BACKGROUND The prophylactic removal of asymptomatic impacted wisdom teeth is defined as the (surgical) removal of wisdom teeth in the absence of local disease. Impacted wisdom teeth may be associated with pathological changes, such as inflammation of the gums around the tooth, root resorption, gum and alveolar bone disease, damage to the adjacent teeth and the development of cysts and tumours. ...

In 1950, the psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson, in a famous treatise on the phases of life development, identified wisdom as a likely, but not inevitable, byproduct of growing older. Wisdom arose, he suggested, during the eighth and final stage of psychosocial development, which he described as “ego integrity versus despair.” If an individual had achieved enough “ego integrity” over the course of a...

Collective wisdom refers to the ability of a population or group of individuals to make an accurate forecast of a future outcome or an accurate characterization of a current outcome. Using basic statistical arguments, it can be shown that the collective will always be more accurate than it’s average member, and that in some circumstances, the collective can be more accurate than any of its memb...

Using longitudinal data on 82 White, California women from the Berkeley Guidance Study, this study examines the relationship between wisdom (defined as a combination of cognitive, reflective, and affective personality qualities) and aging well and explores the early antecedents of wisdom. In structural equation models with latent variables, the social environment of early adulthood has a signif...

Moyamoya disease is a rare neurovascular disorder that involves constriction of certain arteries in the brain. In patients with moyamoya disease, it is very important to prevent cerebral ischemic attacks and intracerebral bleeding caused by fluctuating blood pressure and increased respiration. A 40-year-old woman with moyamoya disease was scheduled for extraction of her right upper and lower im...

© www.sarawickham.com This article first published 2005 Practising Midwife 8(6):33. Republished with permission for personal use only. Page numbers do not correspond to the original. Please do not reproduce/reprint without prior permission, thank you. The stork is well loved as an image associated with birth and midwives; a good number of midwifery practices in the English-speaking world featur...