Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to K Hein.
In addition to dealing with health problems that an adolescent may contract before institutionalization, the pediatrician should be concerned with conditions arising from the institutional setting itself that can affect the adolescent's health or impede the development of adolescent "tasks."
Eight retarded teenage girls are presented whose cases highlight some of the considerations in pregnancy prevention for this population. Their mean age was 15.8 years, and 7 were considered to be educable (IQ 50-70) and 1 of borderline intelligence. Presenting complaints included pregnancy, sexual molestation, salpingitis, and a request for contraception in 2 patients each. Pelvic examination with no anesthesia was accomplished after multiple educational sessions in 7 patients. Contraceptive choices included an intrauterine device (2 patients), postcoital estrogen (1 patient), abstinence (1 patient), no contraception (2 patients). Of the 2 pregnant teenagers, 1 elected to continue and 1 to terminate. Unique considerations were the need for current information about consent, alternatives to sterilization, specific risks of contraception for the retarded with medical problems, and communication skills for eliciting sexual information and attitudes. The 8 patients presented reflect the special features posed by the interaction of adolescence, sexuality, and retardation.
The increased prevalence of venereal disease among adolescents has resulted in a rise in nonacute salpingitis. Laparoscopy was evaluated as an aid in the diagnosis and treatment of presumed nonacute salpingitis in 29 adolescents. The patients had a mean duration of symptoms of 5.5 months, 50% had a recent history of discharge and/or bilateral pelvic pain, and on examination 50% had pain on motion of the cervix, 75% had adnexal tenderness, and 50% had a palpable adnexal fullness or mass. Anatomic findings at laparoscopy included normal pelvic structures in 8, active salpingitis in 13 and nonacute disease in 8. The anaerobic, aerobic, and viral peritoneal cultures obtained at laparascopy from 22 patients resulted in no growth in 18. The four with positive cultures had one organism identified in three cases and two organisms in one case. Anatomic findings were more helpful in diagnosis than the bacteriologic analysis, and our results suggest that laparoscopy increases diagnostic accuracy in the management of presumed nonacute salpingitis.
It is estimated that there are 500,000 youngsters in detention in the United States per year. Detention facilities offer a unique environment in which adolescents at high risk for medical problems can be identified and treated. A health care program within the secure juvenile detention facility for New York is described in order to demonstrate how an academic medical center can effect improvement in the health status of underserved, incarcerated youth while meeting professional educational objectives for health trainees. Results of medical services are given for the past 11 years. Medical problems were diagnosed in 46% of the 47,288 adolescents examined. The conditions were grouped into those related to the legal status of the youngsters, socioeconomic background, and/or the institutional setting. The interrelationship of medical conditions with legal, ethical, and youth advocacy issues were demonstrated. The setting affords on opportunity to train primary care physicians with special emphasis on issues such as the nature of the doctor-patient relationship, confidentiality, and patient advocacy, while providing a necessary service to medically disadvantaged adolescents.
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Over the past decade (1967 to 1977), 76,000 adolescents were screened for a history and somatic signs of illicit drug use at a detention center for juveniles and at an adolescent inpatient unit of a university-affiliated hospital. Dramatic changes in the patterns of drug abuse are reported. Opiate use was prominent in the first half of the decade with a peak in 1970 to 1971 and marijuana use more prominent in the last five years. Inhalant abuse as represented by glue and halogenated cleaning fluids was documented only early in the decade, while the existence of stimulant and depressant abuse follows still other patterns over the decade. Hospital admissions for serious somatic complications of illicit drug use, namely, overdose, drug-related death, hepatic coma, detoxification, and viral hepatitis, were correlated only with trends in the use of opiates. Awareness of drug abuse patterns among adolescents is important for the health professional so that complications can be diagnosed and treated and educational efforts properly directed.
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Between 1973 and 1976, laparoscopy was performed on 50 girls aged 12 to 18 years old for evaluation of abdominal pain severe enough to warrant hospitalization. In nine patients, a pelvic mass was suspected on physical examination or ultrasonography. Twenty-three patients had histories of previous episodes of salpingitis, but negative cultures at time of admission. Eighteen patients had no significant past medical history and normal physical findings. Laparoscopy established a diagnosis in 28 of the 50 patients, and in the 32 patients in whom a specific preoperative diagnosis was entertained, laparoscopy proved it to be incorrect in 15. In all cases where laparoscopy resulted in specific treatment, the symptoms were relieved. There was no morbidity or mortality.
