In 1996, the Bypass Angioplasty Revascularization Investigation (BARI), a randomized trial, found that an initial strategy of coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG), as compared with percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), significantly ...

The probability of curing childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with current treatments ranges from 75 percent to 80 percent. Although some adverse prognostic features have lost clinical importance with recent improvements in therapy,¹ other such ...

Experiments conducted by Goldblatt and colleagues¹ on the effects of renal-artery constriction in animals led to the recognition that renal-artery stenosis may cause hypertension. Initially, surgical revascularization was the only treatment for renal-...

Figure 1. A 61-year-old man with a prosthetic aortic valve presented with acute ischemia of the right foot. An embolectomy of the dorsalis pedis and posterior tibialis arteries was performed. Culture of the thrombus revealed Aspergillus fumigatus. On ...

Studies have aroused concern that some types of surgical procedures, such as coronary revascularization and renal transplantation, are performed less often in women than they should be.¹–⁶ However, the interpretation of these findings is difficult because ...

Pain is one of the most common and widely feared symptoms of illness.¹ Studies of diverse populations of patients have found that unrelieved pain is highly prevalent,²–¹⁷ especially among minority groups.¹⁸–²⁰ We have observed that many of our patients, ...

In 1872, Moritz Kaposi, a Hungarian dermatologist, described five men with aggressive “idiopathic multiple pigmented sarcomas of the skin.”¹ One patient died of gastrointestinal bleeding 15 months after the initial appearance of the skin lesions, and an ...

Type 2 diabetes increases the risk of coronary heart disease by a factor of two to four.¹ The relative increase in the rate of coronary heart disease among patients with diabetes in most studies is greater for women than for men. In the Framingham Heart ...

The great economist Joseph Schumpeter regarded creative destruction as an indispensable element of economic progress. In a similar vein, the report by van Jaarsveld et al.¹ in this issue of the Journal furthers medical progress by doing away with past ...

Osteoarthritis is a common, chronic, and degenerative disease of the joints. It afflicts more than 16 million people in the United States and is one of the leading causes of long-term disability.¹ It is the most prevalent chronic condition among women.² ...

A growing body of compelling and disturbing evidence points to inferior medical care for black Americans, even if they are on an equal economic footing with whites. Differences in access to treatment and the quality of care are at least part of the reason ...

To the Editor: We are writing in support of the Pain Relief Promotion Act of 1999 and to express reservations about your editorial in the December 16 issue.¹ As hematologists and oncologists, we care for terminally ill patients. Our perspective is ...

To the Editor: The report by van Rie and colleagues (Oct. 14 issue)¹ ascribes 12 of 16 cases of recurrent tuberculosis in patients who were negative for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to exogenous reinfection. However, we are concerned about ...

To the Editor: Poldermans et al. (Dec. 9 issue)¹ reported a reduction in the incidence of death and myocardial infarction after vascular surgery among patients who were pretreated with the beta-blocking drug bisoprolol, as compared with those who were ...

To the Editor: Garg et al. (Nov. 25 issue)¹ reported on the effect of the ownership of dialysis facilities on patients' survival and referral for transplantation. They described large differences in outcomes among patients undergoing dialysis who had ...

When I touched your hands,

I touched hands that had felt

the chill of 94 winters,

fingers that had stretched in the sunlight

of as many springs.

When I touched your feet,

I touched feet that had walked

the paths of nine decades,

toes curling and uncurling ...

In Blind Eye, a book that lays the foundation for an indictment against medicine, James B. Stewart, the recipient of a 1988 Pulitzer prize for his reporting on the stock-market crash and insider trading, has assembled the known facts of Dr. Michael Swango'...

This book is the story of a student at Harvard Medical School, from the time of her acceptance to the school to the time of graduation. It is set in the present, probably from 1994 to 1998. The white coat is the symbol of “physicianship” that is given to ...

This slim book contains the reflections on medical education and training of a well-known presence in American medicine and medical education, J. Willis Hurst. The major topics he discusses are clinical teaching, the organization of curriculums, and the ...

In this book, Peter A. Ubel discusses the important and controversial issue of health care rationing in a logical, carefully defined, and well-substantiated manner. He accurately points out that rationing of health care services is essential in any ...

Neurologic Complications of the Reactivation of Varicella–Zoster Virus Review Article, N Engl J Med 2000:342;635-645.. On page 639, Figure 3 was printed upside down.

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

—Mark Twain

On September 2, 1999, the California Medical Association released a highly publicized report entitled, “The Coming Medical Group Failure Epidemic.”¹ The report begins, “Mounting evidence ...