BACKGROUND The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), despite its excellent reliability and validity in primary care, has not been examined for administration to psychiatric patients. This study assesses the accuracy of PHQ-9 in screening for major depressive episode and in diagnosing major depressive episode in patients of a psychiatric specialty clinic. METHODS We compared operational char...

Question: Is an elective colectomy after the first episode of diverticulitis in patients under 50 years, or after the second episode in patients over 50 years, preferable to a strategy of expectant management until after the fourth episode? Design: A Markov model was used to determine the lifetime risks of death and colostomy, quality of life and costs associated with elective colectomy after t...

In spite of vast improvements in urinary stone treatment (ESWL, PNL, ureteroscopy, etc.), metabolic workup concerning the existence of stone forming risk factors are of great importance and can lead to control and even prevention of urinary stone formation in these patients. In this analytical case-control study performed on 266 persons [110 normal persons (56 males and 54 females), 76 pat...

The study was conducted to assess the effect of definition of episode on diarrhoeal morbidity and to develop a means of adjusting estimates of morbidity for the definition of episode used. This paper reports on a cohort study of 374 children, aged 9-32 months, in three African countries, which recorded frequency and consistency of stool over a seven-month period. Different definitions of episod...

BACKGROUND Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) causes substantial clinical and economic burden. While several studies have reported the cost to treat CAP, there is little information on the cost to treat by age, risk profile, and hospitalization in US adults aged ≥50 years. OBJECTIVE To quantify the cost, from a payer perspective, of treating CAP at the episode level, stratified by age, risk p...

OBJECTIVE Recent data from several large studies of pediatric bipolar I disorder reported baseline (current) episode duration ranging from less than a month to >or=1 year. These data may reflect actual sample differences, but the absence of uniformly applied definitions of episode duration, number of lifetime episodes and daily rapid cycling patterns during episodes may also account for these d...

OBJECTIVE Smaller temporal lobe cortical gray matter volumes, including the left superior temporal gyrus, have been reported in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of patients with chronic schizophrenia and, more recently, in patients with first-episode schizophrenia. However, it remains unknown whether there are progressive decreases in temporal lobe cortical gray matter volumes in patien...