BACKGROUND Little is known about the sex-specific effects of cigarette smoking on the level and growth of lung function in adolescence, when 71 percent of people in the United States who smoke tried their first cigarette. METHODS We studied the effects of cigarette smoking on the level and rate of growth of pulmonary function in a cohort of 5158 boys and 4902 girls 10 to 18 years of age, exam...

Early bacterial pulmonary infections within 2 weeks after lung transplantation were studied in 29 patients undergoing surgery between December 1989 and May 1992. Suspected pulmonary infections occurred in 11 patients (38 percent). The most common bacterial organisms isolated were Klebsiella pneumoniae (45 percent; 5/11), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (36 percent; 4/11), Escherichia coli (27 percent; 3...

The Nation's spending for health in fiscal year 1976 reached $139.3 billion, or $638 per person, according to preliminary figures. This total was 14 percent higher than the $122.2 billion spent for health in 1975. In the 2 years since price controls on the health industry were lifted, expenditures have risen $33.0 billion (31 percent). During this period, the economy has grown at a relatively s...

BACKGROUND Trachoma, caused by repeated ocular infection with Chlamydia trachomatis, is an important cause of blindness. Current recommended dosing intervals for mass azithromycin treatment for trachoma are based on a mathematical model. METHODS We collected conjunctival swabs for quantitative polymerase-chain-reaction assay of C. trachomatis before and 2, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after mass ...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether distance to services or diagnosis at a hospital-based medical center compared with a community clinic influences the receipt of psychotherapy versus pharmacotherapy for depression. DATA SOURCE Veterans Affairs (VA) administrative data for 132,329 depressed veterans between October 2003 and September 2004. STUDY DESIGN Multivariable logistic and multinomial regres...

specifically shown. Table ;1 shows, for example, that 50 percent of the 163,429 former beneficiaries whose benefits terminated at age 18 were male. Table II indicates that one standard error is 2.3 percent. Thus, with 95 percent confidence the percentageof male beneficiaries in this group lies between 45.4 and 54.6. The following procedure may be used to make a rough determination of the statis...

The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title 1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the first year of NCLB on teacher effort in the subsequent year suggest that, on average, teacher absence...

We report on 64 patients who did not achieve erections adequate for satisfactory sexual intercourse from among a total of 243 patients who were prescribed PDE5 inhibitors for erectile dysfunction (ED). Intracavernous injection (ICI) of PGE was performed in this non-responder group. An ICI of 20 or 40 mcg of PGE1 in 1 ml saline was performed and the responses evaluated. Forty-nine out of 64 (77 ...

The objective of this survey was to obtain a self-reported assessment of the use of information technology (IT) by final year medical students. Two hundred and sixty five students responded to a questionnaire survey. 81.5% of students considered their computer skills adequate, while 87.9% had access to computers outside the campus. Most students reported adequate skills at word processing, e-ma...

Adequacy of diabetic management in 5 Perak outpatient departments was studied in April 1996. Two hundred diabetic patients' records were analysed. All doctors and 100 patients answered questionnaires on diabetes. Fifty five percent of doctors had adequate knowledge. Patients' knowledge varied between centres (13% to 80% adequacy). Most records had insufficient data to determine adequacy of earl...