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[Life-style and cancer prevention. Activities of the Department of Cancer Prevention, Osaka Cancer Prevention and Detection Center].

The role of the Department of Cancer Prevention, Osaka Cancer Prevention and Detection Center which was established in 1987 is to conduct practical research works in the area of primary prevention of cancer through life-style modification. We have so far examined the applicability and efficacy of such tools as population-based smoking cessation contest, nicotine gum, health risk appraisal and "Know Your Body" program. The outline of our activities and future plans are introduced.

Alcohol Drinking

[Prevention of special complications in gynecologic operations. Part 2. Prevention of adhesions in the peritoneal region, prevention of wound healing disorders].

Own experiences in the prevention of certain complications of gynecological operations are presented. Prophylaxis proved to be possible intraoperatively in capillary bleedings and infections as well as postoperatively in disorders of intestinal motility, peritoneal adhesions and healing disturbances. The successful treatment of our patients in 1976 (1583 major operations including 158 patients at high risk) is summarized in suggestions for therapy.

Female

From preventive policy to preventive practice.

Characteristics of the relationship of preventive policy to preventive practice are reviewed. The relatively low emphasis on prevention compared with treatment programs is discussed and the particular problem of the "anonymity" of prevention is defined. Prevention programs suffer in part because of the lack of identity of the specific individuals benefited. Examples from the cardiovascular diseases are used to illustrate the general points. The contrast between community- and patient-oriented prevention is important. Adequate levels of disease prevention and health promotion will never be attained one case at a time. Interactions among individuals are determinants of environmental behavioral factors relevant to health. The policy forming process is intrinsically interactive in nature. The Institute of Medicine's 1988 study of the future of public health is reviewed with respect to its emphasis on professional participation in the health policy process. Prevention is an essentially multidisciplinary area requiring the participation of many professions and disciplines. This property of prevention will be enhanced in the future. Ten principles which can be useful in translating preventive policy into preventive practice are presented.

Cardiovascular Diseases

The benefits of reducing cholesterol levels: the need to distinguish primary from secondary prevention. 2. Implications for heart disease prevention in Australia.

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the number of coronary heart disease (CHD) events arising from the primary and secondary prevention populations of middle-aged Australian men, and the potential impact in each setting of lipid-lowering therapy on death from CHD. DESIGN: Analysis based on results of a meta-analysis of drug trials to lower cholesterol levels and data from the Hunter Region Heart Disease Prevention Programme. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Death from CHD. RESULTS: Over a five-year period, 1520 fatal CHD events would be expected in a population of 100,000 men aged 35 to 69 years. Approximately 52% would arise from subjects already known to suffer from CHD. We predict that treating everyone in the secondary prevention group who has a blood cholesterol level of greater than 5.2 mmol/L (approximately 5000 subjects) would prevent 118 deaths, compared with 51 deaths prevented by treating those in the primary prevention group who have cholesterol levels of greater than 6.2 mmol/L (approximately 30,000 subjects). The outcome is maintained in several sensitivity analyses. CONCLUSIONS: The majority of persons in whom death from CHD might be prevented by treatment to lower cholesterol levels can be identified by targeting subjects for secondary prevention. Therapy in the secondary prevention setting is much more efficient than in primary prevention.

Adult

Inter-rater reliability of preventable death judgments. The Preventable Death Study Group.

This study examined the inter-rater reliability of preventable death judgments for trauma. A total of 130 deaths were reviewed for potential preventability by multiple panels of nationally chosen experts. Deaths involving a central nervous system (CNS) injury were reviewed by three panels, each consisting of a trauma surgeon, a neurosurgeon, and an emergency physician. Deaths not involving the CNS were reviewed by three panels, each consisting of two trauma surgeons and an emergency physician. Cases for review were sampled from all hospital trauma deaths occurring in Maryland during 1986. Panels were given prehospital and hospital records, medical examiner reports, and autopsy reports, and asked to independently classify deaths as not preventable (NP), possibly preventable (POSS), probably preventable (PROB), or definitely preventable (DEF). Cases in which there was disagreement about preventability were discussed by the panel as a group (via conference call). Results indicated that overall reliability was low. All three panels reviewing non-CNS deaths agreed in only 36% of the cases (kappa = 0.21). Agreement among panels reviewing CNS deaths was somewhat higher at 56% (kappa = 0.40). Most of the disagreements, however, were in judging whether deaths were NP or POSS. Agreement was higher for early deaths and less severely injured patients. For non-CNS deaths agreement was also higher for younger patients. When both autopsy results and prehospital care reports were available reliability increased across panels. A variety of approaches have been used to elicit judgments of preventability. This study provides information to guide recommendations for future studies involving implicit judgments of preventable death.

