Satisfaction with hearing aid use was surveyed in 78 subjects who had been evaluated for hearing aid use by formal speech audiometric measures (synthetic sentence identification). At -10 dB message-to-competition ratio, synthetic sentence identification performance was an average 30% better in satisfied than in dissatisfied users.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Alcohol use and burn injury.

Charts of 108 consecutive adult patients with flame burns of 20% to 70% total body surface area were reviewed to determine the incidence of acute alcohol intoxication and the likelihood that intoxicated patients were chronic alcohol abusers, to assess morbidity and mortality in the alcoholic patient with burns, and to characterize the intervention used in postdischarge treatment of the alcoholic patient with burns who survives. Twenty-seven percent of patients were acutely intoxicated at the time of injury. Evidence for chronic alcohol abuse was apparent in 90% of intoxicated patients, compared to only 11% of nonintoxicated patients (p = 0.0001). Alcoholic patients with burns not only had an overall mortality rate three times that of nonalcoholics (p = 0.001) but also died of smaller burns (p less than 0.05). Surviving alcoholic patients with burns required significantly more intravenous antibiotics and a longer hospitalization. Social service evaluation of use of alcohol was made in 84% of the cases of surviving intoxicated burn victims. Further intervention was undertaken in two thirds of these cases, usually involving an outpatient treatment program.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

An exploration of the travelling-time implications in the siting of specialist units--a case study.

This paper describes a case study in which travelling-time implications for siting health-care facilities were examined for one of the health-care regions in the UK. The results of the study were produced to assist a planning consortium with a specific problem of siting a regional specialty. The accessibility of the sites was measured in terms of travelling-time distributions for the population of the county of Essex, a rural part of the North-East Thames Regional Health Authority. The results show that the optimal selection of site(s) in Essex is dependent on the service provided by centres outside Essex and the relative importance of short and long travelling-times.

Catchment Area, Health↗

PubMedDate not supplied