For more than a hundred years, the United States has operated a decentralized vital statistics system as an essential component of public health. Statistics based on births and deaths registered in the United States are a primary source of data used to track health status, to plan, implement, and evaluate health and social services, and to set health policy. The national vital statistics system...

We studied four different techniques of preoxygenation in 20 healthy volunteers, by continuous analysis of respired gases. Three minutes of tidal breathing from a Magill breathing system or four vital capacity breaths from a non-rebreathing system were found to be equally effective, whereas four vital capacity breaths from a Magill breathing system were less effective. Maximal expiration before...

9 15 36 Nerve center: I told the neurologist, 'I'm having a stroke. These are my symptoms.' I wasn't all upset about it. Needle and the damage done: In my 25 years of doing substance abuse research here I've never seen anything like this… Age old question: How old is your skeleton? It seems like a simple question. As old as you are, right? Not exactly. In this edition of Vital Signs, we tackle ...