OBJECTIVE: The pain physician is often asked to establish the medical impairment of the chronic pain patient (CPP) and from that determination ascertain the work capacity of the CPP. Functional capacity (FC) testing has recently been introduced as a more objective and accurate way of facilitating the determination of work ...

BACKGROUND: Keloids and hypertrophic scars are benign fibrous growths which usually occur after trauma in predisposed individuals. Their etiology, clinical manifestations and treatment are diverse. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to review the pertinent literature concerning keloids and hypertrophic scars as well as present my own perspective on ...

Childhood autism is conceptualized as a behavioural syndrome with several different aetiologies. Its prevalence is estimated at about one in every thousand children born. The male:female ratio is considerably higher than in the general population, but possibly not as high as 3-4:1 (as has been suggested for almost 50 years ...

Historical evidence about toothdrawers in England can be supplemented by references to these men in popular contemporary literature. Poetic and dramatic sources from the late medieval period to the close of the 17th century have been examined to this end, with some attempt made to distinguish satire from historical fact.

Discussions of aggression in the psychoanalytic literature are dominated, both explicitly and implicitly, by loyalty to, or rejection of, Freud's theory of the aggressive drive, which has caused an unfortunate polarization. An approach to aggression is presented that preserves essential features of both drive theory and nondrive theory traditions. It ...

This study was carried out to determine if the content of structured abstracts conforms with recommendations of the Ad Hoc Working Group for the critical appraisal of the medical literature as adopted by the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study design was a survey. All articles published in Annals of ...

In essence, the statistical overview (or meta-analysis) does little more than many medical scientists and practising clinicians have been attempting for years: estimating the average size of an effect from an apparently disparate medical literature. The statistical overview provides a method of pooling the results of comparable trials (or observational ...

This study evaluates inter-author variability in knowledge base construction. Seven board-certified internists independently profiled "acute perinephric abscess", using as reference material a set of 109 peer-reviewed articles. Each participant created a list of findings associated with the disease, estimated the predictive value and sensitivity of each finding, and assessed the ...

The literature on the activities of medical professionals during the tumultuous years of the Third Reich has, over the last decade, increased substantially. However, many questions remain unanswered and the subject is likely to receive further attention following recent access to previously restricted archival material in Eastern Europe. In this ...

Categorical data are usually displayed in medical publications with pie graphs and bar graphs. We here consider some of the problems that occur in displaying the rank, magnitude, width, and spacing of categorical data. A solution to some of these problems is offered by the dot chart, which has been ...

Submentovertex (SMV) cephalograms of a random sample of 32 male Chinese subjects who were 20.1 +/- 1.9 years old and were free of temporomandibular joint symptoms were studied. A submentovertex cephalometric analysis comprised of 5 angular measurements and 10 linear parameters was developed for the purposes of establishing SMV cephalometric ...

The transmetatarsal amputation has been performed for over 40 years as a limb salvage procedure, in diabetic patients with nonhealing ulcerations or nonreconstructible ischemia. It is generally believed that the transmetatarsal amputation provides a better walking extremity than a more proximal amputation and is more energy efficient. A review of ...

As a preliminary step to studying the Army's experience with against medical advice (AMA) discharges, the literature was reviewed. Fifty-one articles were found through a computer program search. These articles reported widely varying rates depending upon the type of patient, primary diagnosis, and type of setting. Patients with drug and/or ...

Clinicians in patient care settings must be able to locate relevant recent medical literature quickly. Computer literacy is increasing, but many clinicians remain ill at ease with search strategies for online bibliographic databases. As part of an ongoing project to simplify the translation of clinical questions into effective searches, a ...

OBJECTIVE: To review the methods of electronic retrieval of biomedical journal articles; to demonstrate CD-ROM and online searching techniques; and to compare major biomedical databases. DESIGN: A CD-ROM MEDLINE search was made by a medical practitioner, with the assistance of an experienced librarian. An online MEDLINE/Excerpta Medica search was made ...

The prevalence, course and prognosis of diseases in patients referred to tertiary medical centers frequently differ from those treated in primary care settings. Extrapolation of findings from one population to another may therefore be unwarranted. Other factors that contribute to misinterpretation of medical literature include failure to distinguish statistical from ...

