To the Editor: Hsu et al. report on a study (Dec. 2 issue)¹ of catheter ablation and its effect on rhythm control in patients with atrial fibrillation and heart failure to support the notion that drug-free maintenance of sinus rhythm may be superior to ...

To the Editor: Alboni and colleagues (Dec. 2 issue)¹ present data from a prospective study investigating the strategy of rhythm control in patients with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation by self-administration of antiarrhythmic agents (the “pill-in-the-...

To the Editor: In their article about cardiovascular events after acute infections (Dec. 16 issue),¹ Smeeth et al. do not discuss alternative, time-honored explanations for the occurrence of cardiovascular events within three days after acute infections. ...

To the Editor: Altered nuclear transfer is a procedure that has been proposed as a morally acceptable means of procuring human embryonic stem cells.¹ In their Perspective article, Melton et al. (Dec. 30 issue)² appear to misunderstand, and therefore ...

To the Editor: The Perspective article by Markel (Dec. 30 issue)¹ contains two incorrect assertions. Galen, perhaps the first physician to base medicine on nature rather than on miracles or metaphysics, was born in Pergamum (now Bergama, Turkey), the ...

To the Editor: In their review article on acute pericarditis, Lange and Hillis (Nov. 18 issue)¹ estimate that in 9 of 10 patients with acute pericarditis, the cause of the disease is either idiopathic or viral. We suggest that this may change when the ...

To the Editor: Simons (Nov. 18 issue)¹ provides a comprehensive review of the advances in drug therapy with histamine H₁-receptor antagonists. However, the author states that there is no current evidence supporting the use of such therapy for asthma — a ...

To the Editor: Polyomavirus type BK nephropathy is an aggressively destructive disease occurring in up to 8 percent of patients with renal allografts,¹,² with rates of graft loss within one year of 30 to 65 percent.³,⁴ There is no therapy with proven ...

Michael Marmot's book offers a drink from the fire hose of social epidemiology. If you want to understand why the health of people living in the United States, the richest and most powerful country in world history, lags far behind the health of people in ...

Love thy neighbor: an American paradox? The United States has one of the highest levels of church attendance in the world, but when it comes to health care, it seems that churchgoers find it difficult to love their neighbors in the way that secular ...

One of my favorite articles in the medical literature appeared in these pages a little more than a decade ago. “The Last Well Person” (N Engl J Med 1994;330:440-1) was an Occasional Note written by a Tennessee physician, Clifton Meador. It was a fictional ...

Peter Curtis-Prior's 57-chapter book took five years to prepare and contains contributions from 106 authors. Its length reflects how ubiquitous essential fatty acids and their metabolites are in human and animal tissues. The clinical implications of ...

Multiple Myeloma Review Article, N Engl J Med 2004:351;1860-1873.. On page 1869, in the second full paragraph in the left-hand column, lines 11 through 12 should have read, “a decrease in the levels of the proteins that inhibit apoptosis,” rather than “...

Acute Pericarditis Clinical Practice, N Engl J Med 2004:351;2195-2202.. On page 2198, in the right-hand column, lines 8 through 13 should have read, “ST-segment elevation also may be seen in patients with an early repolarizing pattern. The most reliable ...

Rofecoxib, Merck, and the FDA Correspondence, N Engl J Med 2004:351;2875-2878.. In the letter by Topol, in Table 1 on page 2878, the 95 percent confidence interval for the number of total deaths and cardiovascular events in study group 090 should have ...

Oral Erythromycin and the Risk of Sudden Death Correspondence, N Engl J Med 2005:352;301-304.. In the letter by Schoenholtz, lines 1 through 4 of the second full paragraph on page 302 should have read, “Between thioridazine and haloperidol are the `...

Tinea Circinata Images in Clinical Medicine, N Engl J Med 2005:352;e6.. In the legend for this image, which appeared only in the Web version of the Journal, the coauthor's name should have read “Anthony Papadopoulos,” rather than “Papadopolous,” as ...