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This
is the fourth issue this year which is rich with papers
from the region. A paper from Iran looked at Naming
Performance in Farsi-speaking demented patients. Naming
is a mental process requiring representations of semantic,
phonologic and morphosyntactic information of our mental
lexicon. The author studied 20 patients with DAT compared
with 17 patients with aphasia using a reference group
of healthy elderly people. All the participants were
examined using A Farsi Aphasia Naming Test developed
by Nilipour (2004). He concluded that naming difficulties
in DAT patients are mostly arising from semantic memory
deficits, whereas in aphasic patients the problem has
A lexical-phonological origin.
A retrospective study of causes
and prognosis of Jaundice in the elderly, from the UK,
looked at the causes and prognosis of jaundice in patients
over 65 years of age presenting to a district general
hospital. Ninety-three patients were studied (mean age
75 years, range 65-96). The authors concluded that mortality
was highest among patients with high bilirubin and low
albumin at presentation.
A paper from Bangladesh looked
at Potential Gain of Life Expectancies for Elimination
of Leading Causes of Death. The authors stressed that
communicable diseases, which include diarrhoeal and
infectious diseases are the major causes of low life
expectancy in our population. If we are able to eliminate
diarrhoeal diseases from our community, expectation
of life will be sharply increased about 1.43 years at
birth. In order to compute the inherent peculiarities
of deaths due to diarrhoeal and infectious diseases
and their combined effect in presence of all other cause
of death, single decrement life tables were constructed.
A retrospective study from Malaysia
looked at Organic psychiatric disorders in older persons.
The sample was collected over 3 months and consisted
of 10 patients above 60 years of age with features fitting
those conditions, conventionally labeled at the time
as Organic Brain Syndromes (OBS). We found that OBS
in hospitalized older people was common (29.41%) and
the detection of these syndromes was poor, taking almost
5 days for a psychiatric referral to be made. Clinical
presentations heterogeneously varied and the majority
of cases were in a delirium (60%) due to various causes.
Only low dosages of treatment were required to treat
the symptoms, except in those who had a premorbid psychiatric
disorder.
A paper from Pakistan looked
at the prevention of cardiovascular disease. The author
stressed that coronary artery disease is a major and
growing contributor to morbidity, mortality and disability
in the South Asian countries including Pakistan. Cardiovascular
disease profile in Pakistan shows the presence of emerging
and advancing diseases such as coronary artery diseases
(CAD) and cerebrovascular accidents (CVA) and of established
and receding diseases such as hypertension and diabetes,
which are also risk factors for CAD and CVA. The author
added that the majority of people have modifiable risk
factors for cardiovascular disease that are easily preventable.
Prevention efforts are required early in life, using
strategies for behavioral modification and health promotion.
In the population aging feature,
a paper from Bangladesh discussed the salient feature
of the Aged Population. The present study revealed that
65 percent of elderly are illiterate and about 78.5
percent of elderly women are illiterate. About 25.4
percent of older persons are non-working. This study
also showed that 77.85 percent of the older persons
of Bangladesh are suffering from various chronic diseases.
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