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Biomedical subjects

M Grossman

Publications and source records attributed to M Grossman.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources
PubMed1988

A retrospective analysis of air-evacuated hypothermia patients.

This study reviews the outcome of 17 hypothermic patients air evacuated by a civilian helicopter transport service. Age (33 +/- 23), type and duration of exposure, and rewarm methods were examined for each patient. Temperature (T), heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), respiratory rate (RR), Glasgow coma score (GCS), trauma score (TS), CRAMS score (CS), and cardiac rhythm in the pre-hospital setting and in the emergency department (ED) were compared to outcome. Eight of the patients had extensive exposure to a cold environment ranging from 4 h to 10 d. The remaining 9 patients were exposed to cold water ranging from 15 min to 4.5 h. By severity of hypothermia as measured in the ED, 6 patients who were hypothermic at the scene were normothermic (t greater than 35 degrees C), 5 patients were classified as mild (t = 35-31.5 degrees C), 3 as moderate (T less than 31.5-25.5 degrees C), and 3 patients were severely hypothermic (T less than 25.5 degrees C). The GCS, TS, and CS were not indicative of outcome. During rewarming, 3 patients had paradoxical temperature drops, and 5 patients had atrial fibrillation. Three patients required cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the field. Two were discharged with resolving disabilities, and 1 expired. No ventricular fibrillation or J waves occurred. All patients were effectively rewarmed without incident. All patient disabilities and the single fatality were not directly related to hypothermia. There were no long-term adverse consequences of helicopter transport in these hypothermic patients.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1987

The detection of errors in sentences after right hemisphere brain damage.

Several experiments have shown that non-aphasic, right hemisphere-damaged adults encounter difficulty solving syllogistic reasoning problems. In order to confirm and further explore the nature of this deficit with different linguistic material, patients with focal cerebral insult were asked to detect logical errors in sentences describing familiar causal situations. The findings revealed significant impairments in detecting errors after insult to anterior portions of the right hemisphere and to the left hemisphere, but qualitatively different patterns of errors in these two groups of patients. We conclude that the right hemisphere may make a unique contribution to sentence processing.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Selective word-learning deficits in aphasia.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether patients with focal brain damage can learn anything about a new word, and if so, whether selected aspects of the new word are acquired depending on the nature of the patient's language processing deficit. In the context of drawing pictures with a number of felt pens identical in all respects except color, agrammatic Broca's aphasics and fluent aphasics were exposed to the new word "bice," an adjective referring to the dark green portion of the color spectrum. Our findings revealed that brain-damaged patients can engage in lexical acquisition, but Broca's aphasics and fluent aphasics apparently learn about different aspects of the new word. Specifically, on successive exposures to "bice," both Broca's aphasics and fluent aphasics exhibit progressively more accurate hypotheses for identifying a bice-colored object. During subsequent assessments, agrammatic aphasics reveal on a metalinguistic judgment task their significant difficulty appreciating the grammatical form class of "bice"; on an object classification task, fluent aphasics are significantly impaired in their classification of bice-colored objects as "bice." Taken together, these unique word-learning profiles reinforce earlier observation on the selective nature of language processing deficits after focal left-hemisphere insult, and support the claim that separate language processing devices may be selectively compromised in different groups of aphasics. The relationship between syntactic and lexical semantic processing is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Stimulus categorization by brain-damaged patients.

Patients with localized insult to the right hemisphere, or to either the anterior or the posterior portion of the left hemisphere, as well as neurologically intact controls, evaluated stimuli on a seven-point rating scale for their degree of category membership. The stimuli were taken from one of two continua, one composed of fruit and vegetable items, and the other of items differing in hue and shape. Different subsets of stimuli provided different contexts for the judgments of category membership. The two left-hemisphere groups showed anomalies in categorizing the fruit and vegetable items but not the perceptual items, while the reverse was true for the right-hemisphere patients. Moreover, both left-hemisphere groups demonstrated context effects in their judgments of the representativeness of the fruit and vegetable items, but differed in the way in which they responded to changing contexts. Left posterior patients demonstrated weak category boundaries and even reclassified items. In contrast, patients with left anterior damage showed highly categorical responses and less differentiation of items within a category. All groups showed striking context effects in judgments of perceptual items in terms of changes in representativeness ratings and the location of a category boundary. Alternative interpretations of the results are offered.

Brain Damage, Chronic↗
PubMed1987

Lexical acquisition in alcoholic Korsakoff psychosis.

