Surgery – Truss – Pad
Patent
1993-06-23
1995-06-06
Sykes, Angela D.
Surgery
Truss
Pad
A61B 505
Patent
active
054213444
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to a method and a means of determining the health condition of a living creature on the basis of a comparison of a selected measured physiological characteristic of the living creature to a corresponding reference characteristic of the healthy condition.
The invention relates in particular to a method and a means of making possible an indication as to the overall health condition of a human or animal.
All instruments employed in medical diagnosis acquire a specific characteristic or specific parameter of a patient, e.g. pulse frequency, blood pressure, chemical composition of the blood etc. Since the normal ranges are known from the corresponding measured values of a healthy population, a criterion for the nature and severity of an illness can be established from the deviation of the actual values from the standard. The diagnosis is made from a plurality of different characteristics, medical experience being the determining factor in selecting the characteristics in each case. However, until now it has not been achieved to establish explicit and objective criteria for the "overall health" condition of a patient even by means of "alternative" methods.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and means of the aforementioned kind which permit a reliable indication as to the overall health condition of a test person. In addition, the invention is intended to permit establishing to what degree the condition of the test person deviates overall from an ideal condition. The means are also intended to permit economic examination of a large number of test persons by enabling the examination to be made quickly and cost effectively.
The method according to the invention is characterized by the steps of detecting the selected physiological characteristic at a statistically significant plurality of measuring points distributed over a defined body region of the living creature, determining the statistical distribution of the measured values obtained for the said body region, and comparing the statistical distribution of the measured values to a reference statistical distribution in the form of the logarithmic normal distribution of the selected physiological characteristic. It is particularly advantageous and thus preferred to determine the said logarithmic distribution from the measured values obtained for the tested person. Due to it being easily available the skin of the test person is preferably used as the body region in question, the electrical conductivity of the skin or its radiation intensity being taken as the physiological characteristic. However, the invention is restricted neither to such special physiological characteristics nor to the body region "skin". Instead, the method according to the invention is generally applicable also to other characteristics and other suitable internal or external body regions.
The invention makes use of the fact that according to the rules of statistics, parameters irrespective of which kind always follow a specific statistical distribution (viz. L. Sachs: Statische Auswertungsmethoden, 2nd Edition, Springer Verlag Berlin 1969, pages 105-106), "statistical distribution" being understood to mean the probability function p(x) indicating the probability or frequency of encountering a specific measured value x in an arbitrary test object, whereby x can encompass the total scale of values available.
The physiological characteristics of living creatures such as, for instance, body height, blood pressure, drug tolerance etc. are also always distributed according to a logarithmic normal distribution, the reason for this being assumed a multiplicative configurational principle (viz. e,g, also: H. Gebelein and H. J. Heite, Klin. Wschr. 28 (1959), page 41). Within the framework of tests according to the invention it was further established that the logarithmic normal distribution exists not only for a specific characteristic in measurements made on a plurality of individuals, but also for a single healthy individual when the character
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Journal "Erfahrungsheilkunde" pp. 240-247 vol. 4/1990.
Reinhard Max
Sykes Angela D.
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