Nifedipine, a calcium channel blocker, is becoming increasingly popular as a tocolytic medication. Previous reports of hepatitis associated with nifedipine in the medical literature have been published. We present the first case reported of a patient with preterm labor treated with nifedipine who had development of a concurrent elevation in ...

There has been a tremendous interest in the circumstances of Mozart's death. Theories of head trauma, poisoning, heart disease, and most prominently, renal failure have all appeared recently in scholarly musicology publications, the lay press, and the medical literature. The purpose of this article is to present the evidence behind ...

The authors present the results obtained in the diagnosis and treatment of the ocular malign melanomas which concern a group of 54 patients, the study covering a period of 4 years. First of all a review of the etiopathological conditions will be done, as well as that of the repartition ...

There are two new computerized radiology literature databases available for those practitioners who require a more sophisticated retrieval system than the Index to Imaging Literature published annually by Radiology. The installation and use of these two products, the floppy disk based PC MASS and the CD-ROM based SilverPlatter Radiology are ...

A new form of joyride, on top of an elevator as it moves up and down the elevator shaft, has surfaced on college campuses and in housing and apartment complexes with elevators. This practice is called "elevator surfing," and an illustrative case is presented, which is believed to be the ...

This report discusses the clinical findings on two patients with 45,X/46,XY mosaicism, two boys presented with penile hypospadias and cryptorchidism. A dysgenetic ovary and a testis were found in one boy, and a dysgenetic ovary in the other. Both patients can be considered to be true hermaphrodites on the basis ...

Through casual observations, formal consultations, and educational sessions, the authors have identified various indexing features of the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) that pose challenges to end users while attempting to obtain relevant retrieval when searching MEDLINE. These problematic features include the use of Explodes, Tree structures, ...

To minimise the effect of reference bias in literature retrieval, it is important to use computerised search strategies that give a high yield of relevant reports. In a MEDLINE search that included the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) "Comparative study," the recall of double-blind trials of NSAIDs in rheumatoid arthritis was ...

Grateful Med is a computer software package developed by the National Library of Medicine which provides access to MEDLINE and other medical databases. The program is available for both IBM and Macintosh computers, is inexpensive, easy to install and has excellent documentation. Health professionals in all areas find Grateful Med ...

Radiographic identification of vicarious excretion of intravenous contrast into the stomach has not previously been cited in the literature. We report here an instance of gastric excretion of iodinated intravenous contrast following excretory urography in a severely burned patient. The physiology and possible pathways of vicarious excretion of contrast are ...

The term "addiction" has become widespread in our society. In this article, I examine the expansion of the medical addiction metaphor to numerous types of behavior. A review of the largely self-help addiction-related literature, selling tens of millions of copies per year, reveals a common path for recovery from these ...

Various published bibliographic and abstract services covering the period 1970-1988 were compared to analyze scope and coverage. A total of 7,281 articles and book titles (1,655 Soviet and 5,626 foreign) were selected on forty-one topics in different medical fields. The titles originated from three different samples but included all Soviet ...

Many reports in the medical literature are flawed through poor presentation of numerical results, or, more seriously, by the use of inadequate or inappropriate statistical methodology. This article expands on the more complex methodological issues. The main emphasis is on discussing key aspects of experimental design, and the idea of ...

This paper reviews the medical workload of a Royal Air Force Search and Rescue squadron on the East Coast of England over a period of 18 years and their association with the principal receiving hospitals in that area. It illustrates the effects of improvements in road networks on the workload ...

Although there is a body of literature on the therapeutic efficacy of sleep deprivation (SD) there are only a few investigations in which the relevance of antidepressive medication for the clinical efficacy of SD has been studied. Based on the literature and on our own investigations with major depressed patients ...

Structural collapse catastrophes are an increasingly greater threat as our population centers expand and as our nations's buildings and infrastructure age. Sophisticated search and rescue capabilities are being developed and deployed to prepare for these eventualities. To assure "successful" rescues, with optimal reduction of morbidity and mortality, an equally sophisticated ...

Low priced shareware packages may be adequate for those whose main need is to index a collection of articles read in journals. Those who search the literature electronically will need a package able to import mass data. Pro-Cite is set up for bibliographic functions only, but Reference File and Notebook ...

This paper discusses the current state and development of health and biomedical literature in Arab countries. The study concentrates on the Arabic sources of medical articles, and surveys and analyzes the size of the literature and its development in the past 100 years. Two aspects of these sources are covered: ...

