PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

P Coetzer

Publications and source records attributed to P Coetzer.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Assessing impairment and disability for syndromes presenting with chronic fatigue.

Many disability claims are based on the subjective symptom of fatigue, which can be caused by a wide spectrum of diagnoses including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and cardiopulmonary diseases. Chronic pain is very often a compounding problem. It is vital for every insurer to have fair and objective criteria to distinguish between invalid claims and those with merit. This review article proposes objective tools and parameters to achieve this goal.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1993

Superior fatigue resistance of elite black South African distance runners.

Black athletes currently dominate long-distance running events in South Africa. In an attempt to explain an apparently superior running ability of black South African athletes at distances > 3 km, we compared physiological measurements in the fastest 9 white and 11 black South African middle-to long-distance runners. Whereas both groups ran at a similar percentage of maximal O2 uptake (%VO2max) over 1.65-5 km, the %VO2max sustained by black athletes was greater than that of white athletes at distances > 5 km (P < 0.001). Although both groups had similar training volumes, black athletes reported that they completed more exercise at > 80% VO2max (36 +/- 18 vs. 14 +/- 7%: P < 0.005). When corrections were made for the black athletes' smaller body mass, their superior ability to sustain a high %VO2max could not be explained by any differences in VO2max, maximal ventilation, or submaximal running economy. Superior distance running performance of the black athletes was not due to a greater (+/- 50%) percentage of type I fibers but was associated with lower blood lactate concentrations during exercise. Time to fatigue during repetitive isometric muscle contractions was also longer in black runners (169 +/- 65 vs. 97 +/- 69 s; P < 0.05), but whether this observation explains the superior endurance or was due to the lower peak muscle strength (46.3 +/- 10.3 vs. 67.5 +/- 18.0 Nm/l lean thigh volume; P < 0.01) remains to be established.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Corneal disease in rural Transkei.

A survey of external eye diseases was undertaken in Transkei; a total of 1,519 people were examined. A high incidence of climatic droplet keratopathy was found in the population, and this was a common cause of blindness in elderly men. Only 7 people had pterygia - all women. Both climatic droplet keratopathy and pterygia are believed to result from actinic damage, therefore the discrepancy noted in the prevalence of these two degenerative disorders was unexpected. Xerophthalmia was observed in 5 children, all of whom had mild forms of vitamin A deficiency eye disease. Although the number of children with overt vitamin A deficiency was small (0.58% of children aged less than 15 years), the importance of this finding lies in the possible pool of children without clinical disease but with low levels of vitamin A and therefore more likely to develop and to succumb to infections of the respiratory and alimentary systems. A further 20 people had corneal changes similar to those found in xerophthalmia; but since associated conjunctival signs were absent it is improbable that these changes were secondary to vitamin A deficiency.

Adolescent↗