CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal articles from July 2006

CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal archives from July 2006

Abortion: ensuring access/L'avortement: garantir l'acces.(Column)
July 4, 2006... Access to reproductive health care is essential to women's health, and for some women, abortion is a key component of that care. But not all women in Canada have adequate, or in some cases any, access to abortion. (1) It is important for...

Deaths.(Obituary)
July 4, 2006... Blanchard, James Ian, Vancouver; University of British Columbia, 1965, family medicine. Died Apr. 14, 2006, aged 65. "He is survived by his brother Murray (Alice), his loving niece Catina Carpenter (Scott) together with his grandniece and...

Query.(experienced doctors)(Column)
July 4, 2006... Eating Disorder Week begins Feb. 27th; Apr. 24th to 30th is Administrative Professionals Week (recently upgraded from Secretaries Week); and, my favourite, Family Doctor's Week, is July 19th to 25th. Then there are a host of lesser topics that...

Chaoulli decision resonates one year later.(Dr. Jacques Chaoulli )
July 4, 2006... Published at www.cmaj.ca on June 9, 2006. One year after sparking consternation that a parallel, private health care system would rapidly emerge after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec's ban on private health insurance for...

Medical students oppose two-tier, petition CMA.(Canadian Medical Association )(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... More than 20% of Canadian medical students have signed a petition asking the CMA to support publicly funded and accessible medical services. The petition was set up by the Student Medical Reform Group following CMA delegates' vote last...

CMA proposes options for private-public split.(Canadian Medical Association)
July 4, 2006... Published at www.cmaj.ca on June 8, 2006. Canadians and physicians must decide the degree to which they would like to increase private health care financing and delivery in light of the unsustainability of the existing system. The CMA...

No "simple solutions" to emergency log-jam.(emergency rooms)
July 4, 2006... The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) calls it "counter-productive." Several of its findings seem counterintuitive. Yet, the authors of the first national, comprehensive study on emergency department (ED) overcrowding in...

Joie de vivre sans smokes.(no smoking in bars)
July 4, 2006... Published at www.cmaj.ca on May 31, 2006. At midnight May 31, patrons of Quebec bars and restaurants inhaled their last lungful of second-hand smoke as Canada's famously laissez-faire province declared virtually all public spaces smoke...

"It's time to act".(Medecins Sans Frontieres touring exhibition )(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... That's the message Medecins Sans Frontieres is taking on the road to 8 cities in Ontario and Quebec this summer. MSF's interactive touring exhibit gives Canadians a chance to join an MSF team in one of 4 countries (Sierra Leone, Bolivia, South...

Fitness failure.(Canadian children not fit)(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... Fitness failure: Canada's children got a "D" for the second year running on the annual report card on physical activity from Active Health Kids Canada. The charitable advocacy group is calling for more information about the importance of:...

Record spending.(health spending Canada)(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... Record spending: The estimated total health spending among Canada's provinces and territories for 2006-07 is expected to reach $84.7 billion, a $5.7 billion or 6.4% increase from the year before. If current rates continue, health spending is...

CMAJ interim report.(Canadian Medical Association Journal )(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... CMAJ Interim report: The CMAJ Governance Review Panel released an Interim Progress Report on May 23 highlighting progress to date. The 6-member panel, led by Montreal lawyer, Richard Pound and CMAJ Ombudsman Dr. John Dossetor, has met 3 times,...

Food fight.(fight obesity, regulations on food industry)(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... Food fight: The US and European Union have decided not to impose new regulations on the food industry to fight obesity. "The government can't tell someone what to eat," Deputy US Health Secretary Alex Azar told Reuters. Both the US and EU have...

Drug spending hits $24.8 billion.(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... Total spending on drugs in Canada increased by 11% last year to $24.8 billion (see Fig. 1), according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information's annual drug expenditures report. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Drug spending consumed 17.5%...

Conflicts cause FDA to review advisory committees.
July 4, 2006... Critics have lately cast the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s scientific advisory panels as little more than partially owned subsidiaries of the pharmaceuticals industry. In fact, one influential US Congressman is so outraged by the...

Unusual variation in upper-body venous anatomy found with cardiovascular MRI.(magnatic resonance imaging)
July 4, 2006... Case: As part of a general presurgical evaluation, a 42-year-old man underwent radiography (Fig. 1). His chest radiograph showed mild cardiomegaly and enlargement of his superior mediastinum. Cardiovascular MRI to assess his thoracic aorta and...

