This article analyzes a public controversy surrounding the hormonal treatment of infertility associated with observance of rabbinic law to illuminate the reach of rabbi-doctor relations in a local configuration of religion and biomedicine that I call "kosher medicine." I combine a historical perspective on the evolution of religious laws governing ...

Legal issues in sports medicine are rapidly developing and establishing an important body of jurisprudence that defines the legal rights and duties of all those involved with protecting the health and safety of athletes. The law makes important distinctions between the relevant duty of care owed to high-school, college, and ...

BACKGROUND: OxyContin® (Purdue Pharma, L.P., Stamford, CT) is now widely regarded as a drug of abuse fueling a larger opioid health crisis. While coverage in the North American press about OxyContin overwhelmingly focused upon the problems of related crime and addiction/misuse and the perspectives of law enforcement officials and police, ...

This article evaluates New Zealand's Medicines Amendment Bill 2011. This Bill is currently before Parliament and will amend the Medicines Act 1981. On June 20, 2011, the Australian and New Zealand governments announced their decision to proceed with a joint scheme for the regulation of therapeutic products such as medicines, ...

The PLOS Medicine editors discuss the recent initiative from the European Medicines Agency to commit to releasing clinical-trial data and how important such moves are for rebuilding trust between the pharmaceutical companies and society.

Forensic science is increasingly relied on by police and the courts to exonerate the innocent and to establish links to crime. With this increased reliance the potential for unjust outcomes increases, especially in serious matters for two reasons. The more serious the matter, the more likely that evidence mishandling can ...

In this review, we introduce the traditional uses of saffron and its pharmacological activities as described by either Avicenna in Book II, Canon of Medicine (al-Qanun fi al-tib) or from recent scientific studies. Modern pharmacological findings on saffron are compared with those mentioned in Avicenna's monograph. A computerized search of ...

Purpose: To investigate and describe the ophthalmic contribution of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832). Materials and Method: A team of 2 ophthalmologists, director of laboratory services, one archeologist and a photographer visited Sarasvathi Mahal Library, March 2004. Photographs of ophthalmic records were taken and analysed. An interview of the present prince, ...

This issue provides a clinical overview of travel medicine focusing on prevention, diagnosis, treatment, practice improvement, and patient information. Readers can complete the accompanying CME quiz for 1.5 credits. Only ACP members and individual subscribers can access the electronic features of In the Clinic. Non-subscribers who wish to access this ...

In the Internet age, managing one's online "reputation" is a challenging but important task for board-certified plastic surgeons. In this article, the authors discuss the options for ensuring that your Internet presence accurately reflects the quality of your practice.

Doctor review sites now populate the Internet. Such posts are often anonymous. Doctors cannot respond because of HIPAA. And the information rarely addresses matters such as patient safety and clinical outcomes. Nonetheless, a doctor's online reputation can positively or negatively impact a doctor's business. By following a number of rules, ...

To ensure patients' privacy, such as telephone number, medical record number, health information, etc., authentication schemes for telecare medicine information systems (TMIS) have been studied widely. Recently, Wei et al. proposed an efficient authentication scheme for TMIS. They claimed their scheme could resist various attacks. However, in this paper, we ...

Reflectance spectrometry is a fast and reliable method for the characterization of human skin if the spectra are analyzed with respect to a physical model describing the optical properties of human skin. For a field study performed at the Institute of Legal Medicine and the Freiburg Materials Research Center of ...

Purpose  This study aimed to explore peoples' needs and expectations of written medicines information (WMI), and to determine the barriers and facilitators experienced or perceived in the context of WMI provision and use. Methods  We conducted eight focus groups with 62 participants over 6 weeks in late 2008 in New South ...

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Major research contributions in ethnopharmacology have generated vast amount of data associated with medicinal plants. Computerized databases facilitate data management and analysis making coherent information available to researchers, planners and other users. Web-based databases also facilitate knowledge transmission and feed the circle of information exchange between the ethnopharmacological ...

The author presents a set of philosophical assumptions that provide a different language for thinking about and responding to the persistent questions: "How can our therapy practices have relevance for people's everyday lives in our fast changing world, what is this relevance, and who determines it?" "Why do some shapes ...