During a 12-month period, 2,672 sexually active youths, 12 to 16 years of age, had genital bacteriologic cultures for Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Anterior urethral cultures were obtained from 2,098 males of whom 2,064 had no symptoms or signs of genitourinary disease. Forty cultures (1.9%) were positive for gonorrhea. Of 574 females, 374 were asymptomatic and 26 (7.0%) had positive gonorrhea cultures from the cervix. Since adolescent boys are more likely to be sexual adventurers, the 1.9% carrier rate represents an important reservoir of gonorrhea and equal in importance to that found in the asymptomatic adolescent girl.
Pelvic examinations, including a Papanicolaou smear of the uterine cervix, were performed on 403 asymptomatic, sexually active adolescent girls aged from 12 to 16 years who were in a youth detention center in New York City. The smears were negative for precancerous abnormalities in 389 girls, but 168 of these had evidence of inflammation or nonspecific atypia. In the remaining 14 smears there was cytologic evidence of early precancerous changes (low-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia). The prevalence rate for early neoplastic changes was 35/1,000, far higher than previously reported. Further evaluation of three of these girls, by colposcopy and biopsy, revealed precancerous epithelial abnormalities of varying degrees of severity in two of them. Since all patients screened were sexually active and were asyptomatic, no clinical feature distinguished the 389 with negative cytology from the 14 with intraepithelial neoplasia. Five of the patients with precancerous cellular abnormalities had histories of sexual activity of less than two years. The data suggest that cervical cytologic screening should be incorporated into the routine examination of sexually active female adolescents.
Ectodermal derivatives provide a readily accessible means of chemically evaluating body protein composition. Therefore, it has been postulated that the analysis of nail nitrogen content may reflect recent nutritional status. Assessment of nail nitrogen content has been previously reported in a small group of neonates and school children. The present study was undertaken to determine if standards for nail nitrogen content could be established for adolescents which could then be used in the assessment of protein nutritional status. Nail clippings were obtained from 118 economically indigent urban black youth, 10 black and 39 white subjects from wealthy suburban communities in the New York area, and 10 poor white-Indian adolescents residing within a barrio in Lima, Peru. Nail samples were analyzed for protein content using the micro Kjeldahl technique. Mean nail nitrogen content for wealthy suburban and impoverished urban black youth was 136 and 137 mg N/g of nail, respectively. Values for poor Peruvian white-Indian and affluent suburban white adolescents were 142 and 141 mg N/g of nail, respectively. The differences between ethnic groups were significant using t test analysis at a P value of less than 0.001. No differences, however, were found between either wealthy and poor of the same racial background or when the data were analyzed by gender. These results suggest that differences in nail nitrogen content are at least in part a reflection of ethnicity. These racial differences must be considered in assessing nutritional status by nail nitrogen analysis.
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The concepts and goals of a program in adolescent medicine should include development of a capability to focus on current health needs of youth in a variety of settings; to plan clinical services to meet those needs with the flexibility necessary to respond to changing future requirements; and to deliver service within such a context while simulataneously creating a milieu conducive to education and investigation into the very process and definition of adolescence. The Division of Adolescent Medicine at Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center was designed 7 years ago to fulfill these goals and consequently may serve others as a functional model for health care delivery to teenagers. The Division is comprised of: (1) a 37 bed in-patient unit; (2) a hospital-based ambulatory program including general diagnostic and follow-up services, as well as a speciality service capability in the areas of gynecology and family planning, cardiology, gastroenterology and nutrition; (3) primary care health services within teenage dentention and prison facilities; (4) addictive disease diagnostic and treatment programs; (5) school health programs from intermediate school through college levels, and (6) the division also performs supportive and consultative functions for a variety of community-based agencies. Within the programatic design approximately 70,000 adolescents have been served. The cornerstone of the educational and investigative efforts has been the concept that all the above six functional units are clinical laboratories and classrooms so that training and research activities are integral parts of each of the service areas. This program design is continually undergoing revision and refinement so as to remain ever-responsive to new and emerging problems to meet additional training demands and, most importantly, to permit and encourage creativity and growth patients and staff.
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