Medications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: cardiovascular concerns.(Health and Drug Alerts)
July 4, 2006... Reason for posting: A variety of stimulant and nonstimulant medications are used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults and children. However, very rare but serious cardiovascular adverse events, including death,...

Invasive group A streptococcal infections.
July 4, 2006... Background and epidemiology: Streptococcus pyogenesis a ubiquitous bacterial organism that gives rise to a wide variety of cutaneous and systemic infections (Fig. 1). It is an important cause of acute pharyngitis and can lead to the development...

Ball-thrower's fracture of the humerus.
July 4, 2006... These radiographs reveal a mildly displaced, comminuted spiral fracture at the distal diaphysis of the left humerus with an associated butterfly fragment (Fig. 1). The patient, a healthy recreational athlete with no prior arm pains, described...

Psoriasis with Auspitz sign.(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... Psoriasis plaques often present as they did in this case: well demarcated, raised and erythematous, with silvery scales. Pinpoint capillary bleeding, known as Auspitz sign (arrows, Fig. 1), can result when the scales are gently scraped away...

Avascular necrosis of the femoral heads after single corticosteroid injection.(Brief article)
July 4, 2006... This patient had minimal tenderness over his hips, with mild limitation to his range of motion. Both hips had cystic changes in the femoral heads without collapse (Fig. 1). He had been treated 8 months previously with a single intramuscular...

Effects of exercise on breast cancer patients and survivors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
July 4, 2006... ABSTRACT Background: Physical exercise has been identified as a potential intervention to improve quality of life in women with breast cancer. We sought to summarize the available evidence concerning the effects of exercise on breast...

Type 2 diabetes does not increase risk of depression.
July 4, 2006... ABSTRACT Background: Although diabetes mellitus has a strong association with the presence of depression, it is unclear whether diabetes itself increases the risk of developing depression. The objective of our study was to evaluate whether...

Low risk of depression in diabetes? Would that it were so.
July 4, 2006... Practitioners who care for patients with diabetes are familiar with the problems of comorbid depression: decreased compliance with treatment, increased risk of complications and disability, and diminished health-related quality of life. The...

Clinical practice guidelines for the use of parathyroid hormone in the treatment of osteoporosis.
July 4, 2006... In 2002, Osteoporosis Canada published clinical practice guidelines for the diagnosis and management of osteoporosis in Canada. (1) At the time, there was considerable evidence for the use of anti-resorptive agents in the management of...

Parathyroid hormone for the treatment of osteoporosis: a systematic review.
July 4, 2006... Abstract Background: Human parathyroid hormone (hPTH)(1-34) was approved in 2004 for the treatment of severe osteoporosis. Members of the Osteoporosis Canada clinical guidelines committee conducted a systematic review of randomized...

Pet peeves.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... My pet peeves: paper tissues in the laundry, toilet seats left up, cars that follow too closely. Dr. Ursus's pet peeve: "patients who ask to be notified of their test results." (1) I can understand if Dr. Ursus wants to lament the cost and...

Merits of psychotherapies.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... I wish to highlight 2 issues regarding the article on the use of antidepressants in children and adolescents. (1) First, the majority of the main measures used in the 16 studies failed to support the drug over placebo. Ten of these studies...

Privacy concerns in preventing fraudulent publication.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... I understand the need for scientific journals to take every reasonable step to prevent the publication of flawed or fraudulent research, (1) but, as Ontario's privacy commissioner, I have serious concerns about the proposed solution of...

One country, too many licensing bodies.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... Having worked in the medical profession in both Canada and abroad, I have come to the conclusion that Canada, the second-largest country in the world (in geographic terms), is too small to have separate medical licensing boards for each...

The problem of evidence-based medicine in developing countries.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... In a recent article, Caleb Alexander and associates (1) elucidate the issue of prioritizing and stopping prescription medicines, pointing to a lack of data on the safety and optimal means of discontinuing drugs. (1) This may be the core problem...

Private health insurance needs consent.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... Loreen Pindera (1) describes the Quebec health ministry's recently released white paper, which recommends private health insurance as a means of reducing waiting time for "elective hip, knee and cataract surgeries, and to cancer-related...

