The results support the superiority of surgical therapy, and the quality of life was significantly better in the surgical group.

Mutations in this gene may be an important cause.

The lung disease could involve mutations in the gene encoding activin-receptor–like kinase 1.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a well-recognized cause of outbreaks of folliculitis associated with the use of whirlpools, hot tubs, swimming pools, saunas, and hydrotherapy pools. Patients can present with pruritic follicular, maculopapular, vesicular, or ...

Autoimmune diseases, with the exception of rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune thyroiditis, are individually rare, but together they affect approximately 5 percent of the population in Western countries.¹,² They are a fascinating but poorly understood ...

The deaths of several celebrities in recent years in association with the nontherapeutic use of cocaine have focused widespread attention on the problem of cocaine abuse. In 1999, an estimated 25 million Americans admitted that they had used cocaine at ...

Stage

A 32-year-old man with a history of asthma and “crack” cocaine use presented to the emergency department after an episode of syncope. Earlier that evening, he had smoked crack cocaine several times. Shortly after his last use, he began to have sharp ...

This week the Journal's table of contents lists one title that is on our Web site but does not appear in the print version. The Journal's first Web-only Image in Clinical Medicine, “A Hair-on-End Skull,”¹ can be found at http://www.nejm.org. We plan to ...

In all of modern medicine, few generally accepted therapeutic interventions are as underutilized as surgical treatment for epileptic seizures. More than 2 million people in the United States have epilepsy, and 400,000 to 600,000 of them have seizures that ...

Primary pulmonary hypertension is a devastating disease that is invariably fatal without definitive therapy. The disorder is more appropriately called a syndrome, since it is characterized by a set of clinical and pathophysiological features common to a ...

Whatsoever I shall see or hear concerning the life of men, in my attendance on the sick, or even apart therefrom, which ought not to be noised abroad, I will keep silence thereon, counting such things to be as sacred secrets.

The Hippocratic Oath

Personal ...

To the Editor: The Sounding Board by Bedell et al. on the doctor's letter of condolence (April 12 issue)¹ was distressing to read. My wife of 40 years died at a prestigious teaching hospital. For nearly four years she had struggled with carcinoma of the ...

To the Editor: Musselman et al. (March 29 issue)¹ suggest that prophylactic treatment with paroxetine is an effective strategy for minimizing depression induced by treatment with interferon alfa in patients with malignant melanoma. However, this strategy ...

To the Editor: Mork et al. (April 12 issue)¹ suggest that infection with human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) may be a risk factor for squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Other studies have shown that rates of HPV infection are higher in ...

To the Editor: In his editorial (March 22 issue)¹ on the treatment of chronic granulomatous disease, Ezekowitz balances the risk of bone marrow transplantation against the benefits of prophylaxis with antimicrobial agents and interferon gamma and cites a ...

To the Editor: During labor at term, a 23-year-old woman took a 30-minute tub bath for relaxation in the morning, in water with a temperature of 37°C. She gave birth to a 3170-g boy later that day. Mother and child left the clinic three days later. At ...

To the Editor: Enteroviruses are the most common agents of myocarditis and have been implicated in the pathogenesis of dilated cardiomyopathy. There are still discrepancies in our knowledge of the association of enteroviruses and myocardial disease, ...

I was never very enthusiastic about eponyms as a student, having enough problems with keeping the manifestations of the lateral medullary syndrome straight without the added burden of remembering that Adolf Wallenberg was the syndrome's original ...

Principles of Neuroepidemiology is an excellent book, despite its misleading title. The principles are covered in the section on methods, which occupies only 4 of the 16 chapters and certainly does not represent the most interesting part of the book. ...

Intervention for pain is an extremely important subject because of the many patients with chronic pain and the frequency with which interventions for pain are performed. New procedures are regularly introduced, often without sufficient documentation of ...

The Hemophilias — From Royal Genes to Gene Therapy Review Article, N Engl J Med 2001:344;1773-1779.. On page 1778, the sentences that begin on line 18 of the left-hand column should have read, “One study in patients with hemophilia B is evaluating the ...

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore characterized the DNA code as a secret code like that of the Nazis. In his words, “with the completion of the Human Genome, we are on the verge of cracking another enemy's secret code. When we intercept and ...

Figure 1. A 58-year-old carpenter was working at a home-construction site while a colleague working above him fired nails into a board with a nail gun. The board broke during one of the firings, accidentally propelling a galvanized nail into the patient's ...