ABSTRACT: In this issue, the Southern Medical Journal presents a series of articles to help students of medicine understand the principles of evidence-based medicine. These articles are not meant to be a comprehensive review, but rather an easy-to-read primer. In this final article, the authors offer suggestions to aid the ...

The telecare medicine information system enables or supports health-care delivery services. In order to safeguard patients' privacy, such as telephone number, medical record number, health information, etc., a secure authentication scheme will thus be in demand. Recently, Wu et al. proposed a smart card based password authentication scheme for the telecare ...

To evaluate a sample of Internet sites advertising statins for sale to the general public. A simulated customer search and evaluation of retrieved sites using evaluation tools focussing on quality (Q) and safe medicine use (SMU). Sites retrieved on 17 November 2010 were systematically analysed from 19 November to 23 ...

The available databases that catalogue information on traditional Chinese medicines are reviewed in terms of their content and utility for in silico research on Chinese herbal medicines, as too are the various protein database resources, and the software available for use in such studies. The software available for bioinformatics and ...

The History of Medicine and Medical Specialties such as Ophthalmology, and the Subspecialty of Strabology extend back to the beginning of recorded history. Before there was photography to record physical abnormalities of living creatures, there was art and artists who did the recording in their works. Fortunately, many such recordings ...

Medical professionals go online for literature searches and communication with families.We administered a questionnaire to members of the Italian Society of Pediatrics to assess determinants of their use of the Internet, of social platforms and of personal health records during clinical practice. All the 9180 members of the Italian Society ...

Clinical Trials (CTs) play an increasingly important role in modern medicine. Often these types of studies, especially in the final phases, require collaboration between several hospitals, laboratories and institutions in different places or countries. The solution proposed is a template which exploits the principles of Networked Clinical Research and the ...

Spurred by the wave of consumerism, patients do not hesitate to drag the doctor to the court. It has now become essential for doctors to educate themselves on the laws relevant to medical practice. This study addresses some of the issues. Doctors in private practice, belonging to different specialities, were ...

Tinnitus is a prevalent and complex medical complaint often co-morbid with stress, anxiety, insomnia, depression, and cognitive or communication difficulties. Its chronicity places a major burden on primary and secondary healthcare services. In our recent national survey of General Practitioners (GPs) from across England, many reported that their awareness of ...

Although cough medicine abuse is a growing problem in many places, there is no study examining the views of young substance abusers toward cough medicine. The objective of this study was to examine personal constructions of cough medicine abusers via the repertory grid tests (N = 11). Several observations are ...

The Internet has totally changed the way information is published and shared in medicine. With web 2.0 and semantic web technologies, web applications allow now collaborative information editing in a way that can be reused by machines. These new tools could be used to in local health networks to promote ...

This research deals with the design of leaflets of medicines, evidencing the problems resulting from the lack of Brazilian normalization to promote the use of the graphical representation of instructional texts warnings. It approaches studies related to the effectiveness and efficiency of information systems, highlighting the semiotics and the cultural ...

Genomic and personalized medicine have become buzz phrases that pervade all fields of medicine. Rapid advances in "-omics" fields of research (chief of which are genomics, proteinomics, and epigenomics) over the last few years have allowed us to dissect the molecular signatures and functional pathways that underlie disease initiation and ...

Aims and objectives.  To explore patients' perspectives on the significance of informal carers in their information management. Background.  Being well informed is considered a prerequisite for the ability of heart failure patients to manage their lives at home. Developing knowledge about the informal caregiver's role in patient information management is ...

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: The aims of this study were to evaluate the awareness of and attitudes towards the 2005 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for Heart Failure (HF) of the cardiologists in Pakistan and assess barriers to adherence to guidelines. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in person from March ...

Postdischarge mortality and morbidity from acute heart failure syndrome (AHFS) are high, affecting nearly half of all discharged patients within 90 days. Emergency department therapy remains largely empiric, with minimal evidence to support definitive recommendations to guide therapy. However, lessons learned from recent registries and trials suggest an approach to ...

In clinical practice, atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most commonly encountered arrhythmia. With the aging of the US population, the number of patients with AF that physicians encounter will increase. Atrial fibrillation management involves a combination of rate- and rhythm-control strategies with thromboprophylaxis, a complicated endeavor given side effect profiles ...

