Whether recommended body weight should remain constant throughout adulthood or should be higher for older adults is controversial. The Department of Agriculture's 1990 Dietary Guidelines for Americans ¹ recommended age-specific ranges of weight for height,...

The prognosis after myocardial infarction in women as compared with men remains uncertain, but it is commonly held that women have a worse prognosis. A recent systematic review identified 17 studies published before June 1994 that compared in-hospital or ...

Preterm birth is the main cause of perinatal mortality and morbidity.¹ Early detection of preterm labor is important, because tocolytic therapy is most effective when given soon after labor starts and before advanced cervical dilation has occurred. ...

There have been many studies of seizures after penetrating war injuries.¹–³ However, most studies of post-traumatic seizures in civilian populations involve selected neurosurgical series.⁴,⁵ The overall risk of seizures is as high as 53 percent after war ...

Figure 1. A 74-year-old man was found unconscious at home and brought to the emergency department. He was obtunded and moved only with painful stimuli. His blood pressure was 95/55 mm Hg, with a heart rate of 115 beats per minute and a temperature of 35.8°...

Acid–base homeostasis exerts a major influence on protein function, thereby critically affecting tissue and organ performance. Deviations of systemic acidity in either direction can have adverse consequences and, when severe, can be life-threatening. Yet ...

Quinidine is the most frequently prescribed antiarrhythmic drug,¹ despite unease about its possible proarrhythmic actions. That caution is required with the use of quinidine was, however, recognized early. Although the beneficial effect of quinine on “...

Stage

A 35-year-old man presented to the hospital in December 1996 with a 10-day history of fever (temperature as high as 40°C [104°F]) and 1-day history of nausea, vomiting, and mild abdominal pain in the right upper quadrant. He denied having headache, ...

Today, at the start of the new year, millions of Americans will resolve to lose weight, but by tomorrow, or next week, or maybe next month, most of them will have given up trying. Few will have lost weight, and even fewer will sustain the loss. Still, at ...

Advances in the care of preterm infants have blunted what otherwise should have been a constant public outcry about the static rate of preterm birth, the leading cause of perinatal and infant morbidity and mortality in the United States. Why has the ...

I.

Long before these children, with their contorted bodies and disordered brains, came to my tall-wooded shores, I lay here amidst the mountains. I cannot say that I waited for their arrival. Neither that first summer three decades ago, nor each ...

To the Editor: We were pleased to see that using an independent protocol, LeLorier et al. (Aug. 21 issue)¹ confirmed both our² previous estimates of the frequency of discrepancies between large trials and meta-analyses and those of Villar et al.³ Their ...

To the Editor: With respect to the article by Darling et al. (Aug. 28 issue)¹ on the effects of hormone-replacement therapy and simvastatin in postmenopausal women with hypercholesterolemia: We carried out a study in which we assessed the effects of the ...

To the Editor: In their article on obesity, Rosenbaum et al. (Aug. 7 issue)¹ characterize sibutramine, currently undergoing regulatory review as a drug for the treatment of obesity, as having both catecholaminergic and serotonergic agonist effects. ...

To the Editor: Ibuprofen can retard the decline in pulmonary function in children with cystic fibrosis.¹ Aminoglycosides are often given to treat pulmonary infections in children with cystic fibrosis. Both ibuprofen and aminoglycosides are nephrotoxic. ...

To the Editor: Dr. Eder, in his discussion of the paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration associated with Hodgkin's disease (July 10 issue),¹ quoted the 1976 paper by Trotter and colleagues² but did not mention that the antibodies they described are now ...

To the Editor: Karen Ignagni, the president of the American Association of Health Plans, stated in the October 9 issue, “The editor of the New England Journal of Medicine is entitled to be a critic of managed care, but it is profoundly disturbing to see ...

Diagnosis and treatment have always been two of the major elements of medical practice, but with the introduction of the CAT scan and other sophisticated imaging techniques, diagnosis by the laying on of hands began to lose its position as the leading ...

What kinds of tests should be performed on a drug before its release? What kinds of professional skills are most appropriate for performing such tests, and how safe must a drug be before it is marketed? Harry Marks, a medical historian at Johns Hopkins ...

In the introduction to this history of 20th-century hematologic diseases, Keith Wailoo asks, “What is the relationship between technology, especially diagnostic technology, and disease?” If nothing else, Drawing Blood shows that this relation is extremely ...

Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital (Case 21-1997) Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital, N Engl J Med 1997:337;115-122.. On page 121, in Table 4, the last entry under the heading “Cancer” should have read “Breast carcinoma,” ...