Central Nervous System

Medical students' improved attitudes toward prevention of cardiovascular diseases from entry to graduation. Preventive Cardiology Academic Cooperative Research Group of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

First-year medical students have been previously reported to have positive attitudes about disease prevention, in general, and about cardiovascular disease prevention, in particular. Whether medical school experiences exert a positive, negative, or neutral effect on prevention-oriented attitudes in medical students is not known. We assessed attitudes toward heart disease prevention in 770 entering medical students enrolled at six selected American medical schools, each having some curricular emphasis on preventive cardiology, and repeated the attitude survey near graduation in the 750 fourth-year students enrolled in the six schools. Response rates were similar at each of the schools for each administration and averaged 88% in entering students and 74% in the graduating students. We used two mean attitude scores, ranging from 1.0 to 5.0 on a Likert scale, 5.0 representing the most positive attitude. The score treating the importance of primary prevention increased from 4.08 +/- 0.39 to 4.35 +/- 0.41. The attitude score concerning the importance of research in preventive cardiology also increased from 3.65 +/- 0.56 to 3.90 +/- 0.64 (P less than .0001 for both comparisons of first-year to fourth-year students). Analyses by school revealed similar increases, as did analyses for men, women, whites, and nonwhites. The results indicate that positive attitudes toward heart disease prevention can become even more positive during medical school. The perpetuation of positive attitudes should contribute to improved clinical prevention behaviors when these graduates embark on careers in medicine.

Adult

Preventive care guidelines: 1991. American College of Physicians. Canadian Task Force on the Periodic Health Examination. United States Preventive Services Task Force.

Clinicians increasingly are urged to integrate preventive services into their clinical practices. To facilitate this process, several groups have developed practice guidelines for preventing disease in asymptomatic patients. In this paper, we compare and contrast preventive guidelines from the American College of Physicians (ACP), the Canadian Task Force on the Periodic Health Examination (CTF), the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), and other well-known authorities. We chose these groups because they based their recommendations on explicit methods that include critical appraisal of the pertinent literature. Recommendations from these authorities usually are consistent with each other. Moreover, the ACP, CTF, and USPSTF all favor a shift away from the relatively simple classification of patients by age and sex for general preventive interventions to the more complex stratification of patients by additional risk factors and the formulation of a selective prevention strategy that is specific to each risk profile. Some guidelines, particularly the criteria used to define patients who are at increased risk for preventable disease and who should have more intensive surveillance, are difficult to interpret. Further research is needed to address some areas of disagreement and ambiguity. In addition, new tools must be developed to help physicians apply preventive guidelines, particularly those that require noting many patient-specific characteristics.

Canada

The Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine's recommendations for postgraduate education in prevention.

The Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, prepared in 1989 by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, assesses the effectiveness of 169 types of preventive interventions. In 1990, the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine formed a panel to review the guide and recommend ways it could be used to enhance both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education. This paper outlines the panel's recommendations of the types of knowledge and attitudes on which postgraduate medical education in prevention should be built. Detailed recommendations are presented, based on the summary findings of the guide, for residency education in prevention. Implementation of these recommendations will integrate preventive services into the continuum of medical care. These recommendations are presented to achieve the goal of educating physicians to approach the total patient, putting the patient's health rather than the disease process in the forefront of primary medical care.

Education, Medical, Graduate

Experimental gram-negative bacterial sepsis: prevention of mortality not preventable by antibiotics alone.

