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Biomedical subjects

R Brumfield

Publications and source records attributed to R Brumfield.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

A family systems approach to case management in a rural community setting.

Case management has proven to be an effective mechanism in assisting clients to seek and receive health care in the most appropriate setting. A family systems approach has been added to the case management program in a Midwestern rural community to encourage greater client and family participation in developing solutions to health care problems. Clients and families become more autonomous decision-makers and authors of change.

Case Management

Results of dorsal wrist synovectomies in the rheumatoid hand.

Seventy-eight patients with rheumatoid arthritis had 102 dorsal wrist tenosynovectomies, intraarticular synovectomies, and Darrach resection from 1962 to 1982. Follow-up after surgery averaged 11 years, with a range from 3 to 20 years. Pain was diminished in all but 17 wrists and motion decreased an average of 13 degrees. Synovitis recurred in 16 wrists and x-ray evidence of progressive intraarticular destruction was seen in 45 wrists. Revision surgery was necessary in 28 wrists.

Adolescent

Palmar shelf arthroplasty in the rheumatoid wrist. Results of long-term follow-up.

Sixty-three palmar-shelf arthroplasties (so-called pseudofusions of the wrist) that had been performed between 1970 and 1978 in forty-nine patients were evaluated. The length of follow-up averaged eighty-three months (minimum, twelve months for the wrists that fused and twenty-four months for those that did not). Preoperatively, all wrists were painful, with 96 per cent being moderately or severely so. Carpal subluxation was present in 79 per cent of the wrists. Postoperatively, pain recurred in 84 per cent of the wrists, but it was less severe (mild in 48 per cent, moderate in 35 per cent, and severe in 2 per cent). Sixty-eight per cent of the wrists fused spontaneously and were no longer painful. Of the twenty wrists (32 per cent) that did not fuse, 70 per cent were mildly or moderately painful. In patients who have rheumatoid arthritis, we found that palmar shelf arthroplasty was followed by a high rate of delayed spontaneous fusion and an unacceptably high rate of recurrent pain, although the pain was less severe.

Arthritis, Rheumatoid