Following a child playground equipment injury prevention project conducted in New York State in 1977, there was a 42 per cent reduction in playground equipment hazards, and a 22.4 per cent reduction in playground related injuries treated in the two largest hospitals of one of the program sites. Knowledge about unsafe playground practices and equipment hazards improved after the workshops for playground personnel. This approach to injury prevention deserves further study.

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A group of 100 children who had experienced one episode of accidental poisoning were studied. A group of matched controls were selected from a previous randomized population derived from the City of Syracuse. The composition of study and control groups was similar in all gross characteristics tested. The poisoned group was found to have many more subsequent episodes of poisoning than the control group. These children were more active and mischievous, were more likely to experience falls, had more frequent separation experiences from the parents, and the maternal-child relationships appeared to differ significantly in several characteristics. It would appear that the repeater concept in accidental poisoning is established and presents a challenge to those presently concerned with prevention of accidental poisoning in children.

Historically, Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) has been rare in the United Kingdom, both in relation to other neoplasms, and in international terms (Grulich et al, 1992). However, its profile has become more prominent since it was first reported among homosexual men in the United States (Centers for Disease Control, 1981) at the beginning of the global AIDS epidemic.The spread of HIV and AIDS in Scotland has been documented in detail elsewhere (Goldberg et al, , 1998. In summary, HIV first entered populations of homosexual/bisexual males and injecting drug users not later than 1982 and 1983 , respectively (Goldberg et al, 1996. The majority of homosexual/bisexual males have been over 30 years old at the time of diagnosis and their progression to AIDS is likely to have been more rapid than the generally younger cohort of injecting drug users. Epidemic spread of HIV among injecting drug users occurred during 1983-86, particularly in Edinburgh and Dundee . By the end of 1997, a cumulative total of 2725 persons in Scotland had been identified as HIV antibody-positive (Goldberg et al, 1998). Just under half of cases were in injecting drug users, one third in homosexual/bisexual males, and one seventh were men or women in whom infection was attributed to heterosexual intercourse; 76% of all infected cases were male.The purpose of the present study is to describe the secular trends in incidence of KS in Scotland before and during the AIDS epidemic, to describe geographical variations in incidence in recent years, and to examine the survival of persons with KS. MATERIALS AND METHODS On the basis of the International Classification of Diseases forOncology (WHO, 1976) morphology code M-9140/3, incident cases of KS for the years 1976-96 were identified and extracted from the Scottish Cancer Registry (SCR). This registry covers the whole of Scotland (population approximately 5.1 million); data quality is believed to be high, in terms of both accuracy and completeness (Harris et al, 1998). The registry collects a range of patient-and tumour-related information, including demographic and diagnostic details. Every year, mortality data, supplied by the General Register Office (Scotland), are linked to cancer registration records by computerized probability matching (Black et al, 1993).Mid-year population estimates were derived from the Annual Reports of the Registrar General for Scotland (Registrar General for Scotland, 1977-97). Age-standardized rates were calculated by direct standardization to the World Standard Population (Waterhouse et al, 1976). Within Scotland, the incidence of KS in each health board area of residence was compared to the incidence in Scotland as a whole by indirect standardization to produce standardized incidence ratios (SIR); exact 95% confidence intervals for the SIRs were calculated (Breslow and Day, 1987). Cumulative observed survival was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method (Kaplan and Meier, 1958).For comparison, annual numbers of cases of AIDS-defining KS by sex, transmission category and year of di...