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Background Although paediatric growth charts are recommended for weight assessment prior to age 20, many teenagers transition earlier to adult care where absolute body mass index ( BMI) is used. This study examines concordance of weight classification in older teenagers using paediatric percentiles and adult thresholds. Methods BMI from 23 640 US teens ages 18-19 years were classified using paediatric BMI percentile criteria for underweight (< 5th), normal (5th to < 85th), overweight (85th to < 95th), obesity (≥ 95th) and severe obesity (≥ 120% × 95th percentile) and adult BMI (kg m−2) criteria for underweight (< 18.5), normal (18.5-24.9), overweight (25-29.9) and obesity: class I (30-34.9), class II (35-39.9) and class III (≥ 40). Concordance was examined using the kappa (κ) statistic. Blood pressure ( BP) from the same visit was classified hypertensive for BP ≥ 140/90. Results The majority of visits (72.8%) occurred in adult primary care. Using paediatric/adult criteria, 3.4%/5.2% were underweight, 66.6%/58.8% normal weight, 15.7%/21.7% overweight, 14.3%/14.3% obese and 4.9%/6.0% severely/class II-III obese, respectively. Paediatric and adult classification for underweight, normal, overweight and obesity were concordant for 90.3% (weighted κ 0.87 [95% confidence interval, 0.87-0.88]). For severe obesity, BMI ≥ 120% × 95th percentile showed high agreement with BMI ≥ 35 kg m−2 (κ 0.89 [0.88-0.91]). Normal-weight males and moderately obese females by paediatric BMI percentile criteria who were discordantly classified into higher adult weight strata had a greater proportion with hypertensive BP compared with concordantly classified counterparts. Conclusions Strong agreement exists between US paediatric BMI percentile and adult BMI classification for older teenagers. Adult BMI classification may optimize BMI tracking and risk stratification during transition from paediatric to adult care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We sought to determine whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is associated with an improved prognosis in women with advanced heart failure (HF) and systolic dysfunction., Background: There are about two million postmenopausal women in the U.S. with HF. However, limited data are available to assess the effects of HRT on survival in this large group of patients., Methods: A retrospective analysis of women age 50 years and over entered into the Beta-Blocker Evaluation of Survival Trial (BEST) was conducted using Cox regression analysis comparing survival in HRT users and non-users after correcting for baseline variables known to predict survival in women with HF and systolic dysfunction., Results: In 493 women age 50 years and older, HRT was associated with a significant reduction in mortality-21% mortality in HRT users and 34% in non-users (p = 0.025). Multivariate analysis demonstrated a hazard ratio for mortality of 0.6 (95% confidence interval = 0.36 to 0.97) (p = 0.039) for HRT users. The benefits of HRT were noted only in women with a nonischemic etiology of HF (n = 237)., Conclusions: Hormone replacement therapy is associated with a marked improvement in survival in postmenopausal women with advanced HF. A prospective, randomized trial of HRT should be performed in this large group of patients.

Objective: To compare intubation skill level and success rate between interfacility transport team members., Design: Prospective collection of data., Setting: University affiliated children's hospital interfacility transport team., Patients: One hundred thirty-two pediatric patients (age range 4 days to 11 years) intubated prior to transport by a specialized team., Interventions: None., Methods: Prospective data was gathered from June 1992 November 1996. In 3616 transports reviewed, 132 intubations were performed by the team at the referring facility. Patient ages ranged from 4 days to 11 years with a mean age of 23 months. We compared resident physicians and respiratory care practitioners (RCPs) to a standard threshold of 1 attempt per successful intubation. An attempt was defined as passage of the endotracheal tube into the oropharynx in an effort to pass it through the vocal cords. Patients were sedated and paralyzed for the procedures. The physicians were 2nd and 3rd year pediatric or emergency medicine residents. They received intubation training in Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), Neonatal Resuscitation Program (NRP), and during rotations through neonatal and pediatric intensive care units. RCPs had an average of 3.5 years of experience overall on the transport team. They received training primarily on mannequins and written tests while in school. They were certified in PALS and NRP and required to participate in annual skill laboratories, which consisted of mannequin intubations and a written examination., Results: The results showed the RCPs to have greater overall success as well as greater success of intubation on first attempt compared to the resident physicians., Conclusion: In our experience, RCPs on the interfacility transport team were very successful in performing endotracheal intubations and were more successful than resident physicians. RCPs are established members of not only the transport team, but also the intensive care units and, therefore, should be considered qualified to routinely perform endotracheal intubations in those settings as well.

The clonal relationships among 187 bloodstream isolates of Escherichia coli from 179 patients at Boston, Mass., Long Beach, Calif., and Nairobi, Kenya, were determined by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE), analysis of polymorphisms associated with the ribosomal operon (ribotyping), and serotyping. MLEE based on 20 enzymes resolved 101 electrophoretic types (ETs), forming five clusters; ribotyping resolved 56 distinct patterns concordant with the analysis by MLEE. The isolates at each study site formed a genetically diverse group and demonstrated similar clonal structures, with the same small subset of lineages accounting for the majority of isolates at each site. Moreover, two ribotypes accounted for approximately 30% of the isolates at each study site. One cluster contained the majority (65%) of isolates and, by direct comparison of the ETs and ribotypes of individual isolates, was genetically indistinguishable from the largest cluster for each of two other collections of E. coli causing pyelonephritis and neonatal meningitis (R. K. Selander, T. K. Korhonen, V. Väisänen-Rhen, P. H. Williams, P. E. Pattison, and D. A. Caugent, Infect. Immun. 52:213-222, 1986; M. Arthur, C. E. Johnson, R. H. Rubin, R. D. Arbeit, C. Campanelli, C. Kim, S. Steinbach, M. Agarwal, R. Wilkinson, and R. Goldstein, Infect. Immun. 57:303-313, 1989), thus defining a virulent set of lineages. The isolates within these virulent lineages typically carried DNA homologous to the adhesin operon pap or sfa and the hemolysin operon hly and expressed O1, O2, O4, O6, O18, O25, or O75 antigens. DNA homologous to pap was distributed among isolates of each major cluster, whereas hly was restricted to isolates of two clusters, typically detected in pap-positive strains, and sfa was restricted to isolates of one cluster, typically detected in pap- and hly-positive strains. The occurrence of pap-positive isolates in the same geographically and genetically divergent lineages suggests that this operon was acquired early in the radiation of E. coli, while hly and sfa were acquired subsequently, most likely by pap-positive and pap- and hly-positive precursors, respectively.