BACKGROUND The incidence of tuberculosis (TB) has been falling in many developed countries; however, there is a trend of an increasing proportion of TB among the elderly. The aim of this study was to evaluate the age transition of patients with TB in Taiwan from 1957 to 2001. METHODS Data on the number of TB cases and patient age were collected from the National Tuberculosis Registry for thre...

Five years of observation of the group of originally Mitsuda-negative contacts living with sources of infection of the lepromatous type in the rural area of Colonia Tovar have now been completed. It is therefore considered proper to report now on the clinical findings and the changes in the tuberculin and lepromin reactions since they were vaccinated with BCG in 1950. The group is believed to h...

In medical decision problems it is very important to use the most relevant piece of information for decision making. We focus on a special case of diagnostic decision making when we can measure many symptoms and signs and we have to make diagnostic conclusions. We can state the problem as follows. We can measure symptoms and signs of a patient, denoted by s1, s2, ..., sk, and we have to decide ...

A case of painless isolated extraocular muscle sarcoid and a literature review are presented. The atypical features in our case include a lack of overt inflammatory symptoms and signs, such as pain, ptosis, and diplopia. The presentation of minimal symptoms without improvement warrant a biopsy to establish the diagnosis and to administer appropriate treatment in order to prevent potential long-...

We report one case of chondrosarcoma of the larynx, which is considered to be rather uncommon. Clinical signs and symptoms have been noted, as well as some suggestions on the aetiology, incidence and site of cartliaginous tumours of the larynx.