Hepatitis C: reviewing the options.(Letter to the editor)
July 4, 2006... Tom Wong and Samuel Lee (1) mention some extrahepatic manifestations of infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV), but they do not discuss the urticarias. Internists and primary care physicians need to be aware that several forms of urticaria can...

Corrections.(Letters)(Correction notice)
July 4, 2006... In the unabridged version of a research article on planned cesarean versus planned vaginal births, (1) there was an error in Table 3. The data should be presented as mean (SD) [median], not midpoint as indicated. REFERENCE 1. Palencia...

Of caregivers and captains.(A Hard Chance: Sailing Into the Heart of Love)(Book review)
July 4, 2006... A Hard Chance--Sailing into the Heart of Love Tom Gallant Pottersfield Press; 2005 223 pp $19.95 ISBN 1-895900-68-9 Veteran broadcast journalist Tom Gallant begins this book with the stark confession: "She almost died. If she had, my life...

Optimism born out of circumstance.(Room for a view)(Column)
July 4, 2006... Health professionals are often assumed to not have disabilities of their own. This became very obvious to me as a medical student during the SARS crisis in Ontario. Because precautions were in place, everyone had to be screened prior to...

Canadian clinicians and patients need clean, clear knowledge/Les cliniciens et les patients ont besoin de connaissances nettes et claires.(Column)
July 18, 2006... Clean water played a vitally important part in controlling the infections of the communicable diseases that ravaged Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. These diseases still impair the health of people living in developing countries. Today it...

One match fits all?(medical residency )
July 18, 2006... It's the uncertainty principle, writ large, on the medical residency stage. Angered by a proposal to put graduates of Canadian and foreign medical schools into 1 competition hopper and buffeted by conflicting reports about the future...

Mental health moves up the agenda.
July 18, 2006... Canadian organizations representing mental health consumers and health professionals applaud the 118 recommendations in a new Senate report, and are optimistic that the federal government will act on its key recommendations by autumn. The...

Dire warnings redux.(health warnings, cigarettes)
July 18, 2006... Health Canada is considering new, even more graphic images on tobacco products to reinforce the negative health effects of smoking--a move that is being both lauded and criticized. Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a...

Full clinical trial disclosure needed: expert.(Dr. Andreas Laupacis, Canadian Expert Drug Advisory Committee)
July 18, 2006... Legislation is required to force pharmaceutical companies to disclose clinical trial information to Canadians, says Dr. Andreas Laupacis of the Canadian Expert Drug Advisory Committee (CEDAC). Laupacis, who emphasized that he was speaking...

Dementia to double.(Brief article)
July 18, 2006... Dementia to double: Over the next 20 years the number of people suffering from dementia is expected to double to 772 000, according to Health Canada documents acquired by the Ottawa Citizen. The Alzheimer Society of Canada is urging the...

WHO study on FGM.(World Health Organization, female genital mutilation )(Brief article)
July 18, 2006... WHO study on FGM: A WHO study of 28 393 women in 6 countries finds that those who have had female genital mutilation (FGM) are significantly more likely to have serious complications during childbirth and that their babies are more likely to...

High stakes.(Tony Clement, health minister's stake in drug industry, not to participate in company proceedings)(Brief article)
July 18, 2006... High stakes: According to conflict-of-interest filing with the Federal Ethics Commissioner, Canada's Health Minister Tony Clement holds a 25% equity position in Prudential Chem Inc., a Toronto firm that makes chemical compounds for the drug...

Scents ban.(Ottawa planning to ban scents in public places)(Brief article)
July 18, 2006... Scents ban: The City of Ottawa is going scent-free in all municipal buildings and has launched a public education program. Its citizen's committee on the environment proposed a phased-in citywide ban on scents in all public places, similar to...

Health care in Canada by region.
July 18, 2006... It's not just the numbers, it's what you do with them. This, says Glenda Yeates, president and CEO of the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), is the true value of the information in Health Care in Canada 2006, CIHI's 7th annual...

A man with recurrent furunculosis.
July 18, 2006... A 48-year-old male custodian at a historic site was well until he vacuumed a collection of animal pelts (beaver, muskrat, bear, rabbit, and bison) of unknown age. Within 3 days, he developed a vesicular lesion on his left fifth finger and a...

