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Biomedical subjects

Paul Hoff

Publications and source records attributed to Paul Hoff.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

[Psychiatric disorders following myocardial infarction].

BACKGROUND: The number of patients who survive acute myocardial infarction has increased during recent decades. In addition, demographic development results in a rising incidence of cardiovascular diseases. Based on these facts, also the significance of psychiatric disorders is growing that may occur after myocardial infarction, such as depression, posttraumatic stress and anxiety disorders. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Physicians are faced with the challenge to identify these clinical entities, that show a syndromal overlap with somatic complaints after myocardial infarction. After differentiation prompt start of adequate psychiatric-psychotherapeutic interventions is of relevance, not only regarding the patient's quality of life, but also in terms of cardiovascular prognosis. Indeed, depressive and anxiety disorders are known to be associated with a poor compliance as for rehabilitation and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disorders. Moreover, some studies suggest depression to be an independent risk factor of coronary heart disease. CONCLUSION: Consequently, early recognition and treatment, most often primarily in the hands of internists and cardiologists, are of enormous importance for the course and prognosis of the psychiatric disorder but also of cardiovascular disease.

Anxiety Disorders↗
PubMed2006

Delusion in general and forensic psychiatry--historical and contemporary aspects.

Delusion has always been a central topic for psychiatric research with regard to etiology and pathogenesis and to diagnosis, treatment, and forensic relevance. Throughout the history of psychiatry as a scientific discipline, there has been dissent on the issue of whether chronic delusion is a nosological entity of its own or just a specific type of another mental disorder, e.g. schizophrenia, mania, or personality disorder, and there already is a considerable literature on this. This article seeks to elucidate the central lines of thought that have governed the scientific debate on delusions and delusion-associated phenomena since the early 19th century. Special attention is given to the practical relevance of these theoretical considerations for forensic questions and psychiatric research. Due to the complex features of delusions, research in this area may well become paradigmatic for many other complicated psycho(patho)logical phenomena, e.g. consciousness, hallucinations and psychotic depression.

Anthropology↗
PubMed2005

Psychiatrists' biographies.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review focuses on publications dealing with psychiatrists' biographies. RECENT FINDINGS: Compared with scientific mainstream topics in psychiatry, the present area constitutes a small but nonetheless highly heterogeneous field. The selected papers are categorized with regard to what relevance is given to biographical data in a narrow sense or to conceptual issues for which the biography of a certain author functions as an illustration. Mere hagiographic biographical notes were not taken into consideration, and nor were plain polemics. Although the differentiation mentioned above seems useful in order to get an overview, it is de facto not possible to clearly separate biographical from conceptual aspects. This may be true for all fields in the history of science, but it is definitely true in the history of psychiatry with its numerous long-standing theoretical controversies - many of them still unresolved and all of them closely linked with the lives of their prominent representatives. SUMMARY: The biographical approach can be helpful in proving that research on the history of psychiatry--if done beyond mere hagiography or simple polemic--is of crucial importance for the understanding and development of theoretical and practical issues in our field.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2004

Electrophysiological evidence for altered early cerebral somatosensory signal processing in schizophrenia.

Various studies have indicated an impairment of sensory signal processing in schizophrenic patients. Anatomical and functional imaging studies have indicated morphological and metabolic abnormalities in the thalamus in schizophrenia. Other results give evidence for an additional role of cortical dysfunction in sensory processing in schizophrenia. Advanced analysis of human median nerve somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) reveals a brief oscillatory burst of low-amplitude and high-frequency activity ( approximately 600 Hz), the so-called high frequency oscillations (HFOs). The present study explores the behavior of HFOs in a cohort of schizophrenic patients in comparison to a group of controls. HFOs in the group of patients appeared with a delayed latency. In the low-frequency part of the SEPs an increase in amplitude was found. These results are interpreted to reflect a lack of somatosensory inhibition in the somatosensory pathway, either at a thalamic or a cortical level.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

High-frequency somatosensory thalamocortical oscillations and psychopathology in schizophrenia.

Human cortical somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs), which are presumably generated in afferent thalamocortical and early cortical fibers, reveal a burst of superimposed early (N20) high-frequency oscillations (HFOs), around 600 Hz. There is increasing evidence of an imbalance of thalamocortical systems in schizophrenic patients. In order to assess correlations between somatosensory evoked oscillations and symptoms of schizophrenia, we investigated median nerve SEPs in 20 inpatients and their age-matched and gender-matched healthy controls using a multichannel EEG. Dipole source analysis and wavelet transformation were performed before and after application of a 450-Hz high-pass filter. In schizophrenics, the maximum HFOs occurred with a significantly prolonged latency. There was also a higher amplitude (energy) in the low-frequency range of the N20 component compared with the controls. Importantly, amplitudes (energy) of HFOs were inversely correlated with symptoms of formal thought disorder and delusions. Alterations of the thalamocortical somatosensory signal processing in schizophrenia with absence of an early HFO - assumed to be of inhibitory nature - could indicate a dysfunctional thalamic inhibition with increased amplitudes of N20, paralleled by enhanced positive schizophrenic symptoms.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Ciprofloxacin-induced acute psychosis in a patient with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.

Tuberculosis (TB) increasingly appears in a multidrug-resistant form (MDR-TB) in Europe, too. Treatment remains difficult due to various side effects of the multi-drug-regimens. Ciprofloxacin is widely used as one of the few TB-second-line drugs. We report on the course of a ciprofloxacin-induced acute psychosis in a patient with MDR(isoniazid, streptomycin)-TB which resolved after cessation of ciprofloxacin treatment and introduction of a novel oxazolidone. Careful treatment considerations particularly in patients with additional predisposing factors to neuropsychiatric symptoms are recommended in the potentially dangerous MDR-TB, thus creating an enormous therapeutic challenge.

Acute Disease↗
PubMed2002

The Kraepelinian dichotomy: preliminary results of a 15-year follow-up study on functional psychoses: focus on negative symptoms.

In a 15-year follow-up study, we used a comparative approach to assess course and outcome for all functional psychoses. The presented results focus on negative symptoms and refer to a sample of 76 patients with schizophrenia, 38 patients with a schizoaffective disorder and 32 patients with an affective disorder according to ICD-9. These patients were assessed at their first psychiatric hospitalization and 15 years later. In summary, the findings indicate that the course and outcome of schizophrenia is less favorable than that of affective and schizoaffective disorders. Negative symptoms occurred in all functional psychoses, but were more frequent and prominent in the schizophrenic group than in the other two diagnostic groups at any time of assessment. Narrower concepts of negative symptoms, conceptualized as the deficit syndrome, seem to be specific for schizophrenia and appear quite rarely in patients with affective psychoses. Overall, our study supports Kraepelin's original hypothesis that bifurcated the psychoses into the affective psychoses and schizophrenia, whereby the latter have a more deleterious long-term course and outcome.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Psychiatry as a clinical science. From Emil Kraepelin to neo-Kraepelinism].

The fundamentals of Kraepelin's theory have been revisited by researchers known as "neokraepelians", from the stand point of the neurobiology. In the case of the revision of Kraepelin, as it happens with other authors, there are some acritical reductionisms. This article tries to make a contribution to the understanding of Kraepelin's thought as well as the historical context of his work, starting with a revision of the clinical and practical position in the present psychiatry.

History, 20th Century↗