Join the 200th Anniversary Celebration

Issue IndexA searchable index of tables of contents

Find An Issue

By Volume and Issue
By Date

Table of contents for

October 12, 2006  Vol. 355 No. 15

Audio Summary of this Issue

Perspective
1517-1519

Nearly 20 years after Moore v. Regents, U.S. jurisprudence still has no coherent answer to a deceptively simple question: Do we own our own bodies? R. Alta Charo discusses the multiple controversies concerning the use of bits and pieces of bodies that are ...

1520-1522

In March, physicians at Germany's university clinics went on strike, and then in June, physicians at German public hospitals staged rolling strikes. Dr. Dennis Nowak writes that to comprehend why German physicians have taken to the streets, one must ...

1522-1523

Today, more than 75% of children with cancer can be cured of their disease. Dr. Philip Rosoff writes that there is a dark side to being cured of cancer as a young person.

Original Articles
1525-1538

In this randomized trial of atypical antipsychotic medications in patients with Alzheimer's disease and psychosis, aggression, or agitation, effectiveness (as measured by the time to drug discontinuation) was similar for olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, and placebo. Patients were more likely to stop taking placebo because of lack of efficacy and were likely to stop taking antipsychotic medications because of intolerability.

1539-1550

For culture and antimicrobial-susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, results are typically available in 1 to 2 months. This report from Peru demonstrates that the microscopic-observation drug-susceptibility assay may be more sensitive for the detection of M. tuberculosis than the current standard techniques and that results are available in significantly less time (median, 7 days).

1551-1562
  • Free Full Text

In a 2-by-2 factorial design, participants without cardiovascular disease but with impaired fasting glucose levels or impaired glucose tolerance received ramipril or placebo (with or without rosiglitazone) for a median of 3 years. The results suggest that ACE inhibitors may modestly improve glucose metabolism, though ramipril failed to change the rate of death or newly diagnosed diabetes.

1563-1571
  • Free Full Text

This maintenance program was based on self-regulation theory that included daily self-weighing. The authors tested the efficacy of delivering the program face to face or over the Internet as compared with the provision of a quarterly newsletter. The interventions improved maintenance of weight loss, particularly when delivered face to face.

Special Article
1572-1582

The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study found a high rate of illness owing to chronic health conditions among more than 10,000 adult survivors of childhood cancer.

Clinical Therapeutics
1583-1591

External-beam radiotherapy is recommended for a 69-year-old man with localized prostate cancer. This therapy has evolved rapidly owing to the development of sophisticated techniques for focusing the radiation beam precisely on its target. Important adverse effects include radiation proctitis, cystitis, urethritis, and erectile dysfunction.

Videos in Clinical Medicine
e16

    Thoracentesis may dramatically reduce respiratory distress in patients presenting with large pleural effusions. In addition, diagnostic thoracentesis is a valuable procedure in a patient with pleural effusion of unknown cause. The fluid can be categorized as a transudate (a product of imbalanced hydrostatic forces) or an exudate (a product of increased capillary permeability or lymphatic obstruction). This procedural video demonstrates how to perform thoracentesis.

    Images in Clinical Medicine
    1592
    • Free Full Text

    This 31-year-old woman presented with a visual-field deficit in the left eye and a systolic ejection murmur. What is the diagnosis?

    Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital
    1593-1602

      A girl had been severely obese since early childhood. She had been adopted in infancy, and her adoptive parents and siblings had normal weights. Numerous programs had failed to produce sustained weight loss. She had problems with snoring, insomnia, somnambulation, daytime sleepiness, and depression. Management options were discussed.

      Editorials
      1604-1606

      Agitation, aggression, delusions, and hallucinations are among the most common and disabling symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. These problems diminish the quality of life for both the patient and caregiver.1 They are also costly.2 Treatments for these ...

      1606-1608
      • Free Full Text

      Tuberculosis remains one of the major unresolved global health problems, and the situation is worsening in many parts of the world, primarily because of the association between tuberculosis and the epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection ...

      1608-1610

      In our increasingly sedentary society, the rates of overnutrition, the metabolic syndrome, and frank diabetes mellitus are rising at an alarming rate.1 Once diabetes has developed, the risks of cardiovascular and renal disease are markedly increased.2 ...

      Clinical Implications of Basic Research
      1611-1613

      Progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may be influenced by microglia, immune cells of the central nervous system.

      Correspondence
      1614-1615

      To the Editor: In their article, Hasin et al. (July 13 issue)1 state that a 5-day course of doxycycline is safe and efficacious for the prevention of tick-borne relapsing fever (TBRF) in a person who has been bitten by an infected tick. We dispute both ...

      1615-1616

      To the Editor: Poehling et al. (July 6 issue)1 state that the underdiagnosis of influenza may lead to missed opportunities for infection control and treatment. The overwhelming majority of patients with influenza have cough, fever, or both. Precautions ...

      1617-1619

      To the Editor: In the article by Kahn et al. (July 6 issue),1 the number of patients receiving mechanical ventilation per hospital bed was about 0.7 per year in hospitals in the lowest quartile of hospital volume (≥150 patients per year), as compared ...

      1619-1620

      To the Editor: Huang et al. (July 13 issue)1 suggest several factors to consider before the initiation of antiretroviral therapy in critically ill patients with HIV infection, but they do not discuss the implications of such therapy regarding adherence ...

      1620-1622

      To the Editor: The National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene (STAR) P-2 trial recently demonstrated that raloxifene, a selective estrogen-receptor modulator, was as effective as tamoxifen in reducing the risk ...

      Book Reviews
      1623-1624

      The scholarship devoted to the complicity of German physicians in the Holocaust is rich and detailed, but there remains, as Michael Bryant demonstrates, still more to learn. It is well established that the techniques employed by the Nazis to exterminate ...

      1624-1625

      A 2004 posting of the “Interrogation Rules of Engagement” at the Abu Ghraib military prison stated that the following techniques required the approval of the commanding general: dietary and environmental manipulation, “sleep adjustment, isolation for ...

      1626

      Judging from conversations I have had with clinicians, most are unaware that the high level of analysis that constitutes this anthology exists; it is deeply relevant to their work. If this book fails to reach clinicians, it will not be for lack of desire ...

      1627

      It is not common to read what is clearly intended as a textbook and then find oneself eager to discover the next pearl of wisdom among many others that have been strung throughout the text. Encounters with Children must now, in its fourth edition, be ...

      Corrections
      1627

      Salt-and-Pepper Retinopathy of Rubella Images in Clinical Medicine, N Engl J Med 2006:355;499.. On page 499, the sentence beginning on line 7 should have read, “Funduscopic examination revealed granular, pigmentary mottling in the macula and periphery, ...

      1627

      Imatinib and Altered Bone and Mineral Metabolism Correspondence, N Engl J Med 2006:355;627-629.. On page 628, the second footnote for Table 1 should have read, “Numbers in parentheses are the number of plasma samples analyzed,” not “Numbers in parentheses ...