The use of pulmonary artery catheters is under debate yet again. We look at two recent trials evaluating their impact on mortality. Our suspicions regarding obesity are proven and we also look at a simple, cost effective method of reducing ventilator-associated pneumonia. Finally, an intervention to improve the poor outcome associated with out-of hospital cardiac arrests is evaluated.

The glutton digs his grave with his teeth Anonymous English proverb Over the past few months yet more information bombards us. Several papers have concentrated on nutrition and markers thereof, in an attempt to make sense of much data. Current interest in blood glucose levels focuses on examining patients' glucose tolerance to predict outcomes. This is particularly pertinent to high-dependency ...

BACKGROUND The publication rate of presentations at medical international meetings has ranged from 11% to 78% with an average of 45%. To date, there are no studies about the final rate of publications at scientific meetings associated with plastic surgery from Korea. The present authors investigated the publication rate among the presentations at meetings associated with plastic surgery. METH...

In the present commentary I review some current therapeutic debates. Is noninvasive ventilation going to become the gold standard for acute hypercapnic respiratory failure, and if we have to intubate and ventilate then what is the gold standard for sedation? Old therapies are challenged (e.g. diuretics may worsen outcome) and new ones suggested (e.g. some critically ill patients may benefit fro...

There are many awards for research. Figure 1 shows the Fields Medal, one of the highest honors a mathematician can receive, which comes with a C$15,000 prize. In 2006, it was awarded to Grigori Perelman from Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St. Petersburg (Russia). He declined, stating that he was not interested in money or fame. In 2010, Perelman also declined the Clay Millennium Prize of $...

Gap junctions play an important role in cell-to-cell communication, a process obviously required for embryo implantation. Uterine luminal epithelium (LE) is the first contact for an implanting embryo and is critical for the establishment of uterine receptivity. Microarray analysis of LE from periimplantation mouse uterus showed low level expression of 19 gap junction proteins in preimplantation...