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October 18, 2007  Vol. 357 No. 16

Audio Summary of this Issue

Perspective
1573-1575

Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced its decision to cease paying hospitals for some of the care made necessary by “preventable complications.” Meredith Rosenthal writes that this rule is the latest in a series of steps that ...

1575-1577

Payment based on results has been touted as a way to avoid waste and increase value in health care. Drs. Alan Garber and Mark McClellan discuss the advantages of this payment model.

Original Articles
1579-1588

This randomized, controlled trial involving more than 10,000 Canadian women investigated Papanicolaou (Pap) cytologic testing and human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing in screening for high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN). All women received both tests. Biopsies, colposcopies, and excisional procedures were performed when indicated. The HPV test was found to be more sensitive than the Pap test.

1589-1597

This Swedish study demonstrates the value of adding a test for HPV DNA to the Pap test for cervical-cancer screening. High-grade (grade 2 or 3) CIN was found more frequently in the initial screening of women who had both tests, and the incidence of grade 3 CIN lesions was reduced in later screening of women who had both tests.

1598-1607

In this randomized trial of patients with Bell's palsy, recovery at 9 months was achieved in 94% of patients treated with prednisolone within 72 hours after the onset of symptoms and in 82% of patients not treated with prednisolone (P<0.001); recovery rates were 85% and 91% with and without acyclovir, respectively (P=0.10). Early treatment with prednisolone significantly improved recovery in patients with Bell's palsy; treatment with acyclovir did not.

1608-1619
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Identifying the gene that underlies the hyper-IgE immune syndrome — also known as Job's syndrome — has been a challenge. Affected persons typically have extremely high levels of IgE and are susceptible to cold staphylococcal abscesses, pneumonia, and eczema. The cause of this disease is now established: mutations in STAT3.

Clinical Practice
1620-1630
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A 45-year-old white woman presents with a 1-year history of scalp-hair loss. She was hospitalized with appendicitis 14 months ago. She has been a vegetarian for 20 years. She takes no medications. Her father was bald. On physical examination, she has diffuse, nonscarring hair thinning with a widened part over the central portion of the scalp. How should this problem be evaluated and treated?

Review Article
1631-1638
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Early administration of reperfusion therapy improves survival among patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction. For primary percutaneous intervention, a goal of 90 minutes or less for door-to-balloon time is incorporated into many measures of quality performance, but delay remains common, with little improvement in this measure over recent years. This review examines the strategies for reducing door-to-balloon time and for selecting the appropriate reperfusion therapy, especially when a delay is unavoidable.

Images in Clinical Medicine
1639

A 59-year-old man presented with a sudden onset of abdominal pain in the left upper quadrant, associated with low-grade fever and shortness of breath. He had had a recent relapse of acute myelogenous leukemia and had an internal-tandem-duplication ...

e17
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This 72-year-old woman with compensated cirrhosis due to hepatitis C infection presented with swelling of the lower leg, splenomegaly, and visible tortuous vessels on the abdominal wall.

Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital
1640-1648

    A 62-year-old woman with a history of breast cancer was found to have a mass in the contralateral breast on magnetic resonance imaging performed for follow-up of the first cancer. Excision of the mass and examination of the biopsy specimen showed infiltrating and in situ ductal carcinoma, grade 3 of 3, positive for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. Options for management are discussed in a multidisciplinary setting.

    Editorials
    1650-1653

    In 1943, Papanicolaou and Traut published their famous monograph on vaginal cytology as a screening method for uterine cancer.1 Since then, the Papanicolaou (Pap) smear has become the most commonly used method to screen for cervical neoplasia, and it is ...

    1653-1655

    Approximately a third of cases of acute peripheral facial weakness are caused by trauma, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, eclampsia, the Ramsay Hunt syndrome (facial palsy with zoster oticus caused by varicella–zoster virus), Lyme disease, sarcoidosis, ...

    1655-1658

    The Janus kinase (JAK)–signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) signaling pathway has emerged over the past decade as a major relay between cell-surface receptors and cytokine responses. The human genome encodes four JAK family members — ...

    Correspondence
    1659-1660

    To the Editor: The prospective trial of dexamethasone for bronchiolitis in infants, conducted by the Bronchiolitis Study Group of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) and reported by Corneli et al. (July 26 issue),1 appears to ...

    1660-1662

    To the Editor: Shiffman et al. (July 12 issue)1 report the results of the ACCELERATE study, which compared 16 weeks with 24 weeks of peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin in patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV). The difference in the rate of sustained ...

    1662

    To the Editor: With regard to the editorial by Lewis (July 19 issue),1 the “perfect clinical trial” for Crohn's disease should be generalizable and should predict effectiveness and the benefit-to-risk ratio in practice. Lewis acknowledges that the ...

    1663

    To the Editor: Robson and Offit (July 12 issue)1 report that among breast cancers detected by screening, 12% were seen on mammography but not on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The authors recommend that MRI be considered as a complement to mammography ...

    1664-1666

    To the Editor: In his review of trastuzumab, Hudis (July 5 issue)1 notes that major research efforts are focused on identifying new predictive markers for tailored decisions regarding cancer treatment. The ErbB receptor family has a key role in ...

    1666-1667

    A 73-year-old man, visiting the United States from Nepal, presented with multiple tonic–clonic seizures. CT showed a 1-cm lesion in the left frontal lobe. MRI was diagnostic of a neoplastic lesion.

    1667-1668

    To the Editor: In 1966, a report on two unrelated young girls who had had recurrent staphylococcal abscesses since infancy was introduced with the biblical quote, “So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the ...

    Book Reviews
    1669-1670

    This nearly 500-page book is a reduced and simplified version of Brian Strom's reference book, Pharmacoepidemiology (4th edition. Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2005), which is to the field what Harrison's and Braunwald's are to internal medicine ...

    1670-1671

    Much has been written about postmenopausal estrogen therapy. No other prescription medication has had such successful promotion to patients and physicians, such widely debated opinions about its use, or such striking ups and downs in the number of ...

    1671-1672

    Recent advances in addiction medicine have been driven by advances in neurobiology. In The Science of Addiction, Carlton Erickson attempts to enlighten the caregivers of patients with substance abuse problems and the patients themselves about advancements ...

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