Paul M. Ford, MD, MS

All Publications

• The clinical value of serum ferritin tests in endurance athletes CLINICAL JOURNAL OF SPORT MEDICINE Garza, D., Shrier, I., Kohl, H. W., Ford, P., Brown, M., Matheson, G. O. 1997; 7 (1): 46-53

  Abstract

  It is common practice to measure serum ferritin levels in endurance athletes because of the belief that low iron stores may compromise performance. The direct relationship between endurance performance and iron deficiency anemia is well known, but there are theoretical reasons to believe that endurance performance may be adversely affected by low iron stores even in the absence of frank anemia. The purpose of this article is to provide a critical review of the scientific evidence relating low iron stores to endurance performance.Medline was searched using MeSH for articles related to ferritin and endurance published since 1985. Additional references were reviewed from the bibliographies of the retrieved articles.All clinical study designs were reviewed as well as relevant animal studies. Conclusions regarding endurance performance in humans were limited to data from clinical studies.In reviewing the literature, the relative strengths of the study designs were examined carefully. Particular attention of the effectiveness of each study in isolating ferritin as the key independent variable. Dependent measures of endurance capacity were also evaluated.Eight studies isolated serum ferritin as the experimental variable. Only one study reported a significant improvement in endurance performance (time to exhaustion) in subjects with low ferritin levels treated with oral iron, but this finding may have been magnified by an unexplained decrease in time to exhaustion in the control group. Iron dosages differed in the studies reviewed. Two additional studies that reported increases in performance parameters following increases in ferritin were confounded by concomitant increases in hemoglobin levels.Iron supplementation can raise serum ferritin levels, but increases in ferritin concentration, unaccompanied by increases in hemoglobin concentration, have not been shown to increase endurance performance. Of concern to the clinician is that athletes with low ferritin levels but hemoglobin in the low-normal range may have iron deficiency anemia responsive to iron supplementation. Low ferritin with hemoglobin in the mid- to upper normal range is at best a relative indication for iron supplementation: low ferritin with hemoglobin in the low normal range is a stronger, yet still relative, indication for iron supplementation in athletes.

  View details for Web of Science ID A1997WE03800009

  View details for PubMedID 9117526

• Lightweight, mobile e-mail for intra-clinic communication JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL INFORMATICS ASSOCIATION ACUFF, R. D., Fagan, L. M., Rindfleisch, T. C., Levitt, B. J., Ford, P. M. 1997: 729-733

  Abstract

  We have developed a mobile messaging system designed for use in the clinic setting. The system is designed to facilitate quick, informal, interactions that occur in a clinical setting, e.g., requests for assistance or information. The system includes safeguards to make sure that the sender of a message is aware if a message is not read in a timely fashion. Evaluation of the system shows message delivery was about 50% slower than our target of 30 seconds. Although the mobile device used is fairly small when combined with a radio unit, it is too bulky and users did not necessarily carry the system with them. This led to delays (over eleven minutes on average) before messages were seen. We expect that improvements in hardware and clinical software will lead to more common use of such adjunct software systems.

  View details for Web of Science ID 000171774300146

  View details for PubMedID 9357721

• A SURVEY OF PATIENT ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC MAIL - ATTITUDES, BARRIERS, AND OPPORTUNITIES 18th Annual Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care - Transforming Information, Changing Health Care Fridsma, D. B., Ford, P., Altman, R. BMJ PUBLISHING GROUP. 1994: 15–19

  Abstract

  The use of electronic mail (e-mail) is increasing among both physicians and patients, although there is limited information in the literature about how patients might use e-mail to communicate with their physician. In our university-based internal medicine clinic, we have studied attitudes toward and access to e-mail among patients. A survey of 444 patients in our clinic showed that 46% of patients in the clinic use e-mail, and 89% of those with e-mail use it at work. Fifty-one percent would use e-mail all or most of the time to communicate with the clinic if it were available, and many of the communications that currently take place by phone could be replaced by e-mail. Barriers to e-mail use include privacy concerns among patients who use e-mail in the workplace, choosing the appropriate tasks for e-mail, and methods for efficiently triaging electronic messages in the clinic.

  View details for Web of Science ID A1994QF21600004

  View details for PubMedID 7949909