Literacy Awareness Week: Low literacy levels have major implications for health providers and practitioners. A quarter of the adult population has serious difficulty reading medicine bottles and packaging, filling in medical forms, following signage in hospitals and reading health promotion material.
The National Adult Literacy Agency will host a range of awareness-building events during National Literacy Awareness Week, September 9th to 15th.
The events will include a national discussion on Health and Literacy at the Mater Hospital Dublin on September 13th. For further information contact Tommy Byrne at 01-8099195 or e-mail: tbyrne@nala.ie
Epidurals and backache: Epidural pain relief during labour is not associated with long-term backache, recent research concluded. In the study, 184 women were given an epidural and 185 received other forms of pain relief.
Self-reported lower back pain, disability and limitation of movement were assessed through interviews with a physiotherapist and a questionnaire. Physical measurements of spinal mobility were also used.
The team found no significant differences in any of the measurements of mobility - nor were there differences in responses to questions about everyday tasks that may be more difficult with lower back pain.
Children's wheezes: Wheezing is a common symptom in young children with a viral infection. It had been thought that influenza was a likely trigger factor but a Canadian study of 173 children with respiratory infection and severe wheeze has shown that they are more likely to have the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). This common respiratory virus causes a narrowing of the small airways in the lungs of young children.
Taking temperatures: Infrared ear thermometry is frequently used in children as it is a quick and accessible method of assessing body temperature. Researchers evaluated the agreement between temperature measured at the rectum and ear in infants resulting in some wide individual differences.
This suggests the use of ear thermometry could overestimate or underestimate body temperature, with implications for clinical management.
This finding means that the presence of fever might not be detected, and accurate temperature might not be obtained, in situations where body temperature needs to be measured with precision.
Lifelines is compiled by Dr Muiris Houston
lifelines@irish-times.ie