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E G Tangalos

Publications and source records attributed to E G Tangalos.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

A bowel symptom questionnaire for the elderly.

While functional gastrointestinal complaints are common in the elderly, valid instruments for their assessment are lacking. We have developed the elderly bowel symptom questionnaire (EBSQ) and report its feasibility, reliability, and validity in medical outpatients and a larger sample of the community (aged 65-93). Reliability was measured by a test-retest procedure, while concurrent validity was documented by comparing physician interview and self-report data. Reliability (median kappa 0.65, interquartile range 0.49-0.79), and validity (median kappa 0.68, interquartile range 0.51-0.80) were very acceptable. A random sample of 424 independently living elderly persons was obtained; 77% replied to the mail survey. Medical record review showed that no current diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome was missed by the questionnaire. Our results confirm that the EBSQ was easy to understand and well accepted, and was a reliable and valid measure of gastrointestinal symptoms in older persons; this instrument may have important clinical and research applications.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

MR-based hippocampal volumetry in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

We evaluated a new magnetic resonance (MR)-based technique for performing volumetric measurements of temporal lobe structures. The technique was designed to assist in making the clinical diagnosis of dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT). We chose specific anatomic regions of interest because of their known involvement in memory function and in the neuropathology of DAT and used a regression model to assess the effects of age on the volumes of the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the hippocampal formation (HF). These measurements were normalized by total intracranial volume (TIV). The volumetric measurements of both the normalized ATL and HF were significantly smaller (p less than 0.001) in DAT patients (N = 20) than in controls (N = 22), but the HF volumes provided much better separation between the two groups. Eighty-five percent of the DAT patients fell below the range of the HF/TIV measurement for the control subjects. This separation held up over the entire age range studied. Normalized volumes of both the HF and ATL decreased with age significantly for both the DAT patients and the controls. These results support the contention that MR-based HF volumetric measurements are accurate in differentiating DAT patients from cognitively normal elderly individuals. This technique may be a useful adjunct in making the clinical diagnosis of DAT.

Aged↗
PubMed1992

Memory function in normal aging.

We evaluated memory function in a group of 161 community-dwelling, cognitively normal individuals aged 62 to 100 years recruited as part of the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer's Disease Patient Registry. We used the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test and the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test to evaluate two aspects of memory function thought to be sensitive to the effects of aging: learning (acquisition) and delayed recall (forgetting). The results were quite consistent and demonstrated that learning or acquisition performance declines uniformly with increasing age but is not related to education. Delayed recall or forgetting, however, remained relatively stable across age when adjusted for the amount of material initially learned. These findings are relevant for assessing normal memory function relative to the early impairments found in dementia and form a baseline against which memory performance can be assessed by the clinician. In particular, suspicion regarding a disorder of brain function affecting memory processes should be raised if learning performance declines more rapidly than expected or if delayed recall is impaired to any significant extent.

Aged↗
PubMed1990

Prevalence of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and concurrent traumatic life events in a general medical population.

A normative sample of 100 patients (59 women and 41 men) from the city of Rochester, Minnesota, and the surrounding rural area who came to the Mayo Clinic for a general medical examination were interviewed in a semistructured format by using a list of questions about childhood life events. Sexual abuse was reported by 16.9% of women and 0% of men, frequencies that are near the lower end of the spectrum of reported values from recent studies. Physical abuse was reported by 5% of the entire group. No association was observed between the two types of abuse. Physical abuse was associated with a significant degree of traumatic life events, but sexual abuse was not. Use of face-to-face interviewing, matched sex and ethnicity of the interviewer, and a high compliance rate substantially increase the probability that the female respondents in the current study were both representative and reliable.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

The autopsy and epidemiology--Olmsted County, Minnesota and Malmo, Sweden.

The existence of high quality, population-based, medical data facilitates the practice of modern epidemiology with its concomitant benefits for clinical practice and public health policy. Two exceptional examples of such databases are provided by Malmo, Sweden, and Olmsted County, Minnesota. This paper outlines briefly the similarities between these two geographic entities, and focuses, in particular, on the central role of the autopsy in Olmsted County. Changing temporal and spatial patterns of autopsy are reviewed as well as two important related issues: the role of consent and the medico-legal autopsy. The paper concludes with a summary of some of the more noteworthy contributions of autopsy-based epidemiological research in Olmsted County, and offers several recommendations for the establishment of a select network of special population-based study areas. These epidemiological "laboratories", through the interchange of data and tissue specimens, could make significant contributions to the study of diseases both nationally and internationally. Their interactive efforts and high quality data bases would help to increase the efficiency of the expenditure of scarce societal resources in epidemiology and health care.

Autopsy↗
PubMed1989

Resurrecting the autopsy: benefits and recommendations.

Maintenance of high autopsy rates is associated with specific benefits, especially for clinical practice and for clinical and epidemiologic research. We have compiled and evaluated (on the basis of related costs and benefits) a comprehensive list of recommendations to resurrect the autopsy and reestablish it as a central contributor to medical practice, teaching, and research.

Autopsy↗