No abstract

Spoken discourse is regarded as an important component of communication assessment, but data on the discourse characteristics of the adult population, and in particular those who fall into the fastest growing section of the population (those aged over 75), are scant. Therefore, detection of deficit is commonly dependent on the assessor's opinion as to what constitutes normal performance. To determine the effects of age, education and gender on spoken discourse, the conversational interaction and picture description skills of 189 neurologically normal adults were examined. Conversation was appraised with reference to five parameters (initiation, topic maintenance, verbosity, turn taking, reference). Picture description was assessed for relevant content, length, efficiency and the inclusion of extraneous information. Level of education did not affect conversational interaction but in picture description those not educated beyond minimal school leaving produced shorter and less complete descriptions. Picture description content and length were not affected by advancing age but the older elderly (aged 75+) conveyed information with reduced efficiency. Conversational interaction style altered with advancing age, with some suggestion of change in the young elderly (age 60-74), but highly significant differences in respect of the old elderly. Gender had no effect on the parameters of conversation and no significant picture description differences were present in males and females though there were trends towards longer and higher content descriptions in females. The results have important diagnostic implications for those concerned with establishing whether pathology such as stroke has affected communication. On a wider scale, awareness of the effects of advancing age and limited education may facilitate successful communication for all who communicate with the public in a professional capacity.

Study participants would welcome having access to a human milk bank for both donating and receiving milk in South Australia.

NSOMExs are a frequent component of dysarthria management in the UK-devolved government countries. This confirmation, along with the details of speech and language therapy practice, provides a foundation for clinical research which will compare outcomes for people with dysarthria, whose management includes and does not include NSOMExs. Speech and language therapy practice may be guided by evidence that speech outcome is or is not affected by NSOMExs.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether people with a history of cancer have a higher prevalence of chronic conditions or different lifestyle behaviour compared with controls. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Cross-sectional, self-reported data from a telephone survey conducted between 1 January 2010 and 31 March 2012 of adult residents of South Australia who self-reported a previous cancer diagnosis (cases) and randomly selected age- and sex-matched residents with no cancer diagnosis (controls). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Self-reported medically diagnosed cardiovascular disease, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, diabetes and osteoporosis; lifestyle behaviour (smoking, physical activity and diet); body mass index (BMI); psychological distress and self-reported health. RESULTS: A total of 2103 cases and 4185 controls were included in the analyses. For men, after adjusting for age, cancer survivors were more likely than controls to have ever had cardiovascular disease (P<0.001), high blood pressure (P=0.001), high cholesterol (P<0.001) and diabetes (P=0.04). These associations remained significant after controlling for socioeconomic status (SES), with the exception of high blood pressure (P=0.09). For women, there was an increased prevalence of high cholesterol (P=0.005), diabetes (P=0.02) and osteoporosis (P=0.005) in cancer cases, but after adjusting for SES, these associations were no longer significant. Women with a previous cancer diagnosis were more likely than controls to have ever smoked, after adjusting for SES (P=0.001). There were no other differences in lifestyle behaviour or BMI between cases and controls for men or women. CONCLUSION: Despite similar lifestyle habits and BMI, the prevalence of chronic conditions was significantly higher among people with a history of cancer than among controls without cancer. This supports the importance of chronic disease management as part of health care after a diagnosis of cancer