These findings show that drug treatment has more effect in patients with higher baseline risk. Although atraumatic needles reduce the incidence of postdural puncture headache after spinal anaesthesia, they have not been adopted widely for diagnostic lumbar puncture. They found that the incidence of headache was significantly reduced by atraumatic needles, but that several attempts at successful lumbar puncture were needed in patients with a high body mass index. One moderate or severe headache was avoided for every five patients who underwent lumbar puncture with atraumatic needles. Additional training in the use of atraumatic needles is needed to minimise failure rates.
Snellen acuity seems to be a poor indicator of an individual's ability to pass a number plate test.
The authors conclude that the guidelines need clarification. Justification was offered in only one of the remaining 85 studies, and ethical review did not question this. The authors argue that ethics committees are in a strong position to question ageism. Home visits do not prevent falls in elderly people in Europe Programmes of multifactorial interventions targeted to the risk profile of the individual showed favourable effects on falls among elderly people in community settings in the United States. Little evidence is yet available about the effects of such interventions among elderly people in Europe.