INTRODUCTION A ccording to 2007 data from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, 23.6 million people—7.8% of the US population have diabetes (1). Also, diabetes incurred an estimated expenditure of $174 billion in direct and indirect costs in 2007 (1). Part of this cost (estimated to be $22.9 billion in 2006) can be attributed to the treatment of diabetes-related ...

The main sequelae of endometriosis are represented by infertility and chronic pelvic pain. Chronic pelvic pain causes disability and distress with a very high economic impact. In the last decades, an impressive amount of pharmacological agents have been tested for the treatment of endometriosis-associated pelvic pain. However, only a few of these have been introduced into clinical practice. Fol...

Specialty training in pain medicine, particularly in western societies, is seen as a technical fi eld that requires the mastery of many interventions such as pain-relieving medications, injections, and implantable devices. The literature suggests, however, that the reason someone with chronic pain gets better has as much to do with the nonspecifi c effects of treatment—such as the personality o...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have assessed the validity of the observational study design by comparing results of studies using this design to results from randomized controlled trials. The present study examined design features of observational studies that could have influenced these comparisons. METHODS To find at least 4 observational studies that evaluated the same treatment, we reviewed ...

Imagine you or your wife, your sister, your mother, your aunt, or your best friend, has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Treatment is expensive. What if you or your loved one does not have medical insurance? Worse yet, what if you or your loved one has medical insurance, but it does not cover the treatment you need to survive? What are you going to do? Can you pay for the treatment out o...

Medical treatments alone, or in combination with phototherapy, are key approaches for treating nonsegmental vitiligo and, to a lesser extent, segmental vitiligo. The treatments are useful for halting disease progression and have been proven effective for inducing repigmentation and decreasing risk of relapses. Although the treatments have side effects and limitations, vitiligo often induces a m...

We analyze the nature of optimal contracts in a dynamic model of repeated (and persistent) adverse selection and moral hazard. In particular we consider the case of surgeons who diagnose patients and then decide whether to perform an operation, and if so, whether to exert a costly but unobservable effort. The probability of a successful operation is a function of the surgeon’s effort, his quali...

Nanobots will help bridge the technological gaps between physics, chemistry and biology on the nano-scale. This will lead to many innovative approaches which will result in new methods and products for both, technological and medical-pharmaceutical applications. In this report the following questions are addressed: How a nanobot works and how nanobots can contribute to medical technology. Advan...