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Tuberculosis is a major global public health challenge and disease in young children is particularly severe. Diagnosing tuberculosis in children is complex as clinical presentation is often atypical and available diagnostic modalities are imperfect. Diagnosis is particularly challenging in developing countries where resources and access to sophisticated facilities are limited. The South African primary health care system requires frontline nurses to be equipped to suspect, diagnose and treat children with tuberculosis, but their capacity to diagnose childhood tuberculosis is unknown. Relatively low rates of childhood tuberculosis notification suggested that tuberculosis may have been under-diagnosed in Mpumalanga Province

Ballistocardiogram and carotid pulse recordings were made on a group of healthy young men and women aged 25 – 35 years. The recordings were subjected to a newly developed procedure for feature recognition and measurement (FRAM) by digital computer. Results from the FRAM were grouped according to sex of subjects tested and inspected for statistically significant differences in mean values of the many separate items calculated. There were marked differences between the men and women in those items most closely related to initial acceleration of blood in the aorta. It was hypothesized that the hyperdynamic values from the males were indicative of intrinsic functional differences between their myocardia and that of the females.

The present study compared the relative efficacy of a behavioral stress-management procedure versus a pharmacologic method (the beta-blocker propranolol) in reducing psychophysiological reactivity in post-myocardial infarction (MI) patients. A pretreatment-posttreatment assessment design was used, with 10 patients participating in six separate sessions. The first session involved evaluating psychophysiological reactivity to an emotional stressor (a public-speaking task). The subsequent five sessions involved the administration of the respective treatments, either stress management or drug. The patients were randomly assigned to each treatment group. The public-speaking stressor was readministered after the last treatment session. Results demonstrated that behavioral stress management reduced psychophysiological reactivity to public speaking to the same level seen with propranolol. The findings suggest that this nonpharmacological approach could be of use when beta-blocker therapy is not desired, not practical, or medically contraindicated.