For several years, it’s been known that cardiopulmonary bypass machines can throw off micro-debris and this has been linked to the cognitive impairment seen in a substantial proportion of patients following cardiac surgery. […]
JAMA 21 Feb 2007
NEJM 22 Feb 2007
Tidings of Seretide to send sales soaring. This study, funded by GlaxoSmithKline (and hence in part by you, dear taxpayer), finds “significant benefits […]
BMJ 24 Feb 2007
It’s amazing how long it has taken us to recognise the basic mechanisms of stroke. Peter Rothwell’s short editorial points out that in people with carotid plaque, processes similar to coronary occlusion can take place suddenly due to plaque instability. […]
Lancet 24 Feb 2007
This week’s Lancet is dominated by the subject of male circumcision to reduce HIV infection, on the basis of two interventional trials from Kenya and Uganda, which show a 50% reduction in line with the previous study from South Africa. […]
Ann Intern Med 20 Feb 2007
This study puts paid to the idea that tight glycaemic control during on-pump cardiac surgery improves outcomes. In this trial it did the exact opposite. […]
More about Circumcision
Harvey Marcovich was sharing a platform with a fellow paediatrician when they were asked about the potential health benefits of preserving the male foreskin. […]
JAMA 14 Feb 2007
In less than ten years, the treatment of myocardial infarction has progressed from just giving aspirin and ensuring the quick delivery of thrombolysis, to complex strategies to maximise early invasive therapy together with the use of glycogen IIb/IIIa inhibitors. […]
NEJM 15 Feb 2007
Kawasaki disease is a disease with many characteristics you don’t want a disease to have. It’s so rare that you will not see it more than once in a GP lifetime, but so dangerous that you mustn’t miss it; it picks out children at random, but often clusters; we don’t know its cause, but it […]
BMJ 17 Feb 2007
This smashing little piece explores those situations where a new treatment is so good that a randomised trial is unnecessary. The mother’s kiss technique for removing foreign bodies from pre-school nostrils is a memorable example; there are many others from the field of surgery, and a formula for measuring real effects from background noise. […]
Lancet 17 Feb 2007
559 For several years now, there has been a stream of trials comparing aromatase inhibitors with tamoxifen at various stages of breast cancer, and the aromatase inhibitors always win. […]