Outbred Swiss mice were inoculated intraperitoneally or intravenously with one 90 to 100% lethal dose of Escherichia coli O:18, Proteus mirabilis, or Klebsiella pneumoniae. After carefully timed intervals, aminoglycoside antibiotics were begun at dosages nnd intervals predetermined to constitute optimal therapy. With progressive increases in delay of antibiotic therapy, mortality rates increased progressively from 0% to 90 to 100%. Standardized models of infection were developed by selecting delay periods before initiating antibiotic therapy such that 50 to 70% mortalities resulted. Utilizing these models, agents with reputed anti-endotoxin activity were administered concomitantly with the delayed antibiotic therapy to determine if any could prevent gram-negative septic mortality no longer preventable by the antibiotics alone. The following were observed: (i) adrenal corticosteroids prevented mortality that was no longer preventable by optimal aminoglycoside antibiotics alone. The following were preventable by optimal aminoglycoside antibiotic therapy alone; (ii) specific antisera also did so, provided anaphylaxis was circumvented; (iii) in one model (P. mirabilis), such protection by adrenal corticosteroids and specific antiserum could be additive; (iv) adrenal corticosteroids and specific antiserum acted synergistically with the aminoglycoside antibiotics--no protection was achieved by delayed administration of the steroids or antiserum alone; (v) timing was crucial--the synergistic protective activity of adrenal corticosteroids and of specific antiserum with aminoglycosides declined rapidly as infection progressed; (vi) cyclophosphamide pretreatment markedly impaired the synergistic protective activity of specific antiserum and of adrenal corticosteroids with aminoglycosides; (vii) no reputed anti-endotoxin agents other than adrenal corticosteroids and specific antiserum proved capable of preventing mortality not preventable by aminoglycoside antibiotics alone. These included antisera to rough mutant Enterobacteriaceae of Rc, Rd, and Re chemotypes, anticoagulants (heparin), ascorbic acid, antiproteolytic agents (aprotinin), alpha adrenergic blockers (phenoxybenzamine), prostaglandin synthetase inhibitors (acetylsalicylic acid, sodium salicylate, indomethacin), nicotinamide, glucose, and insulin-glucose-potassium mixtures.

Adrenal Cortex Hormones

Choices in preventive strategies: experience with the prevention of congenital toxoplasmosis in The Netherlands.

The control congenital toxoplasmosis mainly relies on preventive measures, that can be applied on an individual basis as well as within the scope of a collective preventive programme. Several strategies can be adopted, each with its possibilities and impossibilities: primary prevention (health education), secondary prevention (serological screening) or a combination of primary and secondary prevention. Whatever strategy is chosen, decisions have to be taken with respect to the procedures. This paper lists the choices to be made and their consequences. The debate in international literature on the desirability of preventive programmes is summarized.

Female

Health promotion and disease prevention in the care of older adults: preventive practice in primary care.

Prevention is an important and appropriate component of the primary care of older adults. Office-based approaches to prevention include routinely scheduled examinations for health maintenance and case finding for early disease and disability during visits scheduled for other purposes. The primary care clinician is the optimal person for effective preventive intervention in patients 65 years and older. The spectrum of preventive activities ranges from screening by history taking, physical examination, and laboratory tests to intervention by counseling and therapeutic intervention. Unfortunately, substantial barriers exist to widespread incorporation of preventive practices into primary care, including the need for information and the low level of third-party reimbursement in this area.

Age Factors

What's preventing more prevention? Barriers to development at academic medical centers.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the views of leaders in academic medicine concerning the need for programs in preventive medicine (PM) and the prevailing barriers to program development. DESIGN: Structured interviews. SETTING: Medical schools of the United States. PATIENTS/PARTICIPANTS: 90% of deans and chairpersons of departments of medicine and preventive medicine. INTERVENTIONS: None. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: 91% considered academic PM underdeveloped and 100% considered their own programs average or worse. Identified barriers to development included funding constraints, academic partiality to biomedicine, inadequate quality of preventive medicine research and faculty, public preferences for technologic care, and organization of academic medical centers (AMCs). While 80% perceived a shortage of able PM faculty and 60% considered PM research quality to be inadequate, only 12% of PM units gave research training high priority. While 95% of respondents held that AMCs should develop community programs and 75% identified social problems as a cause of chronic diseases, 65% agreed that community programs are not considered scholarly. Only 23% of PM units gave community service high priority. CONCLUSIONS: A policy contradiction exists: academic leadership agreed on the problems and needed changes in PM, yet the problems were often attributed to nonacademic sources, particularly finding and public preferences, and current academic practices commonly fail to address recognized developmental barriers within academic institutions. A chain of barriers is apparent. Breaking the chain may require a change in our understanding of the role of prevention.

Attitude of Health Personnel

The physician's role in injury prevention: beyond the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report.

