The clinical updates which now follow the editorials in The Lancet provide very useful summaries of current knowledge: here is a concise Australian account of stroke management. […]
Lancet 21 Apr 2007 Vol 369
Ann Intern Med 17 Apr 2007 Vol 146
A big group of Canadians make a valiant attempt to determine which inhalers really benefit patients with chronic obstructive airways disease. The idea was to start with tiotropium and randomise to salmeterol or salmeterol-fluticasone or placebo. […]
Plant of the Week: Fritillaria pallida
The fritillaries are a wonderful group of bulbous plants, mostly of very discreet charm, quite unlike their blowsy cousins, the tulips. […]
Domhnall MacAuley from the Quality Forum
Domhnall MacAuley attending the BMJ/IHI 12th International Forum on Quality and Safety in Health Care, Barcelona April 2007 Airports at 5am on a working day don’t have the same excitement as holiday travel. Suits, briefcases and determined frowns keeping the economy in the air. Nothing like the indignity of putting your toiletries in a clear […]
Unemployed doctors could opt for VSO, review group told
There has been an outcry at the news that one briefing paper to the MTAS review group suggests doctors who can’t find a job in the UK should consider working for Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) instead. The BMA says the government’s failures in workforce planning have created this mess. […]
Hewitt apologises – and announces review of MMC
Health secretary Patricia Hewitt has today issued an apology to those caught up in the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) crisis, acknowledging that it had been a time of ‘great distress’ to them. And she announced another review, this time of the whole of the Modernising Medical Careers policy, rather than just of MTAS. It […]
JAMA 11 Apr 2007
When I said last week that the true scientist rejoices when her/his hypothesis is refuted, I wasn’t trying to restate Popperian orthodoxy but making the point that those who wish to see knowledge expand shouldn’t care whether it does so by proving them right or wrong – the main thing is that they’ve helped in […]
NEJM 12 Apr 2007
A big prospective North American trial – COURAGE – confirms the message of the BMJ a fortnight ago: for chronic stable angina, percutaneous coronary intervention offers no advantage over optimal medical therapy. […]
BMJ 14 Apr 2007
786 Several years ago, Philip Poole-Wilson issued a warning that too many cardiovascular trials use composite end-points and that this can seriously distort their conclusions. […]
Lancet 14 Apr 2007
Another very promising new drug for HIV has arrived – the HIV-1 integrase inhibitor raltegravir. It produced good results in this phase II trial in multi-drug resistant patients and “the safety profile of raltegravir is comparable with that of placebo at all doses studied. […]