Women general practitioners.

Sir, I think the Journal was right to publish the interesting article by Dr K. Williams (January Journal, p.33), based on a study of 500 women years, particularly as this must roughly correspond to the number of women 'on the Pill' in many practices. In my opinion, there was a great enough number of patients with chest pain in the study for the conclusion to be valid. I agreed that it does not rule out a relationship between any single cause of chest pain (e.g. pulmonary embolism) and oral contraceptives, but it does show that, in the average practice, chest pain is as frequent in non-users as in users. I believe that the Editor of the Journal is right to encourage student studies of this calibre by publishing them when possible, and would expect all thinking doctors to read this article, taking into account the status and experience of the author and not allowing the mere fact of publication to prevent them from reading it as critically as Dr Sackin (May Journal, p306) obviously has.