Michael S. Shutty

The Impact of Children on Adults

Children influence adults in numerous ways. Consider the couple who welcome their first healthy child into the world. Their lives are changed dramatically. One parent may have to leave a job to stay at home and provide necessary care for the infant. The parents’sleep patterns will be disrupted for several months, and each spouse will have less time and energy for the other. This can strain the marital relationship, for in coping with the demands of caring for the infant the spouses must make major adjustments in the quantity and quality of time spent with each other (Barton & Alexander, 1980; Glenn & McLanahan, 1982).

Diurnal urine volume estimates in schizophrenic patients with polydipsia during water-loaded versus nonloaded states.

Estimates of diurnal urine volume (DUV) based upon urine creatinine concentrations are frequently used to help diagnose polydipsia and polyuria in schizophrenic patients. Two methods of estimating DUV are available (Koczapski et al 1989; Vieweg et al 1992) with reported associations between methods ranging from kappa coefficients of .70 to correlations of .98, respectively (Verghese et al 1994; Vieweg et al 1992). Goldman et al (1992) reported the overlap of Koczapskis formula with actual 24-hour DUV to be 85% of the variance. It is unclear how sensitive estimated DUV values are to conditions of water loading observed in polydipsic patients. Furthermore, the impact of the frequency and timing of urine creatinine sampling used to estimate DUV remains unassessed. Koczapskis method allows for two urine creatinine samples (taken at 6:00 AM-8:00 AM and 4:00 PM-6:00 PM), whereas Viewegs formula utilizes two or more urine creatinine samples, prompting the question of whether Q.I.D. versus B.I.D. sampling produces more accurate estimates. Given the frequent impracticality of collecting actual 24-hour DUV, a reliable estimation method is desirable for clinical and research use. We compare these two methods of estimating DUV under