The frequency of workplace exacerbation among health maintenance organisation members with asthma.

OBJECTIVES: Workplace conditions can potentially contribute to the worsening of asthma, yet it is unclear what percentage of adults with asthma experience workplace exacerbation of symptoms. The objective of this investigation was to determine the prevalence of workplace exacerbation of asthma (WEA). METHODS: Adults with asthma aged 18-44 were enrolled into the baseline survey of a longitudinal study. Members of a health maintenance organisation were considered candidates for participation if they fulfilled membership, diagnostic, and treatment criteria based on automated review of electronic billing, claims, and pharmacy records. Diagnosis and treatment were confirmed by manual review of medical records. A telephone questionnaire was administered. A work related symptom score was assigned to each participant based on responses to questions about work related asthma symptoms, medication use, and symptom triggers. Blinded to participants' answers to these questions, two researchers independently reviewed the self-reported work histories and assigned exposure ratings. A final exposure score was then calculated. Participants with sufficient evidence for work related symptoms and exposure were classified as having WEA. RESULTS: Of the 598 participants with complete data, 557 (93%) were working, and 136 (23%) fulfilled the criteria for WEA. Those with WEA were more likely to be male and to report that they had been bothered by asthma symptoms during the past seven days. CONCLUSIONS: Workplace exacerbation of asthma was common in this study population, occurring in over a fifth of these adults with asthma. Physicians should consider that work can contribute to the exacerbation of symptoms when treating adults with asthma.

Women's characteristics and gender role attitudes: support for father involvement with children.

Women's (N = 364) personal characteristics and gender role attitudes were examined in relation to their support for father involvement with children. The respondents completed measures of trust, attitudes toward women, hostility, self-esteem, and father involvement. Nontraditional gender role attitudes, positive ratings of their own interpersonal trust, and low hostility toward men were predictive of the respondents' support for father involvement. Participant demographics (including age, marital status, and number of children) were unrelated to their views of father involvement. Results indicate the importance of considering the characteristics and attitudes women bring to the co-parental relationship in the examination of factors influencing father involvement with children. Findings are discussed within the context of mothers' primary child-care and gatekeeping roles.

Maxillary giant cell tumour associated with Paget's disease of bone.

A case involving the rare occurrence of a maxillary giant cell tumour in association with Paget's disease is reported. Surgical treatment consisted of a combined intraoral and temporal approach for tumour resection with temporalis muscle flap reconstruction of the maxilla. The postoperative course was complicated by a recurrence.

Steroid acne after orthognathic surgery.

Steroid acne is a common unwanted effect in patients undergoing corticosteroid therapy. Eight women in a series of 1276 adult patients had acne after orthognathic surgery in which short-course parenteral corticosteroid therapy was used to reduce postoperative swelling. Steroid-induced acneiform eruption is different from acne vulgaris in that the former usually resolves on its own, without scar formation, after withdrawal of the drug.

The effects of nasomaxillary injury on future facial growth.

The appearance of results of injury to the columella, the nasal septum, and the nasal bones, in particular, has been well described. Anomalies of the maxilla and global facial balance secondary to nasomaxillary injury are less well known. Three cases involving children, aged 11, 14, and 17 years, who had suffered nasomaxillary injury at least 8 years earlier as a result of physical beating, were studied with the use of photographs and architectural craniofacial lateral cephalometric radiographic analysis. The architectural craniofacial analysis of Delaire produced a graphic representation of the resultant maxillofacial deformities rather than a description of the deformities in terms of deviation from a statistical mean. Traumatic injury to the nasomaxillary complex provides an experimental model that implicates the role of the cartilaginous nasal septum and local functional conditions in the growth of the nasomaxillary complex. The importance of the functional premaxillary skeletal unit in balanced facial growth allows better understanding of the pathophysiology of malformation of this region.

The eye of the very young beholder: sex typing of infants by young children.

This study was designed to examine the effects of gender labeling on young children by determining the extent to which the qualities they attribute to an infant depend on whether that infant is identified as a girl or as a boy. 20 boys and 20 girls from each of 3- and 5-year-old age groups were shown a 5-min videotape of a boy and a girl infant engaged in a variety of activities. One of the infants was labeled a "boy" and the other a "girl", with the labels reversed for half of the subjects. Each child was then asked to respond to a series of 12 bipolar adjectives, 9 representing sex-stereotypic dimensions, in a forced-choice manner. The major findings indicate that both 3- and 5-year-old children responded in a significantly stereotypic manner based on the gender labels provided for the infants, regardless of the infant's actual gender. A simple concept-formation paradigm is proposed to account for these findings.