The incidence of osteoporosis and of cardiovascular disease increases in women after menopause. These increases can be prevented by estrogen therapy, but this treatment is associated with an increased risk of endometrial cancer,¹ which may persist despite ...

The assessment of patients with acute chest pain in the emergency room is a time-consuming diagnostic challenge. If the electrocardiogram reveals ST-segment elevation, the probability of acute myocardial infarction is high, and further management is well ...

Maternal serum screening for fetal trisomy 21 (Down's syndrome) at 15 to 16 weeks of gestation is an established practice in many countries. The biochemical basis for this approach is that in the presence of fetal trisomy 21, the average maternal serum ...

An inhaled glucocorticoid is currently the medication of choice for long-term control of persistent asthma in children.¹,² There are surprisingly few comprehensive assessments of the benefits and risks of these medications in children over a period of one ...

Figure 1. Which of these 43-year-old identical twins is the patient, and what is her diagnosis?

Dementia is a growing medical, social, and economic problem.¹ Most diagnostic classification systems consider dementia to be a single category of symptoms with many causes. The systems based on the various editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ...

The growth and function of the thyroid are controlled by thyrotropin¹ through the activation of its receptor, which belongs to the large family of G protein–coupled receptors. Despite the extreme diversity of their ligands, all receptors from this family ...

Stage

A 32-year-old woman had been evaluated one month earlier for low-grade fevers and malaise. Her temperature at that time was 37.9°C (100.2°F), but her history and physical examination were otherwise unremarkable. She was told that she probably had a ...

As life expectancy continues to increase, women will soon be postmenopausal for one third of their lives. The human and economic costs of this increased longevity in an estrogen-deficient state are substantial. They include a projected increase in ...

Each year 5 million patients come to emergency departments with chest pain.¹ Some have acute, life-threatening illness, but many others have nothing seriously wrong; some have a history of coronary disease, whereas others have never had a cardiac ...

For decades, a maternal age of more than 35 years on the expected date of delivery has been an accepted indication for amniocentesis for fetal karyotyping, given the moderate increase in fetal aneuploidy associated with advancing maternal age. More ...

For over a century asthma has been recognized as a disorder in which the airways are irritable and narrow too easily and too much in response to a variety of nonspecific stimuli. This view of asthma as a disorder of bronchial hyperresponsiveness led to ...

To the Editor: The article by Bolla et al. (July 31 issue)¹ has deficiencies, and the authors missed a golden opportunity to make a major scientific contribution. First, the study did not include a group of patients meeting the entry criteria who were ...

To the Editor: Levine and colleagues (July 31 issue)¹ claim that an end-tidal carbon dioxide level of 10 mm Hg or less, measured 20 minutes after the initiation of advanced cardiac life support, accurately predicted death in patients with cardiac arrest ...

To the Editor: In his review of Life in the Balance (July 17 issue)¹ Dr. Safar states, “The mobile cardiac care unit introduced in Belfast in the mid-1960s brought cardiology fellows to heart-attack (not heart-arrest) victims in attempts to prevent ...

To the Editor: Gordin et al. (July 31 issue)¹ conclude that isoniazid prophylaxis is not useful in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection who have anergy and multiple risk factors for latent tuberculosis. We are concerned about the ...

To the Editor: Rolfs and coworkers (July 31 issue)¹ convincingly demonstrated that Treponema pallidum invades the central nervous system in at least one fourth of persons with early syphilis regardless of their status with respect to human ...

To the Editor: While inserting a central venous catheter into a patient newly admitted to our hospital with sepsis of unknown cause, a healthy, 27-year-old resident was scratched on the dorsal aspect of her left fifth metacarpal–phalangeal joint by the ...

The history of our continent is a tale of immigrants, both human and microbial, arriving from distant shores. Building from his own vast experience in the field, Professor Desowitz explores the origins in our hemisphere of such devastating illnesses as ...

Infection is the most common problem encountered by obstetricians. Some infections, such as asymptomatic bacteriuria and postpartum endometritis, occur frequently, affect primarily the mother, are easily recognized, and typically respond promptly to ...

Chapters devoted to infectious diseases are an integral part of every specialty textbook, but one may occasionally wish to consult a more comprehensive source. Mandell's Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases is such a source. The AIDS pandemic ...

Tens of millions of trips are taken by travelers from developed to developing countries annually, for pleasure, business, education, and religious reasons and to visit family. Responding to the demand for travelers' health services, clinics to provide ...

Acyclovir: A Decade Later (N Engl J Med 1992:327:782-789). A correction notice for this article was published in the March 4, 1993, issue. The correction notice should have read, “On page 783, in Table 1, the entry in the column headed `Route and Dosage' ...