Community-acquired MRSA: a practitioner's guide.(methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus )
July 18, 2006... Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is usually considered a hospital-acquired (HA) organism. As highlighted elsewhere in this issue of CMAJ, infections with community-acquired (CA) strains of MRSA are being noted more frequently....

Osteoporosis treatment: raloxifene (Evista) and stroke mortality.(Health and Drug Alerts)
July 18, 2006... Reason for posting: Raloxifene is used for the treatment and prevention of osteoporosis. It is a selective estrogen-receptor modulator with estrogen-agonist effects on bone and lipid metabolism but not the breasts and uterus. The drug's effect...

Outbreak in Alberta of community-acquired (USA300) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureusin people with a history of drug use, homelessness or incarceration.
July 18, 2006... Abstract Background: The USA300 strain of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(CA-MRSA) can cause severe infection and is increasingly recognized as a cause of community outbreaks. In 2004, an outbreak was...

Effect of bodychecking on injury rates among minor ice hockey players.
July 18, 2006... ABSTRACT Background: In 2002, Hockey Canada changed the age classifications for minor ice hockey. Previously, 10- and 11-year-old children played at the Atom level (no bodychecking), and 12- and 13-year-old children played at the Peewee...

Public health implications of MRSA in Canada.(methicillin-resostant staphylococcus aureus )
July 18, 2006... Methicillin-resostant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has become established in acute and long-term health facilities worldwide. Currently, 2 main categories are recognized: hospital-associated (HA-MRSA) and community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA)....

Should bodychecking be allowed in minor hockey?
July 18, 2006... With more than 4.5 million Canadians involved in ice hockey as coaches, officials, administrators, volunteers or spectators, and more than 500 000 registered players, hockey is undeniably Canada's national sport. (1) Combining skill and speed,...

Type 1 diabetes: pathogenesis and prevention.
July 18, 2006... ABSTRACT Type 1 diabetes results from the autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing [beta] cells in the pancreas. Genetic and, as yet undefined, environmental factors act together to precipitate the disease. The excess mortality...

Not-so-surprising findings.(Letter to the editor)
July 18, 2006... Investigators who publish their research in medical journals usually report effect measures in the form of ratios, such as relative risk or rate ratio. It is well known that the magnitude of ratio measures depends on the underlying risk for the...

Virtual links to the emergency department.(Letter to the editor)
July 18, 2006... Eddy Lang and colleagues were quite optimistic in their expectations of the power of communication between the emergency department (ED) and family physicians. (1) We all want to reduce duplication and unnecessary admissions to hospital. These...

Correction.(Letters)(Correction notice)
July 18, 2006... In the obituary notice for Dr. Hubert John Warrick, (1) his place of graduation was mistakenly listed as University of London. He graduated from the medical school at St. Mary's Hospital in London, England. REFERENCE (1.) Deaths....

North.(Room for a view)
July 18, 2006... I am driving North. My friend and had been residents together, both older, both in our second careers. He had moved North while I stayed in the city. I am apprehensive. My belly is huge, eight and a half months of new life jabbing at my...

Through Alberta Eyes--the photographs of Orest Semchisen.(Lifeworks)(Brief article)
July 18, 2006... Dr. Orest Semchisen has always worked with great insight into life. During his first career, as a radiologist, he peered into bodies. He studied corporeal realities to reveal the body's resilience and strengths, but also to find weaknesses. ...

World's first botanical garden has roots in medicine.(Padua University, Italy)
July 18, 2006... "The Botanical Garden of Padua is the original of all botanical gardens throughout the world, and represents the birth of science, of scientific exchanges, and understanding of the relationship between nature and culture. It has made a profound...

Deaths.(Alfred Frazer Crook, Peter Michael Ellis, Adrien Gauvreau)(Obituary)
July 18, 2006... Crook, Alfred Frazer, Carleton Place, Ont.; Queen's University, Belfast, Ireland, 1939, radiation oncology. Died Apr. 28, 2006, aged 89. "Loving husband of Alice. Dear father of Ann (Michael Berry), John (Janey), Brian and Tim, and stepfather...

Query.(death of a hero)
July 18, 2006... My uncle died last week. He had been ill for years, but started his death spiral this past year with multiple hospital admissions as morbid markers by the mortal roadside. He had three kids. One became a teacher, another a chemist, and the...