‘Everybody has won but no-one must have prizes’

Have we won?

But he has no chest pain…

Atypical presentations of acute coronary syndromes (ACS) are not uncommon and have been associated with higher mortality probably, because these patients are misdiagnosed and undertreated. They are most frequently encountered in older patients, women and in patients with diabetes, chronic renal failure or dementia. It is also well described in the literature that many chemotherapy agents are as...

Meningococcal disease: has the battle been won?

Meningococcal disease is a worldwide life-threatening infection associated in many cases with debilitating long-term sequelae, both within the military and civilian populations. Military recruits are at a higher risk of acquiring this infection due to numerous factors, such as young recruits in the age group 18-25 years, high carriage rates of meningococci, communal and crowed living quarters a...

Could the South Have Won the War?

Although the Confederate surrenders in April 1865 marked the end of major hostilities of the American Civil War, disputes of interpretation continue to characterise the study of the conduct and outcomes of the War. Whilst this may be simply a feature of all historiography, the extent of these interpretive disputes may well be a direct consequence of the nature of the primary sources that have s...

The war on cancer: have we won the battle but lost the war?

In 1971 president Richard Nixon declared a war on cancer and announced his goal to cure cancer by 1976, the bicentennial year. Thirty nine years and more than 100 billion dollars later, the cumulative adult death rate from cancer adjusted for the size and age of the population has improved by less than 5% [1]. In comparison, the death rate for heart disease over this time period has improved by...