Recent studies have underlined the importance of the distinction between "declarative" and "procedural" aspects of memory functioning. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the relative deficits in these two aspects of anterograde memory in an amnesic population with midline diencephalic lesions, and to determine whether this apparently fundamental distinction in memory types is honored even under real-world conditions. Eight alcoholic Korsakoff patients were examined for their lexical acquisition capacity, including both their application of word-learning procedures to a new lexical domain and their eventual recall of the facts represented by the new word. The findings revealed that each Korsakoff patient successfully applies at least some of the procedures subserving the word-learning process to the new lexical domain. By comparison, the Korsakoff patients subsequently acquire little of the factual knowledge represented by the new word. Specifically, almost all of the patients recognize only the object used during the exposure period to demonstrate the new word. Quantitative and qualitative features of the patients' declarative and procedural memory deficits are discusses in the context of real-world processing advantages and limitations.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Clinical evolution of cutaneous T cell lymphoma in a patient with antibodies to human T-lymphotropic virus type I.

A woman who emigrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic developed the first signs of cutaneous T cell lymphoma during the last trimester of her pregnancy. This patient, found to have a positive reaction against human T-lymphotropic (leukemia-lymphoma) virus type I (HTLV-I), was followed up prospectively from the appearance of the initial skin lesion to the development of high-count helper T cell leukemia. Antibodies reactive with the core protein of HTLV-I were also identified in her husband and mother but not in her 2-year-old daughter. Examination of the patient's course provides clues about the latency period and transmission of HTLV-I and highlights similarities between HTLV-I-positive and HTLV-I-negative cutaneous T cell lymphoma.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Relation of registration with yield and termination of first lactation in dairy goats.

First lactation records of 9941 Alpine, 2383 LaMancha, 11,203 Nubian, 3714 Saanen, and 4649 Toggenburg dairy goat does were obtained from the USDA to evaluate relation of registration (purebred, American, or grade) with lactation yield traits (mature equivalent milk and fat yields) and with reason for termination of lactation (normal, sold for dairy, or culled). Does were grouped by age at first kidding (11 through 16 mo or 21 through 26 mo) and by calendar year (1976 through 1978, 1979 through 1981, or 1982 through 1984). Data were analyzed within breed and year group for yield traits and within breed for reason of termination. Registration and age at first kidding accounted for little variation in mature equivalent milk and fat yields or in reason for termination.

Animals↗
PubMed1987

Multiphasic growth curve analysis in mice.

Growth curves of mean body weights were compared to those of individual weights when fitted to data of male and female mice using monophasic (logistic) and triphasic growth functions. Goodness-of-fit was determined by residual variances and Durbin-Watson statistics. These criteria suggest that the triphasic function, with smaller and less correlated residuals, describes the data better than the monophasic function. For the triphasic function, residual variances were higher when fitting individual weights than mean weights. Males had higher residual variances than females. Auto-correlation was negligible when fitting individual weights for males and for females. Parameters of the triphasic function were higher when fitting curves of individual weights than curves of mean weights; differences between curves within sex were small. Parameters were similar for males and females, especially in the first phase of growth. Half asymptotic weights for the second and third phases were higher for males than for females. From these results, it should be clear that using a multiphasic function to describe growth curves in mice provides greater insight for understanding the biology of growth.

Aging↗
PubMed1986

Prospective study of perinatal transmission of Chlamydia trachomatis.

During a five-year period, 262 (4.7%) of 5,531 pregnant women had positive cervical cultures for Chlamydia trachomatis, and 131 of their infants were followed up prospectively to ascertain the outcome of chlamydial exposure during the birth process. Culture-confirmed inclusion conjunctivitis of the newborn was seen in 23 (18%) of the infants. Chlamydial pneumonia was diagnosed in 21 (16%) of the infants at risk. Chlamydia trachomatis was recovered from 47 of the infants (36%), while 79 (60%) showed serologic evidence of infection. Subclinical rectal and vaginal infections were detected in 14% of infants at risk. In our population, 2.8% of newborn infants show serologic evidence of perinatal chlamydial infection and 1.4% develop either chlamydial pneumonia or conjunctivitis. Incidence rates of this magnitude indicate the need for programs aimed at preventing perinatal transmission of C trachomatis.

Antibodies, Bacterial↗
PubMed1986

Experience with the routine use of erythromycin for chlamydial infections in pregnancy.

