Change in alcohol consumption and physical activity during the COVID-19 pandemic amongst 76 medical students

Objective: To investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic has affected physical activity and alcohol consumption among medical students.Methods: Cross-sectional survey study among 76 students in their second year of medical school. The Wilcoxon sign-rank test and Kruskal-Wallis H test were used to assess the difference between groups.Results: Of 76 respondents, 68% were women, 66% were single and 34% were co-habiting. The median age was 21 years. Overall alcohol consumption decreased during the pandemic year by 12 g/week. Overall physical activity did not significantly change. The decrease in alcohol consumption was mostly caused by a change seen in a high tertile, change was -96 g/week. Alcohol consumption decreased more in women than in men, p = 0.0001.Conclusions: It seems that alcohol consumption among medical students has decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic probably due to reduced social contacts and negative effect of social isolation. This decrease was seen especially among women and among students with higher alcohol consumption before the pandemic. Also, it seems that students had found their ways to remain active during the pandemic since the amount of leisure-time physical activity had not changed significantly.</p

Käden nivelrikon hoito alkaa perusterveydenhuollossa

Väestön ikääntymisen myötä nivelrikon esiintyvyys lisääntyy. Polvi, lonkka ja käden pikkunivelet ovat yleisimpiä sijaintipaikkoja. Kliininen tutkimus on tärkein menetelmä diagnoosin saamiseksi. Nivelrikon vaikeutta voidaan arvioida natiiviröntgenkuvasta. Radiologinen löydös ei kuitenkaan ole välttämättä kivun syy eikä kuluman aste ei korreloi kivun kanssa. Nivelturvotuksen yhteyessä on suljettava pois kiireellisempää hoitoa vaativat vakavat sairaudet, kuten septinen artriitti ja reumataudit. Nivelrikon hoito perustuu potilaan omaehtoisiin harjoitteisiin sekä tämän informointiin ja kannustamiseen. Monesti fysio- ja toimintaterapeutin ohjaus hyödyttää potilasta. Kivulias nivel voidaan tukea lastoilla. Kipulääkityksen tavoitteena on mahdollistaa käden aktiivinen käyttö ja leposäryn hillitseminen. Leikkaushoito tulee kyseeseen, jos oireet ja haitta toimintakyvylle jatkuvat konservatiivisesta hoidosta huolimatta.</p

How well the ICF concepts of functioning, capacity and performance are known amongst the Finnish specialists in physical and rehabilitation medicine?

Purpose: To investigate how well Finnish specialists in physical and rehabilitation medicine (PRM) are familiar with ICF-based concepts of functioning, capacity, and performance. &nbsp; &nbsp; Methods: In February 2013, the 5-minute survey was conducted amongst participants at the annual meeting of the Finnish Society of PRM. The 54 participants (response rate 81%) were asked to define the difference between concepts of functioning and capacity/performance. They were also asked to give some examples of medical tests related to these concepts. Two independent researchers evaluated the responses basing on appropriate definitions presented by ICF and researchers own experience. Results: &nbsp; Of respondents, 83% were able to define the concept of functioning accordingly to the ICF framework as a complex relationship between health condition and contextual factors. Instead, only 24% were capable to describe concept of capacity/performance as an ability to execute single tasks in a standard or current environment. Of respondents, 40% emphasized the physical dimension of performance. Over 80% of respondents suggested at least one test for assessment of the level of performance, but only 57% introduced an example of tests for measuring limitation of functioning. Conclusions: The ICF-based concepts of functioning and performance were not widely used amongst Finnish physicians specialized in PRM even if the responses to survey reflected the biopsychosocial way of understanding the functioning. &nbsp; The ICF-based concepts of functioning and performance were not widely used amongst Finnish physicians specialized in PRM even if the responses to survey reflected the biopsychosocial way of understanding the functioning. The ICF-based concepts of functioning and performance were not widely used amongst Finnish physicians specialized in PRM even if the responses to survey reflected the biopsychosocial way of understanding the functioning. </strong

Multi-trajectory analysis of changes in physical activity and body mass index in relation to retirement : Finnish Retirement and Aging study

Funding Information: This study was supported by funding granted by the Academy of Finland (321409 and 329240 to JV, 286294, 319246, 294154, 332030 to SS), Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture (to SS); Juho Vainio Foundation (to SS), and Hospital District of Southwest Finland (to SS) The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2022 Lintuaho et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background Physical activity and body mass index (BMI) have been reported to change around retirement. The objective was to examine the concurrent changes in physical activity and BMI around retirement, which have not been studied before. In addition, the associations of different demographic characteristics with these changes were examined. Methods The prospective cohort study consisted of 3, 351 participants in the ongoing Finnish Retirement and Ageing Study (FIREA). Repeated postal survey, including questions on physical activity and body weight and height, was conducted once a year up to five times before and after the retirement transition, the mean follow-up time being 3.6 years (SD 0.7). Group-based multi-trajectory modeling was used to identify several clusters with dissimilar concurrent changes in physical activity and BMI within the studied cohort. Results Of the participants, 83% were women. The mean age at the last wave before retirement was 63.3 (SD 1.4) years. Four clusters with different trajectories of physical activity and BMI were identified. BMI remained stable around retirement transition in all four clusters, varying from normal weight to class II obesity. The association of BMI trajectories with physical activity levels were inverse, however, each activity trajectory showed a temporary increase during the retirement transition. Conclusions Retirement seems to have more effect on physical activity than BMI, showing a temporary increase in physical activity at the time of retirement.Peer reviewe

