It is accepted medical practice to remove adenomatous polyps when they are detected in the colon, to search for additional polyps, and to arrange for long-term follow-up of the patient. This approach is based on evidence that adenomatous polyps are ...

Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura is a life-threatening, multisystem disease characterized by thrombocytopenia, microangiopathic hemolytic anemia, fever, neurologic changes, and renal abnormalities.¹ Idiopathic cases occur at a rate of 3.7 per year per ...

Sudden death has been recognized as a possible consequence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy since the first modern descriptions of the disease.¹,² However, despite 40 years of investigation, the search for a way to identify patients who have a high risk of ...

Cataract is a major public health problem. The World Health Organization estimates that 45 million people in the world are blind, about half of them as a result of cataracts.¹ The only treatment is extraction of the cataract, which is performed 1.5 ...

Figure 1. A 21-year-old dental assistant attempted suicide by injecting 10 ml (135 g) of elemental mercury (quicksilver) intravenously. She presented to the emergency room with tachypnea, a dry cough, and bloody sputum. While breathing room air, she had a ...

The development of coronary artery disease, and specifically myocardial infarction, involves hyperplasia of arterial smooth muscle, the development of fatty streaks, atheroma formation, plaque rupture, and ultimately thrombus formation and vessel ...

Erectile dysfunction is defined as the inability to achieve and maintain an erection sufficient to permit satisfactory sexual intercourse.¹ It has been estimated to affect 20 million to 30 million men in the United States.²,³ It may result from ...

Presentation of Case

A 45-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of a mass at the apex of her right lung.

The patient had been well until three and a half years earlier, when she began to have paresthesias in the fourth and fifth fingers of ...

For many years, barium enema was the only way to obtain a complete structural examination of the colon, short of surgery. Development of the double-contrast barium enema improved the ability of the method to detect subtle lesions, and this is the only ...

In this issue of the Journal, Bennett et al. describe 11 cases of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura that occurred in patients during or shortly after they received clopidogrel.¹ The evidence linking clopidogrel to the development of thrombotic ...

Modern information technology is rapidly changing how new knowledge is discovered in most fields of science, including medicine. This technology offers interesting possibilities in the development of methods to understand diseases better, but it also ...

Research on genetic variation aims to understand how genes function and requires the comparison of DNA samples from groups of individuals to identify variations that might have importance for health or disease.¹ This work is easier if the samples are ...

To the Editor: Imagawa and colleagues (Feb. 3 issue)¹ provide evidence that an acute insult to the exocrine pancreas, possibly caused by a virus, may trigger type 1 diabetes mellitus. In a subgroup of adult Japanese patients presenting with type 1 ...

To the Editor: It was heartening to learn that the outcome of kidney transplantation has improved since 1988, as reported by Hariharan and colleagues (March 2 issue).¹ When one discusses treatment options with a patient, however, it is frequently helpful ...

To the Editor: Exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES) in utero is related to an increased risk of clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina and cervix at a young age.¹ However, the long-term risk of cancer in the daughters of women given DES during pregnancy ...

To the Editor: Nonnemaker (Feb. 10 issue)¹ presents her results without much editorializing about the woes of women in medicine. Articles on this topic always worry me, since the victim mentality is so prevalent in our society.

When I was in high school, ...

To the Editor: We thank Dr. Kelly (March 9 issue)¹ for her vigilance on behalf of veterans treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Her suggestion that the sharing of electric razors might be responsible for the relatively high rates of viral ...

To the Editor: Blood-culture–negative endocarditis has been described in about 12 percent of children with endocarditis.¹ Because of recent diagnostic advances, some of the pathogens responsible for these cases have been identified.

A 13-year-old girl ...

How many pages are needed to cover the relevant topics in Comprehensive Clinical Nephrology? Johnson and Feehally convincingly show that in about 700 pages a book can comprehensively deal with all important aspects of clinical nephrology. The authors have ...

Do we really need another textbook on infectious diseases? This was my first thought as I began to review Infectious Diseases, edited by a team of experts in the field.

This book differs in several aspects from other major textbooks of infectious ...

This elegantly written book is a useful introduction to the medical history of malaria in the past half-millennium. The authors, who are neurologists, have read and digested a broad range of European and American works, sometimes quoting them at length so ...

Ischemic Retinopathy Caused by Severe Megaloblastic Anemia Images in Clinical Medicine, N Engl J Med 2000:342;860.. The figures are oriented incorrectly. The correct orientation is 90 degrees counterclockwise.