Asthma is a Serious Danger

Thunderstorm asthma: potential danger but a unique opportunity

Continuous-Flow Left Ventricular Assist Device Thrombosis: A Danger Foreseen is a Danger Avoided

Left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) are an increasingly implemented therapeutic intervention for patients with end-stage heart failure. A growing body of evidence, however, has shown an elevated risk of device thrombosis, a major complication jeopardizing the patient's post-implantation survival. To date, multiple causative factors for LVAD thrombosis have been identified, such as internal s...

Critical care transfers – a danger foreseen is half avoided

How good is the care patients receive during interhospital transfer? The results of a study in this journal make for some disturbing reading. Adverse events occur in about one-third of cases. Half the time this can be related to not following advice from the receiving centre. Of these events, 70% are, in the author's opinion, avoidable and 30% are related to technical problems. So how do we mak...

How much safety is too much danger?

Malarial Hemozoin Is a Nalp3 Inflammasome Activating Danger Signal

BACKGROUND Characteristic symptoms of malaria include recurrent fever attacks and neurodegeneration, signs that are also found in patients with a hyperactive Nalp3 inflammasome. Plasmodium species produce a crystal called hemozoin that is generated by detoxification of heme after hemoglobin degradation in infected red blood cells. Thus, we hypothesized that hemozoin could activate the Nalp3 inf...

Is there a danger of “biocreep” with non-inferiority trials?

Background Non-inferiority (NI) trials test a hypothesis that a new treatment is inferior to standard treatment only to a negligible degree. Bio-creep basically refers to the cyclical phenomenon where a slightly inferior treatment becomes the active control for the next generation of NI trials which over time leads to degradation of the efficacy of the investigational treatment [1,2]. We studie...