[How should we perceive psychosomatic medicine]. / Jak se dívat na psychosomatikkou medicínu.

Psychosomatic (behavioral) medicine is a field of medicine concerned with the development, integration, and application of knowledge in the biological, behavioral, psychological, and social sciences relevant to health and illness. It offers a broader view on the problem than EBM because in addition to disease also focuses on the patient.

[Motivation for preventive care]. / Motivace k preventivní práci.

This article outlines those psychological characteristics of preventive and prophylactic work that qualify it as an efficient and effective skill. The transactional analysis model is used for explaining some peculiarities of everyday contact and communication between medical professionals and patients.

[The consultant ("liaison") psychiatrist and psychologist: his position and tasks in non-psychiatric health care facilities]. / Konzultacní ("LIAISON") psychiatr a psycholog; jejich postaveni a ukoly v nepsychiatrickém zdravotnickém zarízení.

The author summarizes findings assembled during his 25 years of experience as a consulting psychiatrist in medical and surgical departments. He defines the basic groups of actual problems the solution of which is most frequently needed: states of confusion, depression, crises, psychosomatic problems in the narrower sense of the word, conflicts between patients and staff, psychoprophylactic work and research. He emphasizes the demand of an integrated biopsychosocial approach.

Ethical issues in Czech renal failure.

This paper examines the provision of care for those with renal failure in Czechoslovakia, and concludes that a specific law on transplantation is needed. It was originally presented at a conference in Bratislava in January 1992.

[The psychosomatic approach in clinical practice]. / Psychosomatický prístup v klinické praxi.

The author summarizes demands essential for successful implementation of the psychosomatic, i.e. biopsychosocial approach in everyday clinical practice. With regard to the complete shortage of comprehensively conceived psychosomatic centres, the author considers it useful to replace extra-mural psychiatric and psychological services to a maximum extent by consultant ("liaison") psychiatrists and psychologists. Team cooperation of specialists, mostly with a biomedical orientation, with specialists from the psychosocial sphere is an asset for patients as well as for medical thinking. This collaboration gives specialists of both represented models some new demands, in particular the need to find a common language, to define competences and for both an extension of the view on the problems. It opens the possibility of more effective cooperation with the patient's family and moreover the psychiatrist and psychologist can try to reduce stressing influences and attempt their prevention which is also to the benefit of health professionals.

Changes in the EEG spectrum at a two-week intensive endurance training.

Marathon runners in the course of a two-week endurance training, (i.e. in the beginning, after one and after two weeks) and processed by the off-line method of fast spectral analysis. Simultaneously biochemical parameters were monitored which indicated after one week the development of the so called "pseudouremic syndrome of top athletes" of not too great intensity. In the second week of the experiment therapeutic intervention was made in six subjects, i.e. reduced protein supply, greater amount of glucose, application of Ca-lactate and higher amount of liquids. This intervention eliminated entirely the signs of pseudouremic syndrome. The EEG showed in both groups a decrease in theta activity (4-6 Hz) and an increase of the slow alpha component and subtheta activity (6-8 Hz), with no basic difference between the intervened and control group. Thus the changes may be rather attributed to fatigue and perhaps to a poorer supply of the CNS with oxygen and glucose.

Psychometric studies of pirenzepine.

A single dose of 10 mg of pirenzepine given i.m. to 7 healthy volunteers did not elicit local or general signs of intolerance within 6 hours after injection. We also found no significant differences in tests of vegetative symptomatology, visual motor coordination, attention concentration, critical flicker test threshold, nor any other aspects of the central nervous or cardiovascular systems. Ten patients with ulcers receiving pirenzepine 25 mg twice daily also showed no significant changes in psychometric tests, neurotic symptomatology, anxiety, depressive signs and clinical state during 4 weeks treatment. Side-effects of the anticholinergic type occurred only after high doses.