Postgraduate Medical Journal articles from December 2003

Postgraduate Medical Journal archives from December 2003

Time for humanity from doctors towards patients; health care professionals should aspire to making medicine the most humane of the sciences.(Doctor-Patient Communication)
December 1, 2003... It would not be difficult to support the claim that medical achievements during the 20th century rank as high, if not higher, than those in any other field of human endeavour. (1) Doctors have played a significant part in delivering the...

Crowd pleasers: patient centred care.(Personal View)
December 1, 2003... Some 60 years ago my mother was a surgical inpatient on a public ward in a West Yorkshire city. She subsequently riveted her children with a description of the experience. Catering was rudimentary and rations were generally supplemented by...

BookPower: books for developing countries at affordable prices.(Education)
December 1, 2003... WHAT IS BOOKPOWER? BookPower is a unique charity. It provides high quality, affordable textbooks for tertiary students in developing countries at prices that they can afford. BookPower works closely with publishers in the UK to provide...

Dr William Coley and tumour regression: a place in history or in the future.(Review)
December 1, 2003... Spontaneous tumour regression has followed bacterial, fungal, viral, and protozoal infections. This phenomenon inspired the development of numerous rudimentary cancer immunotherapies, with a history spanning thousands of years. Coley took...

Breathlessness in hospitalised adult patients.(Cardiology, Update)
December 1, 2003... Dyspnoea is defined as a sensation of difficult breathing. It is common in hospitalised patients and is often a harbinger of serious and potentially fatal pathology. The pathophysiology of dyspnoea involves complex interactions between...

Image guided navigation system--a new technology for complex endoscopic endonasal surgery.(Original Article)
December 1, 2003... Purpose: Endoscopic endonasal surgery (EES) has become the standard practice in sinonasal and anterior skull base surgery. The purpose of this manuscript is to describe experience using a new technology--the image guided navigation system...

Palmar striated xanthomas.(Images in Medicine)
December 1, 2003... A 52 year old woman presented to the emergency department with two hours of central chest pain. She had no past medical history of ischaemic heart disease, diabetes, or hypertension. She had a family history of ischaemic heart disease; her...

Pneumonia due to antibiotic resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the HAART era.(Original Article)
December 1, 2003... Antibiotic resistance profiles are useful in directing therapeutic strategies during bacterial infections. Patterns of antimicrobial resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa associated pneumonia were investigated in an...

Images in medicine: fetus.
December 1, 2003... Chris Pye began carving in 1975 with the late master carver Gino Masero. He had previously spent four years as a medical student in Cardiff but left to pursue a more creative career. Apart from woodcarving Chris writes books, draws, paints,...

The stethoscope: some preliminary investigations.(Original Article)
December 1, 2003... Textbooks, clinicians, and medical teachers differ as to whether the stethoscope bell or diaphragm should be used for auscultating respiratory sounds at the chest wall. Logic and our results suggest that stethoscope diaphragms are more...

A physiotherapy specialist clinic in paediatric orthopaedics: is it effective?(Audit)
December 1, 2003... A physiotherapy specialist clinic was set up to reduce waiting times for non-urgent, new paediatric orthopaedic referrals. The outcome was reviewed at a minimum of 12 months for 1046 referrals assessed in the physiotherapy support clinic to...

Phenytoin and carbamazepine cross reactivity: report of a case and review of literature.(Adverse Drug Reaction)
December 1, 2003... Cross reactivity between phenytoin, carbamazepine, and oxcarbazepine is reported. An 8 year old boy with partial seizures developed maculopapular rashes with itching on day 15 of carbamazepine therapy. After stopping carbamazepine, phenytoin...

An unusual cause for a colonic stricture: a case of Mycobacterium xenopi mimicking malignancy.(Case Report)
December 1, 2003... Colonic strictures are very common and are a frequent finding on double contrast barium examination; they very often reflect the presence of malignancy, diverticular disease, ischaemia, inflammatory bowel disease, and rarely mycobacterial...

Gastrointestinal stromal tumour in an inguinal hernial sac: an unusual presentation.(Case Report)
December 1, 2003... Malignancy involving hernial sacs is rare. A 72 year old man is reported who had a right inguinal irreducible mass as an initial presentation of gastrointestinal stromal tumour mimicking irreducible inguinal hernia. The diagnosis was missed at...

If only I'd known ...: ten things I wish I'd known when I was 25.
December 1, 2003... (1) Twig 'n' berries are a County Durham euphemism for male genitalia. As a junior doctor I once advised a patient who told me that his twig 'n' berries were not working to pour on cold tea (my wife's cure for ailing houseplants). (2) You...

Abdominal pain and vomiting in an elderly diabetic woman.(Self Assessment Questions)
December 1, 2003... Answers on p 712. A 82 year old white woman was admitted with a history of heart-burn nausea and vomiting of three days' duration. She also complained of pain in her lower abdomen. She was being treated for type 2 diabetes mellitus,...

Proptosis in an asthmatic patient.(Self Assessment Questions)
December 1, 2003... Answers on p 712. A 33 year old male non-smoking farmer was admitted to the neurosurgery services with a history of diplopia, visual loss, epistaxis, and a left orbital swelling. He was referred to us for preoperative evaluation in view of...

Rheumatoid arthritis and neck pain.(Self Assessment Questions)
December 1, 2003... Answers on p 713. A woman aged 55 years, with a longstanding history of polyarticular rheumatoid arthritis, presented with neck pain. There were no symptoms of neurological involvement. Examination revealed mild tenderness at the upper...

QRS duration: a simple marker for predicting cardiac mortality in ICD patients with heart failure.(Echo)
December 1, 2003... Background: Patients resuscitated from ventricular tachyarrhythmias benefit from implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) as opposed to medical treatment. Patients with increased QRS duration receiving an ICD in the presence of heart...

Update on irritable bowel syndrome.(Letter)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2003... We read with interest the recent article on the management of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). (1) The authors present an overview of the epidemiology, impact, aetiology, diagnosis, and management of IBS. Although the article is informative, we...

Clinical Governance.
December 1, 2003... Clinical Governance. John Wright and Peter Hill. (Pp 219; [pounds sterling]19.99.) Churchill Livingstone, 2003. ISBN 0-443-07126-8. Clinical governance first arrived in the NHS in 1999, and it would be reasonable to say that initially...

Recent Advances in Surgery.
December 1, 2003... Recent Advances in Surgery. Edited by Irving Taylor and Colin Johnson. (Pp 241; [pounds sterling]35.) Royal Society of Medicine Press, 2003. ISBN 1-85315-551-9. The 26th part of the Recent Advances series contains 16 chapters arranged...

Medicine & Myths.
December 1, 2003... Medicine & Myths. Richard Heatley. (Pp 136; [pounds sterling]14.99.) Published by www.medicineandmyths.com, 2003. ISBN 0-95444-2105. Medicine is full of myths and sometimes we even recognise them as such. This book is an attempt to...

Probiotics for Crohn's & Colitis.(Books Received)
December 1, 2003... Probiotics for Crohn's & Colitis. Peter Cartwright. (Pp 128; [pounds sterling]9.99.) Prentice Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-9544438-0-2. The receipt of these books is acknowledged and this listing must be regarded as sufficient return for the...

Intrapartum Care.(Books Received)
December 1, 2003... Intrapartum Care. Thomas F Baskett and Sabaratnam Arulkumaran. (Pp 211; [pounds sterling]22.00, [pounds sterling]16.50 to Fellows and Members of the RCOG). Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, September 2002, ISBN 1-900364-73-5....