Minimal clinically important difference and minimal detectable change of the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) amongst patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain

Objectives: The aim of this study is to estimate a minimal clinically important difference (MCID) and a minimal detectable change (MDC) of the 12-item WHODAS 2.0 amongst patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Design: Cross-sectional cohort study. Setting: Outpatient Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine clinic. Subjects: A total of 1988 consecutive patients with musculoskeletal pain. Interventions: A distribution-based approach was employed to estimate a minimal clinically important difference, a minimal detectable change, and a minimal detectable percent change (MDC%). Results: The mean age of the patients was 48 years, and 65% were women. The average intensity of pain was 6,3 (2.0) points (0-10 numeric rating scale) and the mean WHODAS 2.0 total score was 13 (9) points out of 48. The minimal clinically important difference ranged between 3.1 and 4.7 points. The minimal detectable change was 8.6 points and minimal detectable % change was unacceptably high 66%. Conclusions: Amongst patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain, the 12-item WHODAS 2.0 demonstrated a high minimal detectable change of almost nine points. As the minimal detectable change exceeded the level of minimal clinically important difference, nine points were considered to be the amount of change perceived by a respondent as clinically significant.</div

Psychometric properties of 12-item self-administered World Health Organization disability assessment schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) among general population and people with non-acute physical causes of disability - systematic review

Objective: WHODAS 2.0 is a unified scale to measuring disability across diseases, countries, and cultures. The objective was to explore the available evidence on the psychometric properties of 12-item self-administered WHODAS 2.0 among a general population and people with non-acute physical causes of disability.Methods: Five databases Medline, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and PsycINFO were searched for papers related to the validity, reliability, responsiveness, minimal clinically important difference or minimal detectable change of 12-item self-administered WHODAS 2.0. In order to avoid missing any potentially relevant studies, the search clauses were left as generic as possible and the refining search was conducted manually. As the review was focusing on chronic physical disorders and general adult population, major psychiatric diagnoses, acute traumas, other acute conditions (e.g., postpartum or pregnancy), hearing loss, progressive neurological disorders, and age Results: The 14 out of 191 observational studies were considered relevant. The sample sizes varied from 80 up to 31,251 participants. Great diversity was observed in the participants’ health problems. The Cronbach’s alpha was high – up to 0.96. The correlations between WHODAS 2.0 and other disability scales were high. Substantial floor without ceiling effect was reported by two studies. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in a multidimensional structure – up to five factors. The discriminative ability and test–retest reliability of the scale was good.Conclusions: It seems, that the 12-item self-administered WHODAS 2.0 is internally consistent and a reliable scale demonstrating overall good correlation with other measures of disability. However, it appears that it is a multidimensional scale and its total score may represent different combinations of several contributing factors. Thus, the 12-item WHODAS 2.0 can be more reliable when creating a person’s functional profile formed by the 12 individual item scores instead of a single total sum.</p

Pre- and Postintervention Factor Structure of Functional Independence Measure in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury

Objective. To evaluate the factor structure of Functional Independence Measure (FIM (R)) scale amongst people with spinal cord injury (SCI). Methods. This was a retrospective, register-based cohort study on 155 rehabilitants with SCI. FIM was assessed at the beginning and at the end of multidisciplinary inpatient rehabilitation. The internal consistency of the FIM was assessed with Cronbach's alpha and exploratory factor analysis was employed to approximate the construct structure of FIM. Results. The internal consistency demonstrated high Cronbach's alpha of 0.95 to 0.96. For both pre- and postintervention assessments, the exploratory factor analysis resulted in 3-factor structures. Except for two items ("walking or using a wheelchair" and "expression"), the structures of the identified three factors remained the same from the beginning to the end of rehabilitation. The loadings of all items were sufficient, exceeding 0.3. Both pre- and postintervention chi-square tests showed significant p values < 0.0001. The "motor" domain was divided into two factors with this 2-factor structure enduring through the intervention period. Conclusions. Amongst rehabilitants with SCI, FIM failed to demonstrate unidimensionality. Instead, it showed a 3-factor structure that fluctuated only little depending on the timing of measurement. Additionally, when measured separately, also motor score was 2-dimensional, not 1-dimensional. Using a total or subscale FIM, scores seem to be unjustified in the studied population