A 71-year-old man with a penile verrucous carcinoma presenting as a large cutaneous horn is described. Both verrucous carcinoma and penile cutaneous horn are relatively uncommon entities and have not been previously reported to occur concomitantly. A brief review of the relevant medical literature and methods of therapy is included.

Hypnosis has been used as a therapeutic tool for centuries, but only in the past 50 years have the clinical applications been delineated. As evident in the medical literature, the use of hypnosis by the medical community has increased, partly as a result of a growing awareness of hypnotherapy as ...

A systematic manual search for articles related to consultation-liaison psychiatry was compared to a computerized search of the same journals during the same period that was done with the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS). More articles were located with the manual method (94%) than with MEDLARS (65%).

The use of oxime reactivators of inhibited cholinesterase enzymes in poisoning by carbamate compounds has received mixed reviews in the medical literature. Data are limited and inconsistent on the possible role oxime reactivators might have in carbamate intoxication. Based on existing experience, atropine remains the treatment of choice and pralidoxime ...

Because of an increase in hospital marketing efforts, medical illustrators may be asked to assist in developing and implementing hospital identity manuals, which specify the graphic standards for visual communications media. A checklist survey of existing identity manuals and a literature review were conducted by one of the authors, a ...

The incidence of nontraumatic chylothorax is sufficiently low that most primary care physicians are unclear about the criteria for this diagnosis and the proper treatment options. A ten-year review of patients with pleural effusion treated by the university medical service identified 12 individuals with chylothorax. These patients and a current ...

This study investigated the possibility of using aerial color infrared (CIR) photography as a survey technique for egg populations of Psorophora columbiae within a riceland agroecosystem. To accomplish this, eight photographic missions were flown over study fields during a variety of seasons and at various altitudes. Assessment of resulting photographic ...

Intractable paroxysmal sneezing in an 11 1/2-year-old girl was characterized by sneezing with her eyes open, no sneezing while asleep, and sneezing that was refractory to various medications. Results of physical examination were unremarkable. A review of the literature reveals that the disorder is usually psychogenic and responds to psychotherapy.

Utilization review of metoclopramide conducted at the Ambulatory Care Center at the Veterans Administration Medical Clinic in Boise, Idaho, revealed that a substantial proportion of prescriptions were written for indications that were considered inappropriate. After further evaluation, it was found that the medical literature supported metoclopramide use for one of ...

Search results for nine topics in the Medical Behavioral Sciences are reanalyzed to compare the overall performance of descriptor and citation search strategies in identifying relevant and novel documents. Overlap percentages between an aggregate "descriptor-based" database (MEDLINE, EXCERPTA MEDICA, PSYCINFO) and an aggregate "citation-based" database (SCISEARCH, SOCIAL SCISEARCH) ranged from ...

Librarians developed a plan for a medical information network based upon the needs of South Dakota physicians as revealed in a 1984 survey. The South Dakota Med-Fax Network received private funding in 1987 and became operational in 1988. The Network incorporates interactive simultaneous remote on-line database searching (ISRS) and telefacsimile ...

In 1980 an article appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine stating that two-thirds of the studies appearing in the best medical journals contain unwarranted conclusions. In order to deal with the ever increasing mass of biomedical information (termed a "journalistic blastoma" by one editor), IAIMS has extolled the use ...

This paper reviews the development over the last 15 years of a broadening critical trend in the field of medical anthropology by: (1) examining shortcomings of conventional medical anthropology that led to interest in critical alternatives; (2) examining historical and occupational factors that tend to conservatize the subdiscipline; (3) reviewing ...

Empyema has been a prominent component of the medical literature since the time of Hippocrates. The condition has proven to be a rapidly moving target with a considerable shifting in bacteriologic patterns, diagnostic methods, and guidelines for clinical management. The most common etiologic agents are bacteria, which are the subject ...

Colleague and PaperChase are the two most widely used computer systems designed specifically for clinicians and scientists who wish to search the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE data base of references to the biomedical literature. The present study compares the performance of these two systems. Two matched groups of second-year ...

Analysis of extensive dermatoglyphic data, collected from West Kenya by Doz. E.M. Winkler, showed considerable intergroup variability in the frequencies of accessory triradii in the third interdigital area (interdigitum 3) of the palm. A review of the literature confirmed the universally low frequency of this trait, as well as its ...