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T L Horn

Publications and source records attributed to T L Horn.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1985

Evaluation of depression in a general hospital: utility and limitations of the dexamethasone suppression test.

Use of the DST was studied in medically hospitalized, depressed patients. Although complicating medical factors necessarily excluded nearly 60% of referrals, post-dexamethasone plasma cortisol values were significantly higher in 14 major depressives appropriate for the DST as compared to 12 patients with milder, subsyndromal depressive conditions. Using a plasma cortisol criterion of greater than 7 micrograms/dl, the DST identified major depression with 57% sensitivity and 92% specificity in this subsample (p less than 0.005). While limited by a high exclusion rate, the DST may be useful for confirmation of major depression in carefully screened general hospital patients. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Depressive Disorder↗
PubMed1985

Agoraphobia.

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Adult↗
PubMed1979

Patterns of utilization of a neuropsychiatric assessment unit.

During a one-year period an inpatient psychiatric ward specializing in the evaluation of neuropsychiatric disorders admitted 306 patients for neurodiagnostic services and 119 general psychiatric patients for brief treatment. About half the neurodiagnostic patients were referred by sources not affiliated with the unit, and about a quarter came from outside the immediate area, indicating that a variety of community agencies relied on the unit as a referral facility. In nearly 60 per cent of the cases evaluated, suspected medical or neurologic abnormality was confirmed and the probable etiology determined, while in only a small percentage was a previously unsuspected abnormality detected; this combination of outcomes suggests that most referrals were appropriate and that the unit's main function was to clarify etiologic relationship and design treatment plans.

Diagnostic Services↗
PubMed1977

Psychotic pica, nicotinism, and complicated myocardial infarction.

The authors report a case of a schizophrenic patient who repeatedly consumed a wide variety of inedible materials, including significant quantities of tobacco. The phenomenology of this behavior, as well as its psychiatric and medical complications are discussed. It is probable that chronic nicotinism contributed to this patient's refractoriness to psychiatric treatment and to his eventual cardiovascular crisis. The occurrence of pica as a manifestation of severe psychopathology was vividly described by the early pioneers of neuropsychiatry, but has received little attention in recent psychiatric literature. This is in marked contrast to the syndrome of psychogenic water intoxication which continues to be reported frequently. The majority of descriptions of pica have dealt with its occurrence in children, in pregnant women, and as a societal practice in certain cultures studied from a medico-anthropologic point of view. The toxic organic brain syndrome caused by chronic ingestion of nicotine-containing products has also been neglected in psychiatric publications. Descriptions of the neuropsychiatric complications of subacute and chronic nicotinism have been restricted to textbooks of toxicology, where greater emphasis has been given to the acute effects of large quantities of nicotine, often in forms other than tobacco. The following case illustrates the near-fatal practice of tobacco pica in a psychotic patient and dramatically demonstrates the systemic and central nervous system effects of nicotinism.

Adult↗