BACKGROUND The Canadian Trial of Physiological Pacing (CTOPP) reported that the risk of stroke or cardiovascular death was similar between patients receiving ventricular versus physiological pacemakers at the end of the original follow-up period of 3 years. However, the occurrence of atrial fibrillation was significantly less frequent with physiological pacemakers. To assess a potential delayed...

To calculate total funding for a given trial, investigators multiply the number of patients by the $2,000 reimbursement. The resulting value represents the bulk of what NCI will pay for a trial, including long-term follow-up. Faced with a stagnant budget, NCI hasn't raised the reimbursement rate for 7 years, while median costs per subject have reached $6,000 and beyond, according to the Lewin G...

The low incidence of infection in knee arthroplasty is in sharp contrast to the high morbidity associated with its occurrence. This lends urgency to the need for early diagnosis and prompt management when infection does appear. To add to the armamentarium of the existing modalities in dealing with this condition, a new technique is described, which allows lavage at high pressure through a minim...

Changes in the serum creatine kinase (CK) level according to the disease course were regressed to an exponential function Y = A e-ex in each case of 28 Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) through a long-term follow-up study. The regression to this formula implies that DMD muscle would decay by the leaking of a certain amount of CK into the circulation in proportion to the existing muscle. The dim...

The aim of this study was to investigate the long term efficacy of family-focused cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) compared with psycho-education in improving school attendance and other secondary outcomes in adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). A 24 month follow-up of a randomised controlled trial was carried out. Participants received either 13 one-hour sessions of family-focused...

Following the completion of a 20-week, open-label study of the safety and efficacy of liquid rivastigmine for adolescents with Down syndrome, 5 of the 10 adolescents in the clinical trial continued long-term rivastigmine therapy and 5 did not. After an average period of 38 months, all 10 subjects returned for a follow-up assessment to determine the safety and efficacy of long-term rivastigmine ...

This study evaluates the economic consequences of the successful eradication of hookworm disease from the American South. The hookworm-eradication campaign (c. 1910) began soon after (i) the discovery that a variety of health problems among Southerners could be attributed to the disease and (ii) the donation by John D. Rockefeller of a substantial sum to the effort. The Rockefeller Sanitary Com...

BACKGROUND To assess health status and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in childhood cancer survivors who were not involved in regular long-term follow-up. PATIENTS AND METHODS One hundred and twenty-three long-term survivors, median age 33 (19-50) years, follow-up 27 (9-38) years, were recalled to the long-term follow-up clinic. Most of them were treated in the period 1970-1990. Late e...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate one-stop surgery (OSS) for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) regarding symptom relief and patient satisfaction. OSS in our setting means only one visit to the hospital for surgery and no hospital appointments for preassessment or follow-up. We hypothesised that relief of symptoms with OSS is comparable with that in non-OSS patients reported in the lit...

Eleven patients who had islet cell tumours of the pancreas removed over a 20-year period were reviewed. Two had died, one in the postoperative period and one 10 years post-operatively. The remaining nine were traced and eight of them were personally interviewed and tested. All nine were well and free from recurrent symptoms. Five of the eight had evidence of subnormal insulin production in resp...