Research Activities

March 1996

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Contents

About Research Activities

Feature Stories

   Incontinent elderly persons more likely to enter nursing homes if they live in rural areas
   At least 15 percent of nursing home residents could be placed in lower levels of care

Departments

Patient Care/Clinical Decisionmaking
   Combined anticoagulant/antiplatelet therapy reduces risk of stroke after mechanical heart-valve replacement
   Experts examine the relationship between early newborn discharge and neonatal jaundice
   Less than half of primary care physicians correctly diagnose alcohol abuse
   Inappropriate monitoring of antiepileptic drug levels may result in higher hospital charges

Medical Effectiveness/Outcomes Research
   Most outcomes of type-II diabetic and hypertensive patients are unrelated to system of care or physician specialty
   Heart disease patients in America achieve better functioning than their Canadian counterparts
   Recent findings from the low birthweight PORT
   Prostate PORT examines costs and effectiveness of prostate cancer screening among elderly men
   Clinical characteristics combined with a patient's report of visual functioning predict degree of improvement following cataract surgery
   Cataract PORT publishes recent findings

HIV/AIDS Research
   Use of medicines other than ZDV to treat HIV infection has increased greatly over the past 5 years
   Disadvantaged groups lag behind other patients in receipt of new HIV treatments
   Voluntary HIV screening found to be cost-effective at some hospitals
   Rural AIDS cases have risen dramatically among some groups

Health Care Costs and Financing
   Both uninsured and privately insured patients report fewer illness episodes than Medicare and Medicaid patients
   Medicare's PPS does not reduce overall clinical services for depressed elderly persons
   Self-insurance of employee health benefits gains in popularity among certain types of employees

Health Care Delivery
   Changing the nature of a successful pilot program can limit its effectiveness as a large-scale service program
   Most who use the ER for nonurgent care are neither poor nor uninsured
   History of malpractice claims exposure not linked with the practice of defensive medicine among OBs or family physicians
   Physician education program improves preventive medicine services for inner city residents

Announcements
   AHCPR announces new funding opportunities
   Agency launches new Center for Organization and Delivery Studies
   A new AHCPR initiative will assist consumers in choosing health plans
   New publications available from AHCPR

Research Briefs
   Applications of the behavioral model to health studies of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans
   Benign prostatic hyperplasia-specific health status measures in clinical research
   Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of physicians regarding urinary incontinence in persons aged >65 years—Massachusetts and Oklahoma, 1993
   Does the cycle of rerestoration lead to larger restorations?
   Making decisions about antithrombotic therapy in heart disease
   Hepatomegaly and steatosis in HIV-infective patients receiving nucleoside analog antiretroviral therapy
   Comparison and meta-analysis of randomized trials of endarterectomy for symptomatic carotid artery stenosis
   Predicting who dies depends on how severity is measured: Implications for evaluating patient outcomes
   Early biopsy versus empiric treatment with delayed biopsy of non-responders in suspected HIV-associated cerebral toxoplasmosis: A decision analysis
   Variation and quality of self-report health data: Asians and Pacific Islanders compared with other ethnic groups
   A brief mail sexual function inventory for urology

AHCPR Publication No. 96-0045
Current as of March 1996

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Internet Citation:

Research Activities newsletter. March 1996, No. 191. AHCPR Publication No. 96-0045. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/research/mar96/

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