Injuries and their prevention have received little attention by the medical community, despite the fact that injuries are the leading cause of premature death. However, much can be done to reduce the number and severity of injuries, and the practicing physician has an important role to play in this process. This report outlines the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report recommendations for prevention strategies to reduce injuries and then seeks to define a broader role for the physician in prevention injuries that extends beyond the confines of office-based practice. While screening and counseling have proven effectiveness in certain situations, interventions that are passive or automatic in action, such as air bags, have proven to be more effective long-term solutions to reduce both the number and the severity of injuries. The author outlines and provides examples of seven areas where physicians can have a major impact either directly or through implementing effective injury-control strategies. These are: treatment, education, screening, hazard identification, research, advocacy, and policy making. Using all of these approaches, physicians can play a truly effective role in reducing the burden of injuries for their patients.

Accident Prevention

Preventing weight gain in adults: a pound of prevention.

This study evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of a program for weight gain prevention in normal-weight adults. Two hundred nineteen participants were randomized to either weight gain prevention treatment or no treatment for a period of 12 months. Those in the treatment group received monthly newsletters relating to weight management, participated in a financial incentive system, and were offered an optional four-session education course in the sixth month of the program. Results demonstrated high interest in weight gain prevention among individuals who were not objectively overweight. Participation, as measured by return of postcards sent with each newsletter, was approximately 75%. Results after 1 year showed a net weight loss in the group receiving the program of 1.8 lb compared to those in the control group. Eighty-two percent of program participants maintained or lost weight, compared to 56% of the control group. It is concluded that programs for weight gain prevention are feasible in adults and may be more effective than weight loss treatment programs in addressing the problem of community-wide obesity.

Adult

US Preventive Services Task Force. Automobile injury--selected risk factors and prevention in the health care setting.

Every year, highway crashes cause tens of thousands of deaths and millions of nonfatal injuries, many of which can be prevented. Following a mandate from the US Preventive Services Task Force, in this article we describe the magnitude of the automobile injury problem, identify injury risk factors that might be reduced by clinically based preventive programs, and review reports of interventions by health professionals to promote the use of child restraint devices, the only area in which we found published evaluations. We conclude that despite the lack of experimental evidence of the long-term effectiveness of clinically based efforts to promote occupant restraint use, such efforts may be warranted because of the enormous social and economic costs of automobile injury. In addition, physicians and other health professionals are urged to consider promoting nonclinical automobile injury prevention measures.

Accidents, Traffic

Prevention and treatment of kidney stones. Role of medical prevention.

Despite dramatic advances in stone removal brought by extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, there is a continuing need for medical diagnosis and prevention. Justifications for the medical approach include prevention of recurrence (medical treatment could prevent further stone formation, unlike a surgical approach), efficacy of prophylactic program (recurrent stone formation may be inhibited in most patients using a variety of treatment programs), inhibition of spontaneous passage (by medical treatment, although not amenable to surgical treatment), potential avoidance of renal colic (occurring before stone removal avoided by preventing recurrence), reduced need for stone removal (achieved by successful medical treatment), correction of extrarenal manifestations (deleterious extrarenal manifestations of a stone-forming condition, such as bone disease in distal renal tubular acidosis, may be corrected by appropriate medical treatment) and cost-effectiveness. The cost of medical care is estimated to be half to a fourth that of surgical care. The need and type of medical treatment should be appraised continually to accommodate advances in techniques of stone removal.

Colic

Antiplatelet therapy is effective in the prevention of stroke or death in women: subgroup analysis of the European Stroke Prevention Study (ESPS).

Previous stroke prevention studies have suggested that the efficacy of antiplatelet therapy may be less in women than in men. This however, could be due to the small number of women in these trials and the low incidence of cases among female subjects. The European Stroke Prevention Study was a multicenter trial comparing the effect of a combination of dipyridamole 75 mg t.i.d and acetylsalicylic acid 330 mg t.i.d. to placebo in the secondary prevention of stroke or death after one or more recent attacks of TIA (transient ischemic attack), RIND (reversible ischemic neurological deficit) or stroke of atherothrombotic origin. From the 2500 patients recruited, 1307 patients were from a single center, Kuopio, East Finland. Forty-five percent of the patients were women. The number of end-point events (stroke or death from any cause) in women was one-third lower than that in men. End-point reduction in the treatment group was about 50% in women and about 40% in men, significantly lower than in the placebo group in both sexes. Thus, in the relatively randomly selected patient population from one Finnish center, a combination of dipyridamole and acetylsalicylic acid is as effective in women as in men in the prevention of stroke or death. It is unclear, however, whether this beneficial effect in both sexes is due to aspirin only or to the combination therapy of aspirin and dipyridamole.

Aspirin