Problems associated with posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) have traditionally included the need for donor bone, prolonged healing time of donor bone, the difficulty of cutting precise bony channels, the risk of retropulsion of graft, postoperative collapse of the bone graft, and pseudarthrosis. To avoid these problems a carbon fiber reinforced polymer implant cage has been developed to facilitate interbody fusion. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the technical problems and fusion rate associated with these new device for PLIF. Between April 1991 and December 1993, 65 pairs of these implant cages were sold in Sweden. They were traced to six hospitals, where they had been used in the treatment of 51 patients operated on at a total of 65 levels. All PLIF were supplemented with VSP (Variable Screw Placement) instrumentation. All medical records were evaluated and all patients were examined with plain radiographs taken at least 1 year after surgery. If that investigation did not show a clear fusion they were also evaluated with CT (18 patients, 27 levels). No intraoperative problems with the device have been reported; 44 patients (86%) and 58 levels (89%) achieved successful fusion. All patients bar one maintained their immediately obtained postoperative disc height. CT with 1-mm slices and sagittal reconstruction is most helpful if radiographs are difficult to interpret.

This paper highlights the impacts of a revised curriculum which incorporated a strong life skills focus into an existing civic education curriculum (for 4-H youth). The revised curriculum resulted in actual youth gains in life skills competencies. The study also explored the effect of volunteer facilitators in the implementation of an added life skills training component. Despite some significant limitations to the internal and external validity of the study, preliminary indications were that adding explicit life skills training content does in fact lead to an increase in life skills competencies. This was clearer in cases where volunteer facilitators fully implemented the additional content versus implementing none or only part of the life skills training. The limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are outlined in the conclusion.

Abstract:The Adventure Bites -Cooking with Kids program enhanced nutrition curriculum by including a Life Skill development focus and a family night -to improve youth nutrition behaviors. The data was collected using the WSU 4-H Life Skills pre-post youth evaluations, staff surveys, a parent retrospective pre-post survey, and comparison data from non-program sites. The results support adding Life Skills and family night events into youth nutrition curricula. There are opportunities to improve evaluation and do further testing, to determine what the individual impact of Life Skill development and/or individual impact of having family nights had on changes in youth behaviors regarding nutrition.

No abstract