The present study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of International Asthma Guidelines in low-income asthmatic children in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Fifty children with moderate or severe asthma were evaluated. Patients were evaluated before and after a 1 yr follow-up period using a pre- and post-education design with patients acting as their own controls. Parents were interviewed before and 1 yr after the programme. Most of the children were receiving inadequate medical care from their primary physicians, based mainly on bronchodilators. After the educational programme combined with a medical treatment based mainly on inhaled steroids, there was a decrease in emergency room visits and no need for hospital admissions. There was also a significant decrease in asthma severity and impairment scores (p<.0001). The combination of good medical care and an educational programme can reduce the symptoms of asthma and significantly increase the quality of life, as well as decreasing the costs of asthma treatment. We conclude that by applying the International Asthma Guidelines substantial success was achieved, resulting in moving the patients from crises-orientated management into a chronic care and preventive management mode.

No abstract

Frank lead system of vectorcardiography based on the well-established principle, has generally been adopted as an accurate lead system for adults by a majority of cardiologists. However, it was necessary to investigate whether this system is applicable to children of each age group, because in our experiments, so-called Burger triangles in infants and children obtained with the fluid mapper method were different from those in adults. Therefore, in two series of experiments, the results obtained with Frank lead system were compared with those obtained with Grishman lead system. Although in Frank lead system the ARS loops showed a more or less considerable distortion in the cases with incomplete right bundle branch block pattern, this system produced usually no significant distortion and was applicable to infants and children. It was proved that Frank lead system is more useful than Grishman lead system in children with or without heart diseases. The relation between cardiac electromotive force and voltage produced by

No abstract