All schizophrenic patients admitted consecutively either to the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Munich (group 1, N = 183) or the Mental State Hospital Haar/Munich (group 2, N = 447) between 1.8.1989 and 1.2.1990 were examined to assess prevalence estimates for substance abuse in schizophrenic inpatients. Psychiatric diagnosis were made according to ICD-9 criteria. Psychopathology and psychosocial variables were documented by means of the AMDP-protocol on admission and discharge. The diagnostic procedure included a detailed semi-structured interview concerning the individual alcohol and drug history and sociodemographic data, the Munich Alcoholism Screening Test (MALT), a physical examination and the screening of various laboratory parameters such as GGT and MCV, among others. The results show that substance abuse is a very common problem in schizophrenics. Lifetime prevalence rates for substance abuse were estimated at 21.8% in group 1 and 42.9% in group 2, 3-month prevalence rates for substance abuse were estimated at 21.3% resp. 29.0%. Alcohol abuse was by far the most common type of abuse with prevalence estimates being 17.4% resp. 34.6%. Prevalence rates for substance abuse were much higher in the more "chronic"sample of the Mental State Hospital and in male patients. With respect to schizophrenic subtype few differences could be demonstrated with drug dependence being more common in patients with paranoid schizophrenia. The MALT proved to be a valuable screening instrument for alcohol abuse in schizophrenics with both a high specificity and sensitivity. "Dual diagnosis" schizophrenics had a significantly higher rate of suicide attempts and were less likely to be married. Possible clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

The study objective was to describe the types, localizations and severity of injuries among first division Bundesliga football players, and to study the effect of playing position on match and training injury incidence and severity, based on information from the public media. Exposure and injuries data from 1 448 players over 6 consecutive seasons were collected from a media-based register. In total, 3 358 injuries were documented. The incidence rate for match and training injuries was 11.5 per 1 000 match-hours (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10.9-12.2), and 61.4 per 100 player-seasons (95% CI: 58.8-64.1), respectively. Strains (30.3%) and sprains (16.7%) were the major injury types, with the latter causing significantly longer lay-off times than the former. Significant differences between the playing positions were found regarding injury incidence and injury burden (lay-off time per incidence-rate), with wing-defenders sustaining significantly lower incidence-rates of groin injuries compared to forwards (rate ratio: 0.43, 95% CI: 0.17-0.96). Wing-midfielders had the highest incidence-rate and injury burden from match injuries, whereas central-defenders sustained the highest incidence-rate and injury burden from training injuries. There were also significant differences in match availability due to an injury across the playing positions, with midfielders sustaining the highest unavailability rates from a match and training injury. Injury-risk and patterns seem to vary substantially between different playing positions. Identifying positional differences in injury-risk may be of major importance to medical practitioners when considering preventive measures.