No abstract

The incidence of incontinence in a series of 135 consecutive stroke patients was 51% (urine) and 23% (feces) within one year. In 75% the urinary incontinence started within the first two weeks, and in 41% it had cleared during that time. Incontinence at onset is associated with measures of severity of stroke (and of immobility for fecal incontinence). Among 92 survivors at one year, 15% were incontinent of urine, a proportion that rose in two- and three-year survivors to 23 to 24%, but by four years was again 14%, a level similar to that of the general elderly population. It is concluded that incontinence is more commonly a by-product of immobility and dependency than of involvement of the neurologic pathways, and most of it is transient.

No abstract

A battery of tests to measure improvement over time in physical recovery of stroke patients - and to compare this with varying levels of disability at onset, is described. Recovery in a series of 135 patients with fresh stroke treated by traditional methods of rehabilitation is principally in the first 3 months - but also continues in the second 3 months, except for muscle power. Recovery after 6 months is least in muscle power and is limited mainly to walking and mobility (e.g. getting out of the house) which in some cases may be due to altered environmental factors. At onset only 62 per cent showed moderate or severe impairment of muscle power compared to 88 per cent with similar impairment in mobility and dependency. By 1 year 30 per cent of survivors remained dependent.

A four parameter model is proposed for data collected on maximum pit depths enabling simultaneous extrapolation into the future and over large areas of exposed metal. This model is based on the generalized extreme value distribution whose use in this context is here justified mainly on statistical, rather than metallurgical, reasoning. Those aspects of the model which allow for extrapolation in time rely on reported power law dependencies for mean pit depths. Use of the model for predicting means, standard deviations, percentiles, bounds, order statistics, hole counts, and size of perforated areas, is demonstrated, both in general and for a particular data set. Comparisons are made with other reported techniques.