Admissions to Hospital due to Drugs

In a survey of adverse drug reactions in wards of two Belfast hospitals for 52 weeks in 1965–6, 2·9% of 1,268 patients seen were admitted to hospital because of adverse reactions to drugs taken for therapeutic reasons and 2·1% were admitted because of self-poisoning. Patients admitted because of adverse drug reactions were older than those admitted because of self-poisoning and stayed in hospital longer. Among the drugs which caused the adverse reactions were digitalis preparations, antibiotics, corticosteroids, anticoagulants, analgesics, and tranquillizers. Hypersensitivity and side-effect types of reactions were the most common. Barbiturates were the most frequently used drugs in suicidal attempts.     

Improvement to the air-injection technique to estimate xylem vulnerability to cavitation

Several techniques have been developed to quantify the degree of embolism of the xylem using hydraulic conductance. Although there have been several improvements to these techniques, their reliability is still questionable and many technical pitfalls persist. We are proposing here a manometric approach to improve the accuracy of xylem cavitation measurement by the original air-injection technique which uses twigs exposed to pressurized air to cause cavitation. The measured parameter is air bubble production (P _b) caused by xylem cavitation in birch (Betula pendula Roth) twigs from which the percent increase in bubble production is calculated to quantify xylem cavitation. Data produced by three different methods (bench-drying, air-injection, and manometric approach) are compared. Xylem vulnerability curves (VCs) constructed by the reference and reliable bench-drying technique and the manometric approach show similar sigmoid “S” shape, but a small anomaly appeared in the VC constructed by the original air-injection technique. The xylem pressure inducing 50% of embolism (P ₅₀) was the same with the three techniques. Furthermore, there was a strong positive correlation between the estimators of xylem cavitation measured by the three different methods. For its reliability, precision and ease we recommend the manometric technique as an improved version of the original hydraulic air-injection method.