Postoperative atrial fibrillation occurs in 10 to 40 percent of patients undergoing cardiac surgery.¹–¹² Although prophylactic therapy with beta-adrenergic blockers reduces the incidence of postoperative atrial fibrillation,⁸,¹¹,¹³–¹⁷ this arrhythmia ...

Endometrial biopsy is the standard test for detecting endometrial disease, but its value is limited by uncertainty about the origin of the tissue, which is obtained in a blind procedure, and the difficulty of obtaining adequate specimens in some women. ...

Two decades ago, Roussos and Macklem¹ demonstrated that the diaphragm, the major inspiratory muscle, can become fatigued. Although the site of muscular fatigue can occur anywhere in the motor pathway between the cerebral cortex and the muscle fibers ...

The Lennox–Gastaut syndrome is perhaps the most severe of the childhood epilepsy syndromes. Although it accounts for only about 5 percent of all cases of childhood epilepsy, it is a major contributor to morbidity.¹,² The syndrome is characterized by a ...

Figure 1. A 61-year-old man who had had a defibrillator implanted after a cardiac arrest in 1989 was treated with amiodarone in 1990 because of frequent shocks from the defibrillator. After an initial loading dose, a maintenance dose of 400 mg daily was ...

Figure 1. Osteomyelitis of a toe developed in a 59-year-old man with diabetes, coronary artery disease, and a cardioverter–defibrillator, which had been implanted three years earlier. The infection, which was caused by group B streptococcus, spread to the ...

Home care is viewed as an appropriate response to the needs of an aging population and an increasing number of homebound patients.¹ Between 1989 and 1995, the number of patients receiving care at home under Medicare nearly doubled to 3.5 million, and the ...

The transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are caused by infectious agents but usually present as genetic or sporadic disorders. The nature of the infectious agents is not known. In 1986 a new transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, which was called ...

Presentation of Case

A 67-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of back pain and weakness of the legs.

She had a long history of intermittent lumbar pain, with radiation to both hamstring muscles. During the two months before admission, the ...

Transvaginal ultrasonography of the endometrium has become an important part of the evaluation of women presenting with abnormal uterine bleeding. It is noninvasive, low in cost, and widely available.¹ As described by Langer et al. in this issue of the ...

The number of house calls has been steadily declining for decades. The house call is now barely perceptible as a part of what American physicians do. Despite the aging of the population, Medicare's expenditures for house calls are now only about 0.2 ...

Humanitarian assistance to people suffering as a result of catastrophes generally includes large charitable donations of drugs from sources such as private individuals or companies, nongovernmental organizations, United Nations agencies, and foreign ...

To the Editor: The article by Popkin et al. (Sept. 5, 1996, issue)¹ on dietary trends presents a potentially misleading picture of fruit and vegetable intake in the United States. The implied serving sizes (grams of dietary intake in Table 4 of the ...

To the Editor: Bronowicki et al. (July 24 issue)¹ report the probable transmission of hepatitis C virus infection from a seropositive patient to a husband and wife at the time of colonoscopy. They clearly demonstrate the necessity of proper reprocessing ...

To the Editor: Although prostate-specific antigen (PSA) was originally thought to be a prostate-epithelium–specific marker,¹ it has now been described in other tissues and body fluids, including liver, colon, lung, kidney, breast, ovarian, and parotid ...

To the Editor: Why the preoccupation in discussions of mammography with one-age-suits-all (April 17 issue)? ¹ For decades it has been known that women with a positive family history are at increased risk for breast cancer, especially at an early age. ...

To the Editor: We have major questions about the methods and conclusions of Morgan et al. (July 17 issue) ¹ in their study of the Medicare–health maintenance organization (HMO) revolving door. The authors admit that the study area, southern Florida, is ...

To the Editor: In his article on physician-assisted suicide (June 5 issue),¹ Mr. Batavia fails to address the issue of the “slippery slope,” which is the point of the analogy with Nazi Germany. The scenario there was that initially the state passed laws ...

A few years ago, a book on pharmaceutical economics and policy would probably have been greeted with murmurs of polite interest from a few select areas of the health care community and then have been consigned to use as a reference by these sectors. The ...

Historians may one day consider poliomyelitis the most notable disease of the 20th century. Only the development of penicillin can rival polio in terms of its impact on modern society and medicine. For people in most Western industrialized countries ...

This book is based on a conference at Harvard University in December 1994, sponsored by the Harvard Mind, Brain, Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. It brought under one roof some of the leading authorities on placebo and placebo effects, giving many of the ...

The Effect of Aggressive Lowering of Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Levels and Low-Dose Anticoagulation on Obstructive Changes in Saphenous-Vein Coronary-Artery Bypass Grafts Original Article, N Engl J Med 1997:336;153-163.. On page 156, the eighth ...

Book Review of The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine Book Review, N Engl J Med 1997:336;884-885.. On page 885, in lines 14 through 17 of the left-hand column it is stated that Helen Taussig was the first woman to be made a full professor at Johns ...