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Biomedical subjects

R K Griffiths

Publications and source records attributed to R K Griffiths.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

General practitioners and public health.

Family Health Service Authorities (FHSAs), since 1st April 1991, have been both 'managed', by the Regional Health Authority, and 'managing', their contractor services. Both situations are relatively new to them, their Region and the contractors. We examine the opportunities and potential problems of this major strategic change. These relate to: (1) the establishment of effective coordination between providers of primary care services; (2) the establishment of minimum basic standards of care and administration for GPs (based on those set for training practices by the Regional Advisors in General Practice); (3) the development and validation of a data collection system from General Practice which could be used to establish a morbidity database from general practice as a means of health needs assessment as well as for performance review.

Family Practice

Stress distribution in the scapula studied by neutron diffraction.

High intensity neutron beams provide a method of measuring the preferred orientation of apatite crystals in bulk samples of bone. Measurements at seven different sites on the scapula show that the c axes of the crystals lie preferentially along the directions of pull of the attached muscles. The highest orientation is found at positions under the influence of only a single group of muscles, such as M. teres major or M. infraspinatus. In intermediate regions a multiple distribution of crystals is found, able to withstand stresses in more than one direction. The technique provides a method of assessing the distribution of stress in bones.

Animals

Neutron diffraction studies of lumbar vertebrae.

Neutron diffraction measurements of the orientation of the apatite crystals show a significant preference of their c-axes for the vertical direction. This preference increases from bottom to top of each vertebral body and is substantially greater for the second than for the fifth lumbar vertebrae. This is in line with the predominantly vertical forces which the former withstands.

Apatites