents with an Axe II diagnosis could be more related to self-harming than to a wish to die. Hopelessness can be considered an independent variable that determines the lethality of the suicidal attempt.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Sexuality and dementia: a case study].

In this paper we will discuss about sexuality in people with dementia, trying to show difficulties that arise and that affect the patient, his or her partner, the family and the geriatric institute if the patient lives there. Five clinical cases are described and deeply analyzed. Many times psychotropic medications are central in the treatment plan for people with dementia and some kind of sexual difficulty; but this is not enough. We think that it is necessary to combine pharmacologic approaches with others from human sciences that fit with our patients' difficulties.

Aged↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Adolescents' suicide attempt with their parent's psychotropic medication: descriptive study].

OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency in adolescents under 21 years old hospitalized in the Psychiatric Unit of Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires because of suicide attempt with pills taken by their parents. POPULATION AND SAMPLE: This study was carried out in a population of patients under 21 years old hospitalized in the Psychiatric Unit of Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires between September 2004 and February 2006. MATERIAL AND METHOD: This is a quantitative, prospective, observational and transversal study. The variables considered were age, gender, cause of admission, suicide method. When the attempt was done with pills we considered what kind of pills and whom they belong to; we also asked about familiar psychiatric history and familiar history of suicide attempt and suicide. RESULTS: We analyzed data from 85 patients. 67% (n=57) were female and 33% (n=28) male. Age range was between 13 and 21 years with a media of 18,05 +/- 2 years. The principal cause of admission was suicide attempt (40,5 +/- 3,68%) (n=45). The suicide attempt method most frequently used was the ingestion of pills (77,8 +/- 9,6%) (n=35). DISCUSSION: The majority of adolescents who took pills did it with medication belonging to their parents ( 82,8 +/- 16,32%) (n=29). Within this medication 93% (n=27) were psychotropics. The availability of suicide methods is related directly to suicide. Without this methods near many autoagressive impulses may be restrained. The importance of this availability of this methods is often underestimated instead of being modified by prevention.

Adolescent↗