Caregiver financial distress, depressive symptoms and limited social capital as barriers to children's dental care in a mid-western county in the United States.

OBJECTIVE: To identify barriers to children's access to dental care. BASIC RESEARCH DESIGN: A cross-sectional health survey. SETTING: All residential census tracts in Genesee County, Michigan, USA. PARTICIPANTS: 498 adults who reported having children in their households, extracted from 2,932 randomly selected adult participants in the 2009 and 2011 surveys. MAIN MEASURES: Stepwise logistic regression was used to predict two dependent variables: children's lack of any visits to dentists' offices and unmet dental care needs (defined as needing dental care but not receiving it due to cost) in the previous year as reported by the adults. Independent variables included gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, financial planning, financial distress, fear of crime, stress, depressive symptoms, experiences of discrimination, and neighbourhood social capital. RESULTS: Of the 498 adults, 29.9% reported that they had children who had not visited a dentist in the past 12 months and 13% reported that they had household children with unmet dental care needs in the past year. Adults who reported higher depressive symptoms, lower neighbourhood social capital, greater financial distress, and who were younger were more likely to have household children who did not visit a dentist in the past year. Financial distress was the only significant predictor when controlling for other variables to predict unmet dental care needs. CONCLUSIONS: Factors beyond financial distress affect children's dental care; these include parental depressive symptoms and lower neighbourhood social capital. Interventions promoting parental mental health and social integration may increase dental care among children.

Early benefits of improved burn-care capability at Kalafong Hospital.

The creation of an improved burn-care capability was a long-awaited dream at Kalafong Hospital, one of the two academic (tertiary referral) hospitals of the University of Pretoria. When this recently became a reality, a prospective analysis of cost-effective burn care was initiated. For patients with burns of less than 10% body surface area (BSA), hospital stay (healing time) was shortened from a mean of 4.1 d/% BSA burnt to 2.7 d/% BSA burnt (34% reduction; P = 0.01). For patients with burns greater than 10% BSA, hospital stay (healing time) decreased from 2.3 d/% BSA burnt to 1.4 d/% BSA burnt (39% reduction; P = 0.0095). The overall mortality rate declined from 16.2% to 11.2% over the 24-month period. Patients with the largest deep dermal burn injury to survive in our hospital improved from 35% BSA to 60%. It is concluded that the creation of better burn care facilities at our hospital has shortened the hospital stay of survivors by a mean of 35% and decreased the mortality rate by 30%. Hospital authorities should take note of the fact that better facilities not only improve cost-effective patient care but also survival figures.

Atrial cannulation for long-term sequential blood collection in gilts.

Polyvinyl chloride tubing (ID, 1.27 mm; OD, 2.29 mm) was placed via the jugular vein into the right atrium of thirty-five 120- to 200-day-old gilts. Catheters remained patent for 14 to 88 days (mean, 41 days). The major cause of loss of function was damage inflicted by the gilt (20 catheters), whereas only 3 catheters lost patency because of blockage. Using a pulley and counterweight system the exteriorized end of the catheter was suspended above the gilt, facilitating blood collection and minimizing disturbance of the gilts.

Thermally Induced Focusing in a Nd:YAG Laser Rod at Low Input Powers.

Thermally induced focusing in a neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet rod was measured for pulsed optical pumping conditions with low average pump powers (400 W or less). A transient defocusing and a quasi-steady-state equilibrium with positive focusing are identified. The equilibrium induced focusing is shown to depend only on the average pump power for pulse rates above about 5 Hz. The quantitative dependence of the equilibrium induced focusing power of the rod on average pump power was measured, and effects of this induced focusing on the parameters of a laser resonant cavity containing the rod were investigated. A technique for accurately measuring focal powers of the order of 0.02 diopter in systems with f-numbers as high as 8000 is described.