OBJECTIVE The reasons that doctors may refuse or be reluctant to treat have not been widely explored in the medical literature. To understand the ethical implications of reluctance to treat there is a need to recognise the constraints of doctors working in complex systems and to consider how these constraints may influence reluctance. The aim of this paper is to illustrate these constraints usi...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether poor reporting of methods in randomised controlled trials reflects on poor methods. DESIGN Observational study. SETTING Reports of randomised controlled trials conducted by the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group since its establishment in 1968. PARTICIPANTS The Radiation Therapy Oncology Group. Outcome measures Content of reports compared with the design featu...

BACKGROUND The few existing studies on herpes labialis among health care workers have been predominantly among non-dental health care workers. The purpose of this study was to determine Nigerian dental health care providers' knowledge of, attitudes toward, preventive behaviors for, and refusal to treat patients with herpes labialis. METHODS This cross-sectional study was conducted among final...

Coronary Event Reduction in Diabetic Patients With Myocardial Infarction To the Editor: It would be very helpful if we were able to see further analysis of the study by Goldberg et al.1 The analysis presented was for the group as a whole, which included significant variations in baseline cholesterol levels. It would be helpful if we could see an analysis similar to that performed in the LIPID s...

OBJECTIVES To determine the efficacy of intra-articular corticosteroid injections for osteoarthritis of the knee and to identify numbers needed to treat. DATA SOURCES Cochrane controlled trials register, Medline (1966 to 2003), Embase (1980 to 2003), hand searches, and contact with authors. INCLUSION CRITERIA Randomised controlled trial in which the efficacy of intra-articular corticosteroi...

hy a new edition of The Nature of the Judicial Process? Presumably because in the world of law, Benjamin Cardozo still rocks, and his opinions and writings still send worthwhile messages as we near the 100th anniversary of his election to the bench. All law students and many academics continue to wrestle with a number of his common law opinions. Just this year Professor Lawrence Cunningham devo...

Fever is routinely faced during medical practice. Although it is part of the immune response against pathogens, it is often seen as deleterious and a source of discomfort leading to the use of antipyretic drugs. However, few clinical data support this common practice. On the contrary, to date, results tilt in favor of the beneficial effect of fever, such as a better immune response and inhibiti...

Unlike invasive aspergillosis, the prognosis and outcome of hematologic malignancy patients who develop invasive mucormycosis have not significantly improved over the past decade as a majority of patients who develop the infection still die 12 weeks after diagnosis. However, early recognition and treatment of invasive mucormycosis syndromes, as well as individualized approaches to treatment and...