Articles: mortality.
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Prostate cancer mortality rates in the United States declined sharply after 1991 in white men and declined after 1992 in black men. The current study was conducted to investigate possible mechanisms for the declining prostate cancer mortality rates in the United States. ⋯ Similar incidence, survival, and mortality rate patterns are seen in black men and white men in the United States, although with differences in the timing and magnitude of recent rate decreases. Increased detection of prostate cancer before it becomes metastatic, possibly reflecting increased use of PSA testing after 1986, may explain much of the recent mortality decrease in both white men and black men.
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To analyze the mortality attributable to smoking and alcohol consumption in the city of Barcelona from 1983 to 1998. ⋯ The mortality attributable to smoking and alcohol consumption decreased in the city of Barcelona during the study period. Smoking-attributable mortality from lung cancer and COPD increased in both sexes. Alcohol consumption-attributable mortality from liver cirrhosis decreased in men.
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Intensive care medicine · Mar 2003
Surviving intensive care: a report from the 2002 Brussels Roundtable.
The traditional goal of intensive care has been to decrease short-term mortality. While worthy, this goal fails to address the issue of what it means to survive intensive care. Key questions include whether intensive care survivors have optimal long-term outcomes and whether ICU care decisions would change if we knew more about these outcomes. ⋯ There are also opportunities today to improve care. Key to taking advantage of such opportunities is the need for a global awareness of critical illness as an entity that begins and ends outside the ICU 'box'. Specific interventions that show promise for improving care include ICU discharge screening tools and ICU follow-up clinics.
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Recent public attention has focused on quality of care for the dying. Where one dies is an important individual and public health concern. ⋯ Rapid physical decline during the last 5 months was associated with dying at home or in a nursing home, whereas earlier functional loss was associated with dying in a nursing home.
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During normal ageing, the gradual loss of telomeric DNA in dividing somatic cells can contribute to replicative senescence, apoptosis, or neoplastic transformation. In the genetic disorder dyskeratosis congenita, telomere shortening is accelerated, and patients have premature onset of many age-related diseases and early death. ⋯ Those with shorter telomeres in blood DNA had poorer survival, attributable in part to a 3.18-fold higher mortality rate from heart disease (95% CI 1(.)36-7.45, p=0.0079), and an 8.54-fold higher mortality rate from infectious disease (1.52-47.9, p=0.015). These results lend support to the hypothesis that telomere shortening in human beings contributes to mortality in many age-related diseases.