Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to G B Thompson.
A case of choroid plexus papilloma of the cerebellopontine angle, extending from the upper cervical region to the level of the tentorial notch, in a 50-year-old woman is presented. The differential diagnosis of tumors in the cerebellopontine angle and the role of surgical treatment vs. radiation therapy are discussed.
The authors report 188 patients with acute cervical spine injury with fracture who underwent Halo-thoracic brace immobilization. The majority of the fractures were considered unstable. Early neurological assessment revealed 24 patients without neurological deficit. There were 164 patients with associated cervical cord injury; 84 patients with incomplete, and 80 patients with complete tetraplegia. Management consisted of skull traction and application of the Halo-thoracic brace about 1.3 weeks after admission. The average radiological union time was 11.5 weeks following a mean of 10.2 weeks of immobilization in a Halo apparatus. Satisfactory restoration of bone and ligament stability, with no significant posttreatment neck pain, was obtained in 168 cases (89%). This is comparable to the fusion rate achieved for cervical fractures in the literature. The follow-up periods range from 1 month to 6 years, with a mean of 10.8 months. The management and results in 73 patients with unilaterally and bilaterally locked facets with or without fractures are discussed. Complete tetraplegia is not considered a contraindication to Halo apparatus immobilization. The multiple factors responsible for overcoming the barrier of anesthetic skin are elucidated. Use of the Halo apparatus offers early mobilization and rehabilitation without neurological deterioration. Complications are few and insignificant.
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This report describes a 25-month-old child with an internal carotid artery injury that was caused by a fall upon the sharp end of a comb held in the mouth. The initial injury appeared trivial, but 24 hours later a right cerebral hemispheric infarct occurred. Delayed deterioration was caused by increased intracranial pressure and transtentorial herniation. Aggressive medical therapy was instituted for the control of intracranial pressure. The clinical and radiographic features are described in detail and the pertinent literature is reviewed. This is the first reported patient with this condition who survived once transtentorial herniation was present.
Zero-based budgeting (ZBB) is a management decision-making tool currently gaining wide acceptance. ZBB is a budgeting approach which is useful for planning, controlling and coordinating financial and human resources. It involves the re-evaluation of all budgeted activities in terms of priorities established by the management. The traditional process of incremental budgeting differs from ZBB in that only the planned changes are evaluated in the former. In incremental budgeting, the base budget is considered authorized and required little attention. The ZBB process focuses on the whol budget. This is accomplished by: (1) identifying decision units; (2) evaluating each decision unit in terms of performance, costs, benefits, and alternate means of accomplishiing the objectives; (3) ranking the decision packages; and (4) preparing a budget for the highest priority decision packages. The effect of the ZBB approach is that new high priority programs may be funded by eliminating or reducing existing lower-priority programs. ZBB is viewed as a logical process which can combine many of the elements of good management.
This article compares older black workers and older white workers on coverage under private pension plans, the receipt of pension benefits upon retirement, and the job characteristics associated with both coverage and receipt. Data are from the 1969 and 1975 interviews of the Retirement History Study and describe pre-ERISA conditions among persons in their late fifties to mid-sixties. Black workers were much less likely than white workers to have been covered by a private pension on their longest job. Moreover, among those who were covered, they were less likely to have received benefits. The racial differences appear to result in part from subtantial differences on job characteristics, particularly industry.
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This article, based on data from the Retirement History Study, examines coverage by an employee pension plan on the longest job and the extent to which covered workers received an employee pension upon retirement and the size of their benefits. It also examines the joint receipt of employee pension and OASDI benefits and the size of the combined benefits. Each of these pension variables is analyzed for differences by class of worker (private wage and salary or government), sex, and characteristics of the longest job (industry, occupation, tenure, recency of job, extent of employment, and annual earnings rate). The majority of completely retired individuals in their early to middle sixties in 1972 did not receive employee pension benefits in that year. Women employed in private industry on their longest job were the most disadvantaged in this regard. Even when they were fortunate enough to receive retirement benefits from employee pension plans, their benefits were substantially lower than those of men or of women employed in government.
Many private pension plans have provided benefit increases or other forms of protection against inflation to their retired workers in recent years. This article, based on panel data from the Retirement History Study, examines the extent to which completely retired persons in their sixties benefited from these increases from 1970 to 1974. The private pension benefits of retirees rose slightly during the period, but their purchasing power declined sharply on account of the considerable growth in the inflation rate. Social security benefits, on the other hand, rose substantially more than the consumer price index. As a result, total retirement benefits largely maintained or nearly maintained their purchasing power.
This article examines selected benefit characteristics--primary insurance amount, entitlement status, and actuarial reduction--of women aged 62 and over and the relationship between these characteristics and the receipt of income from other sources and the size of total income in 1971. Special attention is given to age variations in beneficiary and income factors and to the comparatively disadvantageous economic situation of the oldest cohorts of aged beneficiary women. A major conclusion is that the lower incomes of the oldest cohorts were largely due to the fact that OASDI cash benefits are not adjusted to reflect rising wage levels after retirement or to steady increases in the taxable maximum.
The charts were reviewed at 323 patients who underwent a total of 578 ventricular shunting procedures at the Vancouver General Hospital, the original procedure having been done between 1960 and 1970 inclusive. There were 503 ventriculoatrial shunts, 38 ventriculo-peritoneal shunts, 34 Torkildsen procedures and three other procedures. The complications of the 503 ventriculo-vascular shunts, and the technique variables that might be related to these complications, were subjected to computer analysis.
Free amino compounds were measured in 16 rapidly frozen epileptogenic foci excised from temporal or frontal cortex of nine patients with focal epilepsy, and in single cortical biopsy specimens obtained from 16 nonepileptic patients. Unlike the findings of a previous study, glutamic and aspartic acids were not diminished in the foci, nor was there a decrease in gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) or taurine levels. Glycine content was markedly elevated in two of 16 epileptogenic foci. These results do not suggest that deficiencies of GABA or of taurine, amino acids that may act physiologically as inhibitory neurotransmitters or modulators of inhibition, are causes of focal epilepsy, nor do they provide a logical basis for clinical trials of taurine in treatment of human epilepsy.
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Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.