Neurologic Disorders

The tendency of certain workplace toxins, including organic solvents such as n-hexane, metals such as lead and arsenic, and certain organophosphate compounds, to cause profound and occasionally irreversible damage to the axons of ...

THE clinical discipline of occupational medicine, largely unstudied, untaught, and unpracticed in major medical centers as recently as a decade ago, underwent unprecedented rejuvenation in the 1980s. Spurred by national regulatory programs and ...

ASBESTOS is a mineral causing much controversy in today's society. Before the passage and enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, millions of Americans were exposed to relatively high concentrations of airborne asbestos in the work-...

(First of Two Parts)

THE prostaglandins and thromboxane A₂ are biologically active metabolites of arachidonic acid.^{1 , 2} Their actions and the pharmacologic agents that influence their formation affect almost every aspect of medical practice.

The ...

Therapeutic Issues

Regionalization of Therapy

The possibility of increasing thrombolysis without causing bleeding has motivated efforts to direct therapy selectively to the pathologic thrombus. Two approaches that have been tried are administration of ...

We speak very frequently of the normal clotting time. In a glass tube?... Glass tubes have held the center of the stage for quite a long time but the process of clotting is now observed in plastic vessels and a considerably longer period of time is ...

The Clinical Spectrum of HSV Infections

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) has been isolated from nearly all visceral and mucocutaneous sites. The clinical manifestations and course of HSV infections depend on the anatomic site of the infection, the age and ...

ASTHMA has been recognized for more than 30 centuries,¹ but only in the past 50 years has death from the disease attracted much attention. Floyer reported sudden death from asthma in an 18-month-old child in 1698.² In 1784, Cullen wrote, "The asthma, ...

BURNS remain a major health problem throughout the world, although the United States has the highest incidence of burns among all industrialized countries. A U.S. citizen has a 1 in 70 chance of being hospitalized for a burn during his or her lifespan. ...

CIGARETTE smoking has been identified as the single most important source of preventable morbidity and premature mortality in each of the reports of the U.S. Surgeon General produced since 1964. The estimated annual excess mortality from cigarette smoking ...

MOST ischemic cerebral vascular disease results from arterial narrowing or occlusion. The pathologic process may involve vessels of any size and may be intrinsic to the vessel, as in atherosclerosis, lipohyalinosis, inflammation, or dissection, or it may ...

THE acceptance of the Renaissance concept that an illness could be helped by bloodletting was tempered by the adverse effects of blood loss. Indeed, Louis XIII and George Washington were probably killed by this therapy.^{1 , 2} The selective removal of ...

Sarcoidosis

Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disease of unknown cause characterized by enhanced cellular immune processes at sites of involvement.^{36,53,59, 152} Almost all organs can be affected by the disease, but the lower respiratory tract is ...

THE interstitial lung diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders of the lower respiratory tract characterized by derangements of the alveolar walls and loss of functional alveolar capillary units.^{1 2 3} More than 100 agents are known to cause ...

COMPUTED tomography (CT) of the body (excluding the head and neck) has become a well-established, important, and sometimes crucial noninvasive imaging examination. Once regarded as a paradigm of high-cost technology of unproved value,¹ CT has evolved as a ...

METHOTREXATE, the most widely used antimetabolite in cancer chemotherapy, has an essential role in the treatment of such diverse diseases as acute lymphocytic leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, osteosarcoma, choriocarcinoma, head and neck cancer, and ...

SOON after the discovery of x-rays by Roentgen in 1895, an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association ¹ suggested that the new x-rays might have some therapeutic potential. The realization of this potential, however, has been a slow ...

THE respiratory system consists essentially of two parts: a gas-exchanging organ — the lungs—and a pump that ventilates the lungs. The pump consists of the chest wall, the respiratory muscles that displace it, the centers in the nervous system that ...

THE catecholamines norepinephrine and epinephrine are key regulators of many physiologic events in human beings; norepinephrine acts primarily as a neurotransmitter released from sympathetic-nerve terminals, and epinephrine functions as a circulating ...

ASBESTOS is one of our most useful minerals. Over 3000 manufactured products of contemporary importance contain it. Asbestos is employed in construction materials because it is resistant to thermal and corrosive destruction and increases the tensile ...