A popular saying holds that if one can hear a heart murmur in the middle of a loud and busy emergency department, then by definition the murmur is significant. Whether or not this is actually true, it does capture the frustration emergency physicians feel when trying to diagnose or manage ...

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify the prevalence of the use of vitamin/mineral supplements or natural/herbal remedies, concurrent use of pharmaceutical medication, and to profile those most likely to use these complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) in the treatment of five chronic conditions identified as national health ...

Heart failure (HF) is a severe heart disease. The use of autologous bone marrow stem cells (BMCs) mobilization in the treatment of HF has been a hot topic to research both in Western medicine and Chinese medicine (CM). There are many clinical trials and experiments on study of BMCs mobilization ...

No formal guidelines exist to guide physicians caring for patients with sarcoidosis in their screening for management of patients with cardiac sarcoidosis. We conducted a modified Delphi study to investigate if a consensus could be reached on the best approaches for screening for and management of cardiac sarcoidosis. A modified ...

It is time to challenge the issue of pleasure associated with the core of medical practice. Its importance is made clear through its opposite: unhappiness-something which affects doctors in a rather worrying way. The paper aims to provide a discussion on pleasure on reliable grounds. Plato's conception of techne is ...

Diagnosis and management of acute heart failure syndromes are described in the most recent ESC/ESICM guidelines. However, physicians dealing with these patients in their daily practice may need guidance in choosing therapeutic alternatives as soon as the dyspneic patient arrives to the emergency department. Herein, practical recommendations for the very ...

New guidelines for the management of atrial fibrillation (AF) have recently been published by the American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association, and Heart Rhythm Society (ACCF/AHA/HRS) task force on practice guidelines, the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS), and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Although they all refer to the ...

A multispecialty clinic practice is a common practice arrangement for colorectal surgeons. This type of practice has a variety of features, both positive and negative. The authors explore location, practice patterns, lifestyles, compensation, and academic opportunities associated with a multispecialty clinic practice. This information can assist younger surgeons in choosing ...

Digoxin is the oldest cardiac medication used in contemporary medicine. With a complex pharmacokinetic profile and narrow therapeutic index, its use in managing patients with atrial arrhythmias or heart failure can present a challenge to today's clinicians. Digoxin dosing based on patient-specific factors such as age, lean body weight, and ...

Heart failure, a major clinical problem affecting millions of people, may be modified by the genetic diversity of the affected individuals. A novel medical approach, personalized medicine, seeks to use genetic information to "personalize" and improve diagnosis, prevention, and therapy. The personalized management of heart failure involves a large spectrum ...

A review of cardiology in Israel by Prof. Gad Keren.

A generation ago the nineteenth century was at the heart of medical historical scholarship, as the era when modem medicine was born. Over the last decade or so things have changed: other centuries vie for center stage, and former key "turning points," like hospital medicine and laboratory medicine, are now ...

Several characteristics of Egyptian culture and civilization could be identified in prehistoric and ancient historic Geto-Dacian territories, belonging to modern Romania (Fig. 1). From early times, magic, religion and philosophy have been part of pre-scientific medicine. Therefore these aspects are to be tackled when speaking of medicine in mythological or ...

To compare medicine administration by two nurses to a patient with swallowing difficulties and: To assess the safety of medication administration to a patient with dysphagia. To explore possible system changes to ensure safety standards are understood and adhered to. Administering medicines to patients with dysphagia is complex and nurses ...

A dynamic method (DM) recently proposed for the management of captive subdivided populations was evaluated using the pilot species Drosophila melanogaster. By accounting for the particular genetic population structure, the DM determines the optimal mating pairs, their contributions to progeny and the migration pattern that minimize the overall co-ancestry in ...

Pharmacy dispensing databases provide a comprehensive source of data on medicines use free from many of the biases inherent in administrative databases. There are challenges associated with using pharmacy databases however. This paper describes the methods we used, and their performance, so that other researchers considering using pharmacy databases may ...

The practice of sedation for digestive endoscopy continues to evolve throughout the world. In many countries, there is a trend for increased utilization of sedation during routine endoscopic procedures. Sedation improves patient satisfaction with endoscopy and the willingness to comply with screening guidelines and it improves the quality of examination. ...