Marked Hyperthyroxinemia During Amiodarone Treatment Revealing Thyroid Hormone Resistance Syndrome

International audienc

Health related quality of life and physical performance. SENECA 1999

This paper describes health related quality of life in 81-85 year old participants of the SENECA study and relates outcome to health and physical performance. DESIGN: SENECA is a mixed-longitudinal study in birth-cohorts, 1913-1918, with baseline measurements in 1988/1989 repeated in 1993 and 1999. Nine towns collected data in 1999. The study population consisted of 445 survivors. METHODS: Health related quality of Life was measured by The Nottingham Health Profile (NHP). Percentages of answers (yes/no) to 38 items were used for scoring different dimensions. Self-perceived health was measured by a global question with five answer categories and chronic diseases as presence or absence of any chronic reported disease. For functional ability, a standardised Activity of Daily Living (ADL) questionnaire was used with 16 questions on a 4-point scale. Functional limitations were measured by a sum-score of objective simple functions tests (PPT). RESULTS: Average scores in the different sections were: Energy:46, pain:55, emotional reactions:58, sleep:64, social integration:47 and physical mobility:70 11% had no problems in any of the sections. All health and physical performance measures were significantly associated with, not only physical mobility, but also affective and social components of quality of life, age 81-85. CONCLUSION: The Nottingham Health Profile was a useful instrument to measure health related quality of life in physical, affective and social dimensions across birth cohorts, gender and culturally different towns in Europe. The answers apparently mirrored the subjective disadvantage of impairment-related functional limitations and may therefore be used as end point for further analyses of SENECA dat

Changes in physical performance in elderly Europeans. SENECA 1993-1999

OBJECTIVE: To assess longitudinal changes in subjective and objective measures of physical performance in elderly Europeans. DESIGN: Longitudinal study including SENECA measurements 1993-1999. SETTING: Data were collected in 9 'traditional' European towns. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: In total 444 men and women, born 1913-1918 participated both in the follow-up survey in 1993 and in the finale in 1999. Changes in Activities of Daily Living (ADL), the 7 item Physical Performance Test (PPT) and in the ability to perform the chair stand and the tandem test were measured. RESULTS: ADL and PPT did not change significantly between the 2 surveys, while participants needed more time to perform the chair stand (p<0.02) and their balance declined according to the tandem test (p<0.01). Men were significantly better than women, in all measures of physical performance. However, the decline in functioning was of the same magnitude. All tests showed significant variation between centres in physical function, Significant cross cultural variation was found for changes in the capacity to perform the objective tests. Tests of distributions showed good association between the self reported and objective measures of physical performance. Rather than assessing the same task in several ways, the measures may reflect different levels of disability, and as such be important end point measures. CONCLUSIONS: Both ADL and objective tests of simple functions applied well in the SENECA population. Physical performance declines with age. Across European towns variation in physical performance was identified