The Spine Patient Outcomes Research Trial (SPORT) tried to randomise patients with disc herniation and radicular signs to receive either open discectomy or non-operative treatment. But the referee couldn’t keep […]
Latest articles
NEJM 23 Nov 2006
The influenza season is now upon us, so it’s time again to lie awake thinking about the possibility of pandemic avian influenza A. You may remember that when The Rational […]
BMJ 25 Nov 2006
As a jobbing clinician, how often do you use a prognostic scoring system? Never, would be the answer for most of us, though we have a vague idea about the […]
Lancet 25 Nov 2006
Ever heard of ancrod? It’s a tissue plasminogen activator which improves stroke outcomes slightly if given within a short time. However, this study shows no benefit in patients with acute […]
Ann Intern Med 21 Nov 2006
I’m sure that individual susceptibility to the effect of drugs has been known from before the dawn of civilisation: in oral epics, most chieftains hold their drink better than underlings. […]
Fungus of the Week: Amanita muscaria
You are unlikely to find the story-book red spotted caps of this fungus so late in the season, but I nominate it for illustrating that primitive tribes – in this […]
JAMA 15 Nov 2006
Working in a urology unit thirty years ago, I was struck by the discrepancy between male patients’ symptoms of urgency, frequency and nocturia and the size of their prostates, which […]
NEJM 16 Nov 2006
So what do we do about patients with chronic kidney disease who become anaemic? Watchers of QI, put your fingers on your buzzers. “Give them erythropoietin […]
BMJ 18 Nov 2006
This year, British GPs have suddenly been required to keep registers of chronic kidney disease, based on lab returns of estimated GFR from samples we have sent opportunistically. We have […]
Orphic Mysteries
In her Editor’s choice, Fiona Godlee reports receiving an e-mail from her distinguished predecessor Stephen Lock, asking for readers to come up with medical excuses to celebrate the four hundredth […]