JAMA 9 Nov 2011 Vol 306 1983 Replumbing the brain through a hole in the skull is an idea that sounds straight out of the heroic days of kill-or-cure surgery. It’s been known for about 50 years that you can connect the superficial temporal artery branch through the cranium to a middle cerebral artery cortical […]
The COMET Initiative is making it easier for people to develop, identify, and use core outcome sets to improve the potential impact of research findings on healthcare practice, health, and wellbeing. But what about the challenge of assessing the potential impact of being part of a piece of research on health and wellbeing? Is there a […]
JAMA 12 Oct 2011 Vol 306 1549 It has been a bad week for vitamin supplements. Worst hit, as usual, has been vitamin E. The SELECT trial began collecting 35 000+ healthy men with normal feeling prostates back in 2001 and randomised them to get a selenium supplement, a vitamin E supplement, both, or placebo. […]
JAMA 28 Sep 2011 Vol 306 1329 Intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation reduces left ventricular load and improves outcomes in animal models of myocardial infarction. But in previous small human studies of MI without shock, it hasn’t been shown to do anything much, and this trial confirms that it does not reduce infarct size significantly. But such […]
JAMA 21 Sep 2011 Vol 306 1205 I don’t know why spammers have me down as so interested in imitation Rolex watches and erectile function: neither is particularly true. But I guess that if I had a diagnosis of localised prostate cancer, I might want to know the chances of each treatment option causing me […]
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research papers and accompanying articles. […]
JAMA 14 Sep 2011 Vol 306 1089 In medicine, always expect the counterintuitive. For some time it has been known that removing more lymph nodes at the time of bowel cancer surgery is associated with better outcomes. This is nicely confirmed in this large cohort study – 86 394 patients, showing a one third reduction […]
In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on keeping up to date with the current scientific literature. To practise evidence based medicine, we have to constantly read and appraise medical journals, and implement (or disregard) their teachings into our everyday work. This means that students and clinicians alike are required to read more […]
JAMA 7 Sep 2011 Vol 306 952 This is a themed issue on Medical Education, a domain where giant forces compete for the minds of highly selected young people, and science can tell us little about what really matters. I gave my first talk on the subject in 1973, to a largely female student audience […]
NEJM 1 Sep 2011 Vol 365 787 Studies of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest require heroic feats of organization and generally provide survival-to-discharge rates around 7%. In this randomized trial, the research question was whether in a person found pulseless out of hospital, it’s best to start CPR immediately or to analyze the heart rhythm immediately. In […]