With about 150,000 cases and 60,000 deaths annually, colorectal cancer is one of the commonest causes of death from cancer in the United States¹. Currently, determining prognosis and selecting patients for postoperative adjuvant therapy rely mainly on ...

Several studies have shown that in patients with chronic stable angina due to single-vessel coronary artery disease, the coronary vasodilator response (defined as the ratio of maximal to basal coronary blood flow) is reduced not only in the region of ...

Polyunsaturated fatty acids of the n-3 series, primarily eicosapentaenoic acid (C20:5) and docosahexaenoic acid (C22:6), are abundant in fish and may affect numerous health-related characteristics favorably¹. Extensive research has focused on the relation ...

In 1990, more than 27,000 patients died of liver failure in the United States¹. Perfusion through a liver from another person or a member of another species, such as a monkey, outside the body was used in the past to stabilize the condition of some ...

Figure 1. Pressure Tracings in Obstructive Cardiomyopathy.

Simultaneous arterial (A) and left ventricular (LV) pressures were recorded in a patient with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy. The first three beats show a peak systolic gradient of 25 mm ...

The use of in vitro fertilization has engendered considerable debate about who should receive treatment, whether health insurance should cover the costs, and if so, to what extent. The debate has been fueled by conflicting and sometimes misleading claims. ...

In the United States, 8.5 percent of married couples are infertile¹. Although the overall incidence of infertility did not increase between 1968 and 1982, the number of visits to physicians for treatment of infertility nearly tripled¹. This increase in ...

Patients with Addison's disease excrete excessive amounts of sodium in the urine but retain potassium, thus becoming hyponatremic and hyperkalemic. Early studies demonstrated that the problems could be ameliorated in humans and animals by administering ...

Presentation of Case

A 32-year-old man was referred to the hospital because of hyperthermia on exercise.

The patient had been well and athletic until 4 1/2 years earlier, when he began to experience intermittent fever provoked by exercise and followed by ...

All cancer staging systems seek to identify clinical and pathologic features that can predict outcome (prognosis) or in some cases guide therapy. The theme common to all staging systems for colorectal carcinoma is that the depth of invasion of the bowel ...

Fulminant hepatic failure is characterized by the rapid appearance of jaundice, coagulopathy, and encephalopathy and reflects severe hepatocellular injury or necrosis. Acute viral hepatitis and drug-induced liver injury account for the vast majority of ...

Each year more than a million American women use infertility services, but fewer than 50 percent of them go on to deliver a live baby¹. Standard treatments for infertility include induction of ovulation, artificial insemination, and surgery for tubal ...

To the Editor: In the study of riluzole in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by Bensimon et al. (March 3 issue),¹ 24 patients (15.5 percent of all patients) were included who did not meet the stringent inclusion criteria. Without this group, the differences ...

To the Editor: Lipton and Rosenberg (March 3 issue)¹ explored the role of excitatory amino acids as a final common pathway for neurologic disorders. Their findings rekindle the question of the effect of ingestion of neurotoxic amino acids on neurologic ...

To the Editor: Carpenter and Buchanan provide a succinct yet comprehensive overview of schizophrenia (March 10 issue)¹. Their article presents a fairly clear discussion of the diagnosis, course, and outcome; epidemiology and causes; and pathophysiology ...

To the Editor: In their 1991 article on clozapine (March 14, 1991, issue),¹ Drs. Baldessarini and Frankenburg stated, “Other trends noted with clozapine include somewhat (20 to 30 percent) higher plasma levels in women and smokers and up to twofold ...

To the Editor: It was a pleasure to read the article by Adams et al. on the diagnosis of perioperative myocardial infarction by the measurement of troponin I (March 10 issue).¹ Clearly, creatine kinase levels can be misleading in the perioperative period,...

To the Editor: In September 1993 we reported on the Global Utilization of Streptokinase and Tissue Plasminogen Activator for Occluded Coronary Arteries (GUSTO) trial, which involved 41,021 patients with acute myocardial infarction (Sept. 2 issue).¹ In ...

To the Editor: According to the National Center for Health Statistics, over 300,000 percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasties are performed annually in the United States¹. Since its approval by the Food and Drug Administration in September 1990, ...

To the Editor: One of the cases reported in our paper “Dose and Dose Intensity of Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Stage II, Node-Positive Breast Carcinoma” (May 5 issue)¹ came from St. Mary's Hospital in Montreal, an institution that is reported to have ...

To the Editor: In regard to our article on improved mineral balance and skeletal metabolism in postmenopausal women given potassium bicarbonate (June 23 issue),¹ some concern has been expressed about the risk of hyperkalemia with the doses used (60 to ...

To the Editor: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the extremity can be particularly useful in delineating a collection of inflammatory fluid at the interface of muscle and fascia in areas of necrosis. Why was MRI not performed in the patient described ...

Pellegrino and Thomasma are arguably among the most influential authors now writing about the moral nature of physicianhood, which they call “the central crisis in medicine today -- the confusion about who and what physicians are, and what they should be.”...

There are times, however rare, when the reader takes in a text while wondering about the imaginative life of its dedicated author. Such is the case with Richard Wolfe's reconstruction of Robert Hinckley's “The First Operation under Ether.” Wolfe has ...

Did you know most itches target a small area that gets bigger as you scratch? Did you know there are different kinds of itch, just as there are different kinds of pain? Did you know that morphine inhibits pain and promotes itch, whereas naloxone and other ...

The goal of this book, as aptly stated in the preface, is “to introduce biochemistry, biology, and pathology of the extracellular matrix to all those who do not have close contact with this exciting and rapidly developing field.” The book is reasonably ...

Word-processing packages usually have a built-in program to check the spelling of general English terms. However, such programs do not meet the needs of the medical profession, since many medical terms are not included. Programs designed to check the ...

J. Stuart Moore's history of chiropractic in the United States seeks to explain why chiropractic has survived whereas other fringe medical movements have disappeared. The author's first conclusion appears on the initial page of his preface: the vast ...

Response of Resistant Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura to Pulsed High-Dose Dexamethasone Therapy Original Article, N Engl J Med 1994:330;1560-1564.. On page 1563, in Table 3, the mean level of platelet-associated IgM for all patients before therapy ...