In an effort to prevent perinatal acquisition of Chlamydia trachomatis, we offered treatment with erythromycin ethylsuccinate (400 mg four times a day for seven days, given at 36 weeks' gestation) to 184 pregnant women with cervical chlamydial infections. Thirty-two women refused treatment; 24 of their infants were followed and served as the controls. Therapy was discontinued by 5 of 10 women who had gastrointestinal disturbances. Forty-seven women who completed therapy refused infant follow-up; in four (9 percent) of these women, therapy had failed to eradicate the infection. Sixty women and 59 infants completed the entire protocol; 55 (92 percent) of the women had negative cultures for chlamydia at follow-up. Chlamydial infection developed in 4 (7 percent) of the 59 infants of treated mothers, as compared with 12 (50 percent) of the 24 infants of untreated mothers; this difference was significant (P less than 0.001). With a success rate of 92 percent (98 of 107 patients) in treating maternal infection and with a relatively low intolerance rate (3 percent; 5 of 152), this regimen appears to be an effective, although not ideal, therapy for chlamydial infection in pregnant women. We conclude that in settings in which the prevalence of chlamydia infection is high, a routine program of screening pregnant women for cervical C. trachomatis, followed by treatment of those infected, would be cost effective and would reduce infant morbidity.

Chlamydia Infections↗
PubMed1986

Proper and common nouns: form class judgments in Broca's aphasia.

Studies of agrammatic Broca's aphasics' comprehension of sentences containing articles have demonstrated profound deficits. It has not been clear whether the impairments are due to an inability to isolate the article in the stream of speech, or to difficulty in the construction and/or interpretation of various syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic levels of representation. This paper reports three experiments on Broca's aphasics' ability to distinguish between common nouns (e.g., "a rose") and proper nouns (e.g., "Rose"). This grammatical form class decision is signaled by the presence or absence of an article, and is represented at the lexical node level of linguistic analysis. The three experiments demonstrated that Broca's aphasics point to pictures representing classes of objects when asked to point to "the X" and point to pictures representing unique individuals when asked to point to "X". Thus, they were shown to be able to use the presence or absence of an article to determine lexical category. Their performance was especially accurate in an oral language context which was highly redundant and in a written language context where patients themselves could control the rate of information flow. They were quantitatively impaired, relative to controls, in a third study, which made higher information processing demands. Moreover, in this third study nonsense syllables preceding the noun which are phonologically similar to a known article were much more likely to evoke the misclassification of its noun as common than were phonologically distinct nonsense syllables. These data indicate that Broca's aphasics indeed have some difficulty isolating the article in the stream of speech. Nevertheless, detailed analyses of aphasics' performance revealed their ability to distinguish between common nouns and proper nouns even under these demanding conditions. Taken together, the three studies show that insofar as agrammatic patients are able to keep track of the presence or absence of articles, they can make a grammatical decision at the lexical node level of linguistic analysis. We conclude, then, that agrammatic Broca's aphasics are particularly impaired in the use of articles to construct and/or interpret phrasal constituents.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

The appreciation of affect in alcoholic Korsakoff patients.

The purpose of this study is to assess the appreciation of affective components of words in patients with insult to diencephalic and subcortical brain structures thought to subserve emotional expression. Six alcoholic Korsakoff patients were presented with triadic comparisons composed of names of birds, predators, and birds of prey. The principal findings revealed that normal control subjects associate birds of prey with both birds and predators, but Korsakoff patients associate the birds of prey significantly more often with birds than predators. Three-dimensional spatial representations of patients' associations revealed that normals cluster birds at one extreme of a dimension and predators at the other extreme, with birds of prey lying in an intermediate position. Korsakoff patients also clearly separate the birds from the predators and form tight clusters within each of these groups, but they associate the birds of prey noticeably with the birds. Moreover, Korsakoff patients displayed, on another dimension of the spatial representation, their difficulty appreciating that a word could possess multiple category memberships. The findings are discussed with respect to the multifaceted dementia seen in Korsakoff Syndrome, and are interpreted to provide guarded support for the claim that insult to particular diencephalic and subcortical brain structures interferes with the appreciation of affective material in particular circumstances.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Correlations between parities for lactation traits in United States dairy goats.

Correlations between parities for milk yield, fat yield, and days in milk were calculated across and within does for five breeds of United States dairy goats; Alpine, LaMancha, Saanen, and Toggenburg, using lactation records to January 1981. Records were initiated during 1966 through 1979 and had between 125 and 305 d in milk. Parities were first through fourth, and fifth or greater. Overall phenotypic correlations between the three lactation traits averaged across breed were .95 between milk and fat yield and about .60 between milk or fat yield and days in milk. Within-herd phenotypic partial correlations between parities 1 and 2 (the two parities with most data) averaged .47 for milk yield, .42 for fat yield, and .07 for days in milk. Components of variance due to herd averaged about 34% for milk yield and for fat yield and 23% for days in milk. Components of variance due to doe/herd averaged 28% for milk yield, 25% for fat yield, and 17% for days in milk. Repeatabilities averaged .42 for milk yield, .38 for fat yield, and .22 for days in milk.

Animals↗