When marginal costs and benefits should be used in screening

When Should Screening and Surveillance Be Used during Pregnancy?

Using the ethical and legal concept of shared responsibility for healthy births, this article considers social, cultural, and historical contexts in which medicalization and criminalization have worked in tandem to widen surveillance in ways that intensify scrutiny of women's lives under the guise of child protection, bringing women who are pregnant, postpartum, or parenting under criminal just...

Component resolved diagnosis: when should it be used?

The knowledge on molecular allergy diagnosis is continuously evolving. It is now time for the clinician to integrate this knowledge and use it when needed to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and thus provide more precise therapeutic and avoidance measures. This review does not intend to comprehensively analyze all the available allergen molecules, but to provide some practical clues on use and...

When should screening be performed for gestational diabetes?

AIM To consider the arguments for screening outside the standard screening period of 24 to 28 weeks of gestation. MATERIALS AND METHODS A search of the literature between 1990 and 2010 was performed using the PubMed® and Cochrane® databases. Recommendations from learned societies in diabetology and obstetrics & gynaecology were consulted. RESULTS Gestational diabetes mellitus screening is c...

Clinical Governance: Costs and Benefits

Should levodopa be used anymore?

Levodopa is the most potent dopaminergic oral drug available in clinical practice. After chronic treatment, many patients with Parkinson's disease develop dyskinesia and motor fluctuations which are difficult to manage. It was hoped that introduction of dopaminergic agonists could diminish these side effects while keeping the same efficacy as levodopa. Prospective clinical data do not support t...