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Biomedical subjects

W D Gentry

Publications and source records attributed to W D Gentry.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1982

Chronic back pain: does elective surgery benefit patients with evidence of psychologic disturbance?

Thirty-five patients with chronic low back pain responded to a follow-up survey 18 months after being discharged from the hospital. All patients had objective (MMPI) evidence of psychologic disturbance during hospitalization. Seven patients subsequently obtained additional elective back surgery; the remaining 28 did not. Follow-up data indicated that patients who had operation were less likely to return to work during this period, were less likely to have reduction in their perceived pain, and were more likely to report increased disability than were those not operated on. These data suggest that elective surgery may, in fact, be counterproductive for patients with chronic low back pain and evidence of psychologic disturbance.

Antisocial Personality Disorder↗
PubMed1979

Associative learning, habit, and health behavior.

Habit is defined as a firmly established behavior pattern marked by increasing automaticity, decreasing awareness, and partial independence from reinforcement. Reinforcement is viewed as of primary importance in the acquisition of behavior, whereas principles of associative learning enter to complement reinforcement in the maintenance of behavior. Habit is seen as a mechanism for short-circuiting the reinforcement process to avoid its overload and for providing the organism with speed and stability of response instead of the variability offered by reinforcement. The implications of this definition of habit for acquisition and alteration of health behavior are discussed; examples include smoking, obesity, alcoholism, and coronary-prone (type A) behavior.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1978

The pain apperception test: an investigation of concurrent validity.

Gave 55 chronic pain patients the Pain Apperception Test (PAT), the MMPI, the Health Index Index, the Whitely Index, the Pain Estimate, and the Tourniquet Test in an investigation of the concurrent validity of the PAT. The results did not support strongly the concurrent validity of the PAT, given the small number of significant correlations obtained. However, several consistent patterns did emerge: The PAT appeared to be correlated positively with the Alcoholism and Social Introversion scales of the MMPI and with the Invalidism scale of the Health Index. The PAT appeared to be correlated negatively with the Psychopathic Deviate scale of the MMPI. The latter results are discussed with respect to the psychodynamics of chronic pain patients. Further research is suggested, especially with regard to direct pain measures and predictive validity.

Chronic Disease↗
PubMed1978

Multivariate analyses of the MMPI profiles of low back pain patients.

A multivariate clustering procedure was used to identify replicable, homogeneous MMPI profile subgroups among three independent cohorts of male (N = 233) and female (N = 315) low back pain ((LBP) patients. Three subgroups were replicated across all male cohorts and four subgroups were replicated across all female cohorts. Multiple discriminant analysis showed that for both male and female patients between-subgroup variability was significantly greater than within-subgroup variability. The results suggest that LBP patients may not be solely characterized by MMPI profiles featuring the "conversion V" configuration. Examination of the profile subgroups also suggests there may be distinct, pain-related, behavioral attributes associated with each subgroup which might have important implications for practitioners' choice of treatment modalities. Suggestions are made for research regarding the development of specific, optimal treatments for various LBP patient subgroups.

Analysis of Variance↗
PubMed1978

Effect of alcohol consumption on state anxiety changes in male and female nonalcoholics.

Ten male and 10 female nonalcoholic college students were given drinks having alcohol levels of 0, 0.5, 0.8, and 1.2 g/kg. They were then given four complex psychomotor tests, immediately before and after which they were given the Spielberger State Anxiety Inventory, and asked to rate their performance on a five-point scale. Mean anxiety change scores were -.90, .75, 4.75, and 5.55 for the four alcohol doses, respectively. There was no significant correlation between anxiety change and actual performance on the visual vigilance task, but for males there was a significant correlation between anxiety change and perceived level of impairment.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed1977

The effect of descriptive anger expression, insult, and no feedback on interpersonal aggression, hostility, and empathy motivation.

In a test of the hypothesis that descriptive anger expression elicits less subsequent aggression and greater empathy than does aggressive insult, 60 male undergraduates were instructed to set varying levels of shock for an opponent during a series of competitive trials before and after hearing one of four types of taped comment. Results indicated that descriptive anger expression led to a significant decrease in aggression, while no feedback (opponent said nothing) led to an increase in aggression. Insult and no anger feedback resulted in little change in aggressive behavior. In contrast, descriptive anger expression, insult, and no anger feedback produced more residual hostility than did no feedback. Descriptive anger expression Ss appeared to be more motivated by empathy in setting shocks, as compared to the other three groups. Empathy was found to be generally associated with lower shock settings initially and with reductions in shock settings following the opponent's comments. Empathy, however, was not related to Ss' hostility ratings. The results tend to support the clinical utility of descriptive anger expression in improving interpersonal relations.

Aggression↗
PubMed1977

Subclinical spontaneous abortion.

Blood samples were obtained from 5 women during the menstrual cycle in which they had conceived. Although neither the women nor their physicians were clinically aware that conception had occurred, one or more of the blood specimens from each woman contained human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), as measured by a specific radioimmunoassay. Each patient underwent a spontaneous abortion with 4 of the 5 women describing a delayed, but otherwise normal, menses. The fifth noted an unusually abundant amount of vaginal bleeding. Immunologic urinary pregnancy slide tests were negative in the 4 women on whom the tests were performed. The levels of hCG in the serum of these women were abnormally low for the estimated length of gestation, suggesting that defective trophoblastic function may be important in the pathogenesis of this phenomenon. These examples illustrate that some women may conceive and abort so early that the pregnancy and the abortion may remain subclinical. Therefore, it is likely that the true incidence of spontaneous abortions during the first trimester is greater than the presently accepted incidence of 15%.

Abortion, Spontaneous↗