DTC Use Discouragement Is Unrealistic Despite Real Concerns About Antibiotics

Unrealistic concerns about fever in children: the influence of cultural-ethnic and sociodemographic factors.

BACKGROUND Parental fear and misconceptions about fever are widespread in western society. Ethnicity and sociodemographic factors have been suggested as contributing factors. OBJECTIVES To test the hypothesis that undue parental concern about fever is less in traditional than in western cultural-ethnic groups. METHODS Bedouin (traditional society) and Jewish (western society) parents of chi...

Smokers' unrealistic optimism about their risk.

OBJECTIVE Past studies have produced ambiguous or inconsistent results when testing whether smokers actually underestimate their own risks of experiencing tobacco related illness. Whereas smokers claim that they are less at risk than the average smoker on self administered questionnaires, this unrealistic optimism has not been found in telephone or face-to-face interviews. We avoided the measur...

What is unrealistic optimism?

Here we consider the nature of unrealistic optimism and other related positive illusions. We are interested in whether cognitive states that are unrealistically optimistic are belief states, whether they are false, and whether they are epistemically irrational. We also ask to what extent unrealistically optimistic cognitive states are fixed. Based on the classic and recent empirical literature ...

Nebraska Economy Grows Despite Recession Concerns

Questions about the use of antibiotics in acute pancreatitis

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The use of antibiotics in acute pancreatitis despite recent clinical trials remains controversial. The aim of this study is to review the latest clinical trials and guidelines about antibiotics in acute pancreatitis and determine its proper use. METHODS Through a Medline search, we selected and analyzed pertinent randomized clinical trials and guidelines that evaluate...