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The quality of the clinical records included in the clinical charts is assessed through a sample of the clinical charts existing at the Health Center Zaidin-Sur (Granada, Spain). The quality was ascertained via the number of visits annotated, the number of records considered as essential (life style, family and personal history), and the number of received or requested consultation. This information is compared to the data of the general files of the Health Center, to the information gathered by a direct interview (performed to assess the validity of the essential records), and to the results of a protocol studying the visit activities. The analysis of data shows that just a 40.4% of the visits are annotated on the clinical chart. A lower percentage of the essential records were annotated, 37.6%. The requested consultations are annotated in 43.8% and the received ones in 87.6%. We discuss on the need of periodic evaluation of the records to show their limitations and deficiencies. This is the first step to improve them.

It is done a cross-sectional study of the prevalence of mental retardation in the province of Jaén (Spain), based on the cumulated cases reported to the Institute of Social Services of the Social Security (INSERSO) until January 1, 1984. The main objective of this research is to know the prevalence of mental retardation in our province, and to analize its relationship with some sociodemographic variables. The prevalence obtained has been 4.09%, being a 59.27% of the prevalence due to endogenous/unexplained etiology. Mild subnormality constitutes a 8.4% of cases, being closely related with the size of the locality (municipio). Prevalence of mental subnormality showed a significative linear association with the size of the locality (r = -0.904, p less than 0.05), and with the population growth (r = -0.929, p less than 0.01). This relationship was not observed neither with the level of per capita income nor the altitude of the locality. A multiple regression analysis is made for every etiology of mental retardation and several social and geographic variables. We conclude that the figures for mental retardation in our province show a direct relationship with local development parameters.

Strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from patients in the University of Granada (Spain) from 1981 to 1986 were pyocin-typed in order to determine which types were the most common. The proportions of typable and non typable strains were similar to those obtained by other authors. A high percentage of typable strains were unclassifiable (UC) according to Govan's method. The most frequent types of typable strains were 580 (55 of Govan), 270 (UC), 280 (UC), 570 (UC), 670 (73 of Govan), 113 (10 of Govan), 470 (86 of Govan) and 180 (58 of Govan). These types were responsible for the appearance of several nosocomial outbreaks during the years of this study. Types 580, 113 and 280 remained constant for these six years; for this reason, they can be considered endemic of our hospital.

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