Obesity Sickens, Kills, and Creates Significant Societal Costs For the first time since the Civil War, American life expectancy is projected to decrease.1 The reason: diseases related to obesity. Obesity now affects one in six children and more than one in three adults.2, 3 Obesity rates have more than doubled over the past 40 years, and the percentage of children age six to 11 who are obese has quadrupled,4 climbing from 4 to 18.8%; 40% of American adults will be obese by 2015.5 Obesity and excess weight contribute to more than 20 chronic illnesses, ranging from diabetes and hypertension to conditions with less well-known links to obesity, such as colon cancer.6 In 2000, obesity caused an estimated 112,000 deaths.7 With each obese employee estimated to cost employers 20 lost days of work a year, obesity adversely affects productivity more than any other health problem. Rising obesity rates also affect health care spending.8 In 2009, obesity and overweight together will add $228 billion to the na...
This study explains the restructuring of the city plan that changed after the Second World War in European countries. Focusing mostly on the patterns in England and Germany, this work examines the concept of modern urbanism after the Great War.
The post-war period literature, or postmodern literature, is generally described with the adjectives duplication, contradiction, chaos, and fragmentation. However, fragmentation is the key concept among them as the term is employed in a wide range of fields. Witnessing the failure of humanist ideal of wholeness, * Arş. Gör. Pamukkale Üniversitesi, Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi, İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Anabilim Dalı, [email protected]
Six Months in Sudan: A Young Doctor in a War-torn VillageJames MaskalykDoubleday Canada; 2009.352 pp $29.95James Maskalyk is a fool. But in the finest tradition of the wise fool, he challenges and asks questions as he shares the story of his seemingly tireless work with Medecins Sans Fronti
The Canadian affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War is urging doctors to use diagnostic alternatives to procedures that require reactor-based ionizing radiation, because of links between the way medical isotopes are produced and the nuclear weapons industry.Canada
This victory is worth celebrating; but are we winning our long-term war against cardiovascular disease? In this issue, Tu and colleagues report on trends in cardio- vascular disease in Canada between 1994 and 2004. 2 Mortal- ity due to cardiovascular disease fell by 30% in this period. The decline was slightly more for acute myocardial infarction than for stroke and heart failure. Hospitalization rates for stroke and heart failure fell by 27%, whereas age-adjusted hosital admission rates for acute myocardial infarction appar- ently fell by only 9%. The true proportion is probably greater but concealed by the effects of the aging and growth of the population, by diagnostic changes that have inflated patient numbers and by the counting of episodes rather than of pa- tients. The practice by hospitals of recoding diagnoses to maximize income may also have contributed to the apparent 33% decline of in-hospital case-fatality rates among patients with acute myocardial infarction. In contrast, reductions in case-fatality rates due to stroke and heart failure were rela- tively modest. An increase in the average age of patients in Canada, as elsewhere, was consistent with a "compression of morbidity," which means that disease commences at a later age and affects a shorter period of the total life span. It is cru- cial to note that most deaths occurred outside of hospital, many among individuals with no prior diagnosis of cardiovas- cular disease. As the first such evaluation in Canada, the study by Tu and colleagues had many strengths. It was comprehensive, spe- cific to Canada and based on data of adequate quality. Its ac- knowledged limitations included its analysis of episodes rather than individuals, leaving open the possibility that a greater reduction in incident-related hospitalizations may have occurred but been obscured by an increase in recurrent admissions. A lack of information on case mix means that severity of disease may have declined as thresholds for ad- mission to hospital were relaxed. The apparent decline in case-fatality rates may thus have been inflated. The findings of Tu and colleagues are generally consistent with those of analyses in the United States and Europe. Using linked data in Scotland, McIntyre and colleagues