Acute colonic pseudo-obstruction consists of massive dilation of the colon in the absence of mechanical obstruction. This severe form of adynamic ileus, also known as Ogilvie's syndrome,¹ develops in hospitalized patients and is associated with a wide ...

Aortic-valve sclerosis, calcification and thickening of a trileaflet aortic valve in the absence of obstruction of ventricular outflow, is common in the elderly, affecting 21 to 26 percent of adults over 65 years of age.¹,² When calcification and ...

Human ehrlichioses are recently recognized tick-borne zoonotic infections.¹ Worldwide, four species of ehrlichia have been identified as pathogens in humans. In the United States, Ehrlichia chaffeensis causes human monocytic ehrlichiosis,²,³ and a species ...

Pseudohypoaldosteronism is a rare syndrome characterized by defective sodium transport in the distal nephron and renal salt wasting despite high serum aldosterone concentrations. Two clinically distinct forms of pseudohypoaldosteronism have been ...

Figure 1. A 47-year-old afebrile man infected with the human immunodeficiency virus presented with headache, weakness of the left arm, a CD4 count of 2 per cubic millimeter, and white-cell count of 3 per cubic millimeter. T₁-weighted axial and coronal ...

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a clonal myeloproliferative expansion of transformed, primitive hematopoietic progenitor cells. It involves myeloid, monocytic, erythroid, megakaryocytic, B-lymphoid, and occasionally T-lymphoid lineages.¹ CML was the ...

Hemangiomas are the most common soft-tissue tumors of infancy, occurring in approximately 5 to 10 percent of one-year-old children. Despite the frequency of these tumors, their pathogenesis is not completely understood, and the best approach to their ...

Presentation of Case

A 69-year-old man was admitted to the hospital because of the radiologic finding of pulmonary nodules.

The patient had been well until several weeks earlier, when a cough, fever, and dyspnea developed. A thoracic radiograph obtained ...

Acute colonic pseudo-obstruction, also called Ogilvie's syndrome, refers to marked dilation of the colon in the absence of mechanical obstruction. It generally develops in hospitalized patients over a period of days, and up to 95 percent of affected ...

In a provocative study in this issue of the Journal, Otto and colleagues report that aortic sclerosis, a condition without obvious hemodynamic consequences, was associated with an increased risk of death from any cause and from cardiovascular causes.¹ ...

The ehrlichia are obligate intracellular bacteria that infect a variety of animals, usually with ticks as vectors. Ehrlichia sennetsu, the first species recognized to infect humans, causes a mononucleosis-like illness that so far has been seen only in ...

Successful clinical research depends on the ability to recruit research subjects. Tension between the need to recruit subjects and the obligation to offer them certain types of protection has made recruitment a persistent ethical challenge. One important ...

To the Editor: The meta-analysis reported by the International Perinatal HIV Group (April 1 issue)¹ provides convincing evidence that the risk of transmission of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) may be further reduced by elective cesarean ...

To the Editor: The first patient described by Smith et al. (Feb. 18 issue)¹ had five bouts of peritonitis with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. All were treated with intravenous vancomycin. The patient's peritoneal catheter remained in place. ...

To the Editor: The key to the validity of any study of a diagnostic test is a systematic comparison with an accepted gold standard. Using the coronary angiogram as the gold standard, Michaelides et al. (Feb. 4 issue)¹ conclude that the use of right-sided ...

To the Editor: Jacobs et al. (Feb. 11 issue)¹ found that radial scars were an independent risk factor for breast cancer. We are surprised that the authors did not report any synchronous carcinoma associated with the 99 radial scars they examined. We ...

To the Editor: A woman came to the pediatric infectious-disease clinic, requesting that we evaluate her two-month-old daughter for asplenia. An older daughter had been well until she was two years of age, at which time sepsis and disseminated ...

To the Editor: It is premature to draw any definitive conclusions about the experience with legalized physician-assisted suicide in Oregon as reported by Chin et al. (Feb. 18 issue),¹ because the surveillance by state investigators relied on physicians' ...

To the Editor: We enjoyed reading Dr. Ginzberg's editorial on the uncertain future of managed care (Jan. 14 issue).¹ However, we believe that we need further explanation of his statement, “The public will be forced to recognize that the U.S. health care ...

To the Editor: The process of hibernation, the “winter sleep of warm-blooded animals,” is a physiologic mechanism of self-protection that remains little understood. Webster's New World Dictionary defines hibernate as “to pass the winter in a torpid ...

Multiple sclerosis was first described about 160 years ago by Jean Martin Charcot. Since then, it has become one of the most common conditions faced by clinical neurologists and one of the most intriguing puzzles for neuroscientists. Multiple sclerosis is ...

Is stroke a genetic disease? Genetics of Cerebrovascular Disease puts forth the message that genetic factors do play a part in the pathogenesis of stroke. Traditionally, stroke has not been considered an inherited disease, and most cerebrovascular events ...