The lifetime prevalence of low back pain is approximately 80 percent; 31 million Americans have low back pain at any given time¹. In the United States, low back pain is second only to the common cold as the reason patients cite for seeking medical care. ...

The incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is increasing by 3 to 4 percent a year, a rate surpassed only by those for lung cancer in women and malignant melanoma¹. About 40 percent of cases of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosed in the United States are diffuse ...

Diabetes mellitus is known to occur more frequently in patients with pancreatic cancer than in the general population,¹–⁶ and it has repeatedly been claimed that diabetes is a risk factor for the tumor⁶–¹⁸. The increased frequency of diabetes in patients ...

Disseminated acanthamoeba infection, an amebic infection characterized by granulomatous infiltrates in the brain and skin, usually occurs in immunocompromised or debilitated patients and generally progresses to death. There has been no effective therapy. ...

Figure 1. Wallerian Degeneration of the Pyramidal Tract.

Coronal views of the brain of a 41-year-old man with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and right-sided spastic hemiplegia, aphasia, and hemianopia were obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (...

There is considerable public interest in the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia¹. By a margin of 54 to 46 percent, voters in Washington defeated Initiative 119, which would have legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia, in 1991. In ...

The retina, the transparent neural tissue lining the interior of the eye, is the initial receptor for visual stimuli. Exciting progress has been made in many areas of retinal investigation, from genetic breakthroughs in retinoblastoma and retinitis ...

Presentation of Case

A 41-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of neurologic abnormalities and an osteolytic lesion of the right mandible.

The patient had been in good health until three months earlier, when there was the onset of ...

Back pain affects nearly half of all adults during a given year, and about two thirds of adults have back pain at some time in their lives. It is the second leading reason for visits to physicians in the United States and the leading cause of work-related ...

Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas are a heterogeneous group of disorders. Approximately 85 percent of them originate from B lymphocytes, and these B-cell lymphomas fall into the following main groups: lymphocytic lymphoma, follicular-center-cell lymphoma, mantle-...

Public-opinion polls have consistently shown that approximately 60 percent of the American public favors legal reform allowing physician-assisted death as a last resort to end the suffering of competent patients¹. Yet the voters in Washington State in ...

On February 25, 1994, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a letter to the Coalition on Smoking or Health announcing its intention to consider regulating cigarettes. The agency's premises were that the vast majority of tobacco users self-...

To the Editor: Kleber (Feb. 3 issue)¹ refers to an explosion of use by young people of “crack” cocaine in the 1980s and implies that it was due to a dramatic drop in price and to increased availability. Clearly, any use of crack among younger people is ...

To the Editor: The article by Svensson and Dahlback on resistance to activated protein C (APC) (Feb. 24 issue)¹ postulates that there is a genetically determined defect in anticoagulation characterized by resistance to APC. The authors subsequently found ...

To the Editor: Golino et al. (Feb. 24 issue)¹ showed that serotonin is released into the coronary circulation during angioplasty and that this vasoactive substance may contribute to the occurrence of vasoconstriction distal to the dilated site. ...

To the Editor: Rodin et al. (Feb. 17 issue)¹ postulate the dysregulation of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase in some women with the polycystic ovary syndrome. The interconversion of cortisol and hormonally inactive cortisone is catalyzed by at least two ...

To the Editor: Ehlers-Danlos syndrome type VI is an autosomal recessive disorder of connective tissue caused by mutations in the gene for collagen lysyl hydroxylase. This enzyme hydroxylates lysyl residues on newly synthesized intracellular collagen ...

To the Editor: Membranous glomerulopathy, which is characterized by immune-complex deposits on the epithelial side of the glomerular basement membrane, is one of the most frequent forms of glomerulopathy. The mechanisms responsible for abnormal antibody ...

To the Editor: The chance of, and so the delay in, encountering a condition depends on its prevalence. A new doctor was likely to wait longer to see his first case of AIDS in 1983 than in 1993. Similarly, a patient is likely to meet the human ...

To the Editor: Saccharin is not known to alter liver function¹–⁴. We report on a patient who had elevated serum concentrations of liver enzymes after the oral administration of three different drugs, of which saccharin was the only common constituent. ...

It was impossible in the time available for review of this textbook to do justice to the stunning amount of scholarship and effort that went into its making. As one experiences the rites of passage in becoming a surgeon, one encounters along the way rare, ...

Peritonitis denotes inflammation of the mesothelial lining of the peritoneal cavity and its loose subepithelial connective tissue. As simple as this descriptive definition of a host response sounds, its clinical impact on the entire host may be complex. ...

Endocrine surgery is one of the more intellectually challenging branches of surgery because of the physiologic complexity and anatomical diversity of the system. This admirable textbook supplies the current scientific background, including discussions of ...

The prevention and treatment of infections occupy a large part of the career of a surgeon. Although there are many textbooks on infectious disease, the type of infections faced by surgeons demands a reference work that is comprehensive, easy to read, and -...

Guns in the Home Correspondence, N Engl J Med 1994:330;1157-1159.. On page 1157, in line 10 of the letter by Stolinsky and Stolinsky, the correlation coefficient should have been “r = –0.135,” not “R = 0.135,” as printed. We regret the error.

Dose and Dose Intensity of Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Stage II, Node-Positive Breast Carcinoma Original Article, N Engl J Med 1994:330;1253-1259.. On page 1258, the sentence that starts on the eighth line of the right-hand column of text should have read, “...