Background Fever is the most important and common symptom of pediatric diseases. Fever can be a sign or symptom or complication of disease. Considering the development of complementary and alternative medicine worldwide and the prevalence of this symptom in children, we...

Dear Editor, The access to medical care is unacceptably low worldwide in spite of the increasing demand for medical care due to population aging and increasing burden of non-infectious diseases...

BACKGROUND Traditional primary care practice change approaches have not led to full implementation of national asthma guidelines. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of 2 asthma care improvement strategies in primary care. DESIGN Two-year randomized controlled clinical trial. SETTING Forty-two primary care pediatric practices affiliated with 4 managed care organizations. PARTICIPANT...

The clinical diagnosis of transient ischemic attack (TIA) or minor stroke is highly subjective, especially if the brain imaging does not reveal any evidence of ischemic lesion. Herein, I report a case of small vessel TIA and another case of lacunar infarction in which the ischemic lesions were detected with the perfusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A 76-year-old woman presented w...

BACKGROUND Placebo effects on pain have been found to vary in size for different routes of medication administration (e.g. oral vs. injection). This has important implications for both clinical research and practice. To enhance our understanding of these differential placebo effects, research on the underlying expectations about multiple routes and symptoms other than pain is vital. METHODS A...

BACKGROUND Despite advances in asthma treatment, severe asthma (SA) still results in high morbidity and use of health resources. Our hypothesis was that SA patients would achieve adequate control with a systematic protocol, including oral corticosteroids, budesonide/formoterol maintenance and reliever therapy and a multidisciplinary approach to improve adherence. METHODS Non-controlled (NC) S...

Introduction Mild intermittent asthma is common in children and viral infections are responsible for the majority of exacerbations. As leukotrienes are potent inflammatory mediators, some studies have shown that Montelukast, a leukotriene receptor antagonist, may be effective on reduction of asthma symptom. To determine whether a short course of Montelukast in asthmatic children with common col...

BACKGROUND Based on the hypothesis that a vicious cycle of dental fear exists, whereby the consequences of fear tend to maintain that fear, the relationship between dental fear, self-reported oral health status and the use of dental services was explored. METHODS The study used a telephone interview survey with interviews predominantly conducted in 2002. A random sample of 6,112 Australian re...