In 1996, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a regulation, to be effective by January 1998, requiring that all enriched flour, rice, pasta, cornmeal, and other grain products contain 140 μg of folic acid per 100 g in addition to the thiamine, ...

The use of postoperative radiation therapy in patients with ductal carcinoma in situ of the breast is controversial. The National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) protocol B-17, a prospective, randomized trial, showed that the actuarial ...

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is the leading cause of infectious complications after organ transplantation and has been implicated as a cause of graft rejection. In renal transplantation, the risk of CMV disease is highest in the second month after ...

Liposuction is the most common cosmetic operation in the United States.¹ The technique of tumescent liposuction is a relatively new procedure that has gained popularity in the past decade, in part because of its purported safety.²,³ Tumescent liposuction ...

Continuous high-frequency stimulation of the basal ganglia was recently introduced for the treatment of patients with advanced Parkinson's disease.¹ This treatment seems to be most effective when the electrodes are placed in the subthalamic nuclei.²,³ ...

Figure 1. A 44-year-old man was evaluated for symmetric deposits of fat on his arms and legs. At the age of 26 years, he had been hospitalized because of axonal polyneuropathy of the legs and alcoholic fatty liver. Subsequently, fat deposits ...

Alcohol dependence is a chronic disorder that results from a variety of genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors.¹ As defined by the American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it is characterized ...

Presentation of Case

A nine-year-old girl was admitted to the hospital because of fever and cervical lymphadenopathy.

The patient had been well until four weeks earlier, when she began to have bilateral popliteal pain that extended upward over the ...

We entered this century with a confusion of terms for benign conditions of the breast that are possibly associated with cancer, summarized by J.C. Warren in 1905.¹ We exit this century with a broad consensus that largely fulfills Warren's call for ...

On November 6, 1780, the Italian anatomist Luigi Galvani made an entry in his diary that recorded his observation of electrically stimulated muscle contractions in the legs of a freshly killed frog.¹ Galvani performed subsequent experiments in which a ...

The National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, which began its work to great fanfare just over a year ago, held its last meeting on March 16. The commission, established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, had 17 members. The act required ...

To the Editor: McColl et al. and Blum et al. (Dec. 24 issue)¹,² reached opposite conclusions regarding the eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection in patients with nonulcer dyspepsia. In an accompanying editorial, Friedman³ concluded that ...

To the Editor: Stevenson, in her editorial in response to the article by Cohn et al. (Dec. 17 issue),¹,² writes tellingly regarding the problems of and prospects for patients with advanced congestive heart failure who are foundering despite the best ...

To the Editor: Taken as a whole, the articles by El-Sadr et al.¹ and Bozzette et al.² and the accompanying editorial by Steinbrook³ (Dec. 24 issue) seem to argue against the conclusion of El-Sadr et al. that atovaquone may be the preferred choice for ...

To the Editor: Homocystinuria due to a deficiency of cystathionine β-synthase has been reported to occur with a cumulative overall frequency of 1 in 344,000 worldwide, a value that ranges from 1 in 58,000 to 1 in 1,000,000 in countries that ...

To the Editor: In their contribution to Images in Clinical Medicine (Dec. 17 issue),¹ Alberio and Lämmle describe a man with odontogenic infection complicated by thrombophlebitis of the internal jugular vein, sepsis, and metastatic foci of infection. ...

To the Editor: Figure 1 of the Sounding Board article entitled “Paying More Fairly for Medicare Capitated Care,” by Iezzoni et al. (Dec. 24 issue),¹ shows the ratio of predicted to actual Medicare costs for five high-cost diagnostic groups according to ...

To the Editor: For many years, our divisional grand round, like most others, was a once-weekly session with one speaker.¹–⁴ To increase its attractiveness to a broader audience (students, researchers, and other health professionals), we developed a new ...

The development of new and improved diagnostic procedures and treatments that allow physicians to treat diseases more effectively has complicated the practice of medicine. In elderly, frail, and disabled patients who are dying of chronic, irreversible ...

“Gimp!” “Cripple!” The critical epithet often betokens the scorn and fear that disability provokes in the onlooker. Indeed, the human perception of illness is based as much on the dreaded functional consequences of the sequelae of disease as on mortality. ...

The word “encyclopedia,” according to one dictionary, is derived from Greek words meaning to “encircle education.” The title of the four volumes reviewed here thus claims to encircle what is known about reproduction. Certainly, these volumes draw a very ...

The advent of in vitro fertilization and ultrasonographic imaging and progress in biochemistry, cell biology, immunology, molecular biology, pathology, and therapeutics have revolutionized our understanding of embryonic medicine. Moreover, the study of ...

Waste is not always what it seems. In his Cold War novel Underworld, for example, Don DeLillo explores the multifaceted qualities of waste. “Waste,” he notes, “is the secret history, the underhistory, the way archaeologists dig out the history of early ...