ACUTE spinal-cord injury has been extraordinarily resistant to effective treatment. The improved longevity of patients with spinal-cord injuries is almost certainly due to general advances in nursing and acute medical and rehabilitational care.¹ There ...

THE G proteins are a family of guanine nucleotide—binding proteins that mediate signal transduction across cell membranes. These proteins couple cell-surface receptors to their second-messenger signal-generation systems and thereby regulate the activity ...

PRIMARY biliary cirrhosis is a chronic, usually progressive cholestatic liver disease that occurs predominantly in middle-aged women.^{1 2 3} Although the pathogenesis of the disease is unknown, it is becoming apparent that autoimmune mechanisms play a major ...

IN 1985, the recognition of several patients with primary mediastinal germ-cell tumors and hematologic neoplasia led to the description of the biologic association of these two uncommon neoplastic disorders.^{1 , 2} The simultaneous presentation of two rare ...

CLINICAL trials conducted in large series of patients with different hematologic neoplasms have confirmed the antitumor activity of interferon.^{1 , 2} So far, the most impressive responses have occurred in patients with hairy-cell or chronic myelogenous ...

IT is widely recognized that the experiments performed on prisoners in German concentration camps during the Second World War were in fact brutal crimes committed under the guise of medical research. There is controversy, however, about the use of the ...

DISTURBANCES of gait are common in the elderly and can be disabling. In one population-based study, 15 percent of the subjects over 60 years of age had some abnormality of gait.¹ The prevalence of gait disturbances may be considerably higher among very ...

Presentation of Case

A 16-year-old boy was admitted to the hospital because of repeated seizures.

The patient was well until 26 1/2 months earlier, when he had a generalized tonic—clonic seizure, which recurred four or five times later on the same day. He ...

To have an intact brain and intact sensation and function about the head, neck, and shoulders, yet to lack basic hand skills and locomotion is indeed a tragic disability. If there is also loss of bowel and bladder control, the problem seems overwhelming. ...

Given the myriad extracellular signals impinging on cells, the number of mechanisms used to convey information to them is surprisingly limited. A common feature is a signal discriminator, better known as a receptor. Often, the receptor is also an ...

For nearly 50 years there has been debate about whether anyone should use information gained from Nazi experimentation on concentration camp victims. Those opposed to making any use of such data believe that it would tend to blunt the horror of what ...

Recent opinion surveys have disclosed the American public's deepening restiveness over the shortcomings of U.S. health care, which has grown to such a point that the majority of the respondents now look favorably on alternative systems, particularly the ...

To the Editor: Ho et al.¹ and Baltimore and Feinberg² (Dec. 14 issue) suggest that "residual"1 or "lingering"² doubts about the virus-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) hypothesis are now resolved by new evidence of viremia in patients with AIDS.¹ ...

To the Editor: Deyton et al. (Nov. 2 issue)¹ report that reversible left ventricular dysfunction developed in three patients with AIDS while they were being treated with interferon alfa for Kaposi's sarcoma. We agree that the temporal relation between ...

To the Editor: We commend Dr. Young et al. (Dec. 14 issue)* for continuing to educate the medical community about the Carney complex, a rare autosomal dominant disorder characterized by mesenchymal tumors, spotty skin pigmentation, functional endocrine ...

To the Editor: The study by Kaye et al. (Dec. 28 issue)¹ describes several interesting findings but raises a number of questions. Why did the authors elect to use a combination of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, etoposide, and vincristine, when their ...

To the Editor: I recently saw a patient in whom colonoscopy contributed to the management of his upper respiratory tract infection. A 66-year-old man had colonoscopic removal of adenomatous polyps of the colon a year before. He had done well, with no ...

To the Editor: We do not find compelling the evidence presented by Hartz et al. (Dec. 21 issue)¹ of an association between hospital mortality rates and the quality of care (and hence between the quality of care and the characteristics of the hospital ...

To the Editor: I should like to call attention to a new variation of an uncommon form of epilepsy, namely, "Nintendo epilepsy." I recently saw a 13-year-old girl who had had a generalized tonic—clonic seizure while playing the video game. The game had ...

To the Editor: I wish to report a sports injury attributable to the excessive playing of video games. A 35-year-old woman visited my home during the Christmas holidays, at which time my sons received a Nintendo video game. The woman, who had not ...

While reviewing books can often be a chore, it was a pleasure to review this book. Scott and his colleagues have put together a superbly readable work. Most of the contributors are current or former members of the Vanderbilt University faculty.

The ...

As stated in the preface, this book is intended "to serve the needs of the surgical resident or practicing surgeon who seeks to understand how complications occur in order to prevent them where possible or to deal with them expeditiously." This updated ...

There are about 25,000 cases of subarachnoid hemorrhage due to aneurysm each year in the United States. About half the patients die without undergoing surgery, which means that about 12,500 patients have operations each year. No one would claim that ...

The first of these books (Ryan and Allman) should be made available to all health professionals who care for people involved in athletics at any level, and it should be a primary textbook for everyone affiliated with sports, whether they be coaches, ...

Arthroscopy has become widely accepted as a useful surgical technique in treating joint disease. Over the past 10 years, advances in this technique have enabled orthopedic surgeons to care for patients with conditions that previously required arthrotomy. ...

Evidently this author intended to write a practical book about general gynecologic surgical care for both seasoned gynecologists and general surgeons. There is no doubt that general surgeons can review key gynecologic concepts here. The discussions of the ...

MEDICAL COLLEGE OF VIRGINIA

The following programs will be offered in Virginia Beach, unless otherwise noted: "The 14th Annual Postgraduate Course on Rehabilitation of the Brain Injured Adult and Child" (Williamsburg, June 7–10); "Practical Internal ...

Zidovudine in Asymptomatic Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection: A Controlled Trial in Persons with Fewer than 500 CD4-Positive Cells per Cubic Millimeter (April 5, 1990; 322:941–9). On page 944, in the right-hand column, the opening sentence of the ...