Hearing in young diabetic patients.

Among patients who have sensorineural hearing loss of unknown etiology, diabetes is one of the diseases to be routinely investigated. The purpose of this study was to examine the uncertain relationship between sensorineural hearing loss and diabetes. The authors prospectively studied the pure tone audiometry in 60 diabetic patients, aged less than 40 years and in 60 randomly selected age and sex matched non-diabetic control subjects. The average hearing threshold of the diabetic patients showed a significant elevation than the control subjects although this average threshold in the young diabetic group was still within normal limits. Finally, no consistent association between the average hearing threshold and factors; such as duration of disease, controllable status of diabetes, presence of family history of diabetes or presence of any complication was found to be significant among young diabetic patients.

Operative obstetrics at Ramathibodi Hospital, 1970-1990.

A 21-year retrospective review of operative obstetrics at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Ramathibodi Hospital was reported from January 1, 1970 to December 31, 1990. There were a total of 128,630 deliveries, of which 41,724 (32.4%) were abnormal deliveries. Forceps, vacuum and cesarean section still increased, but vaginal breech deliveries have lost their popularity in this institution.

The changing patterns of cardiac diseases in 4 hospital medical schools in 2 Decades.

A retrospective study of 1,293,843 in-patients of the medical schools Siriraj, Chulalongkorn, Ramathibodi and Chiangmai hospitals in the alternate years from 1969 to 1987 (covering almost two decades), according to ICU 8-9, reveals that the proportion to all in-patient admission of 1. all cardiac patient admissions has steadily increased; 2. all cardiac failure admissions has significantly increased, but those due to anaemia and thyroid disturbances are unchanged; 3. all congenital heart disease admissions remained unchanged from 1969 to 1979, but significantly increased thereafter; 4. hypertensive cardiovascular admissions has remained unchanged; 5. rheumatic heart disease admission has decreased; 6. cardiac infection admissions has remained unchanged, but non-infection cardiac inflammation admissions has increased; 7. ischemic heart disease admissions has increased; 8. cardiac beriberi admissions decreased from 1969 to 1979, and unchanged thereafter; 9. cor pulmonale admissions has increased; and 10. cardiomyopathy admissions has increased, particularly after 1977. This information will help in planning for admission and the budgets of hospital medical schools and medical centres. It will also be useful in the planning of preventing specifice heart diseases, such as ischemic heart disease, which is increasing rapidly in the general population.