SURVIVAL has improved for premature neonates. An increasing proportion of the morbidity and mortality among such infants is now the result of nosocomial infection; this is particularly true among those who weigh less than 1500 g at birth (very-low-birth-...

THE amelioration of diabetes mellitus by the transplantation of pancreatic islets in animals has generated enthusiasm for the use of this procedure in humans with diabetes mellitus. If successful, islet transplantation would have advantages over ...

LEFT ventricular dysfunction and ventricular premature depolarizations have been shown to predict mortality after myocardial infarction.^{1 , 2} The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST), a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, was ...

INFECTIONS remain the leading cause of death among patients admitted to the surgical intensive care unit (ICU) despite improvements in supportive care and the development of new broad-spectrum antibiotics. Adjunctive therapeutic measures are needed to ...

THE randomized clinical trial is the primary tool used to evaluate the clinical usefulness of technological procedures and treatments. Decisions to conduct such trials are based on the expectation that the results, whether positive or negative, will ...

META-ANALYSIS of randomized, controlled trials is an increasingly important method in clinical research. Its growing importance is a natural outgrowth of the abundance of trials published each year and the small size of many trials that take varied ...

MORICIZINE hydrochloride was first synthesized in the Soviet Union in 1964,^{1 2 3} and after pharmacologic and clinical evaluation in the United States^{4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19} it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in June 1990 ...

Presentation of Case

A boy died at the age of 56 months after having had for most of his life a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by a gradual loss of motor and verbal skills, with generalized seizures, myoclonus, and final ...

With the introduction of intravenous formulations, the use of immune globulins, once limited to IgG replacement in severe humoral immunodeficiencies, has been extended to include the prevention or treatment of a wide variety of infections and immunologic ...

The article by Pyzdrowski et al. on transplantation of pancreatic-islet autografts in this issue of the Journal ¹ raises several important questions. Is the transplantation of islet autografts appropriate therapy for patients disabled by painful chronic ...

The factors that influence doctors' decisions to embrace a new treatment are incompletely understood. Choices are influenced by advertising, medical opinion leaders, peers, and patients, but of all the sources, the most objective are randomized clinical ...

On any given day, an estimated 35 million Americans are without health insurance.¹ In addition, at least 20 million people have insurance that could prove inadequate in the event of serious illness.² Coverage by insurance policies that require large out-...

To the Editor:... The exclusive use of the discrepancy measure by Shaywitz et al. (Jan. 16 issue)¹ serves both to include ordinary intelligent children who read poorly for a variety of nonbiologic reasons (e.g., social opportunity, motivation, and the ...

To the Editor:... A cause—effect relation between oral prednisone treatment of optic neuritis and the development of multiple sclerosis does not seem likely. Perhaps the higher incidence of recurrent optic neuritis in the prednisone group in the Optic ...

To the Editor: Schlaghecke et al. (Jan. 23 issue)¹ present interesting data on the responsiveness of the hypothalamic—pituitary—adrenocortical axis in patients treated with glucocorticoids. One of their conclusions is that the basal plasma cortisol ...

To the Editor: Tilyard et al. recently reported (Feb. 6 issue)¹ that calcitriol therapy reduced the rates of vertebral and peripheral fractures in postmenopausal women in New Zealand.... Is it possible that the effect on fractures that was attributed to ...

To the Editor: I have two problems with the report by Ramond and colleagues (Feb. 20 issue)¹ that prednisolone treatment improved survival in patients with alcoholic hepatitis. The first problem concerns the clinical equivalency of the placebo and the ...

To the Editor: To increase the intensity of the dose administered during chemotherapy in patients with inflammatory breast cancer, we designed a prospective, randomized pilot study comparing intravenous polychemotherapy alone with intravenous polytherapy ...

To the Editor: The value of aspirin for the prevention of ischemic stroke in patients with nonrheumatic atrial fibrillation has been endorsed in two large, placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind clinical trials. Using intention-to-treat analysis, ...

To the Editor: Suppose the facts of the Calvert case, as discussed by Annas (Feb. 6 issue),¹ are changed. The couple separates (and eventually divorces) during the pregnancy, and the husband falls in love with and moves in with the surrogate and intends ...

The magic of modern medicine is visible wherever we look. Amazing images produced by magnetic resonance imaging machines allow us to see the unseen, to view the heretofore unimagined depths of the human body. Blots of the Northern, Southern, Southwestern, ...

Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical drawings have fascinated scientists since at least the end of the 18th century. The drawings are at times accurate depictions of personal experience and at other times a witness to the medieval dogma that still controlled ...

This fascinating book will stimulate the thinking of many different kinds of readers. Barbara Duden's scholarly work of historical research provides a clearer understanding of how an 18th-century physician thought about his patients, and led the author to ...

Writing about nature and science for a general audience is an art that can inform, inspire, and influence — as Silent Spring did in Rachel Carson's vivid account of environmental destruction, or as Paul de Kruif's The Microbe Hunters did by enticing young ...

This remarkable and very interesting book was commissioned by the Chicago Medical Society in 1949; the first edition was published in 1956. This second edition is essentially unchanged from the first, except that it now includes a chapter on the social ...

Radiology

Atlas of Normal Roentgen Variants That May Simulate Disease. Fifth edition. By Theodore E. Keats. 983 pp., illustrated. St. Louis, Mosby-Year Book, 1992. $169.

Atlas of Pediatric Ultrasound. Edited by Reinhard D. Schulz and Ulrich V. Willi. 204 ...

JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS

The following will be offered in Baltimore: "Endoscopic Sinus Surgery — Hands-On Laboratory and Lecture Series" (Aug. 13–15); "Colloquium and Workshops on Laryngeal Disorders" (Sept. 10–12); "34th Annual Emil Novak ...