1 Wolf F. Lessons to be learned from evidence-based medicine: practice and promise of evidence-based medicine and evidence-based education. Med Teach 2000;22:251–9. 2 The Campbell Collaboration. http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/. [Accessed 27 September 2007.] 3 van der Vleuten CPM, Dolmans DHJM, Scherpbier AJJA. The need for evidence in education. Med Teach 2000;22:246–50. 4 Todres M, Steph...

The clinical use of aspirin, first synthesized over 100 years ago, entered a new phase in 1974 with the reporting of the first randomised trial showing a reduction in vascular disease deaths from low-doses. More recent evidence suggests that the medicine is effective against cancer, which makes aspirin of very considerable potential importance to public health improvement and potentially also t...

In a recent article, Goldberg and presented the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute’s experience in managing acute pnomyelocytic leukemia (APL) without hepanin. They also analyzed historical data and concluded “that the coagulopathy associated with APL can be successfully managed with intensive chemotherapy and blood product support” and that “the necessity for the inc...

Dengue fever (DF) has several hematological manifestations including thrombocytopenia and increased bleeding risk. Prophylactic platelet transfusion-in the absence of major bleeding-is utilized in DF with thrombocytopenia with the intention of preventing hemorrhagic complications. However, prophylactic platelet transfusion in DF is neither standardized nor supported by clinical evidence. We con...

receive prophylactic antibiotics, primarily for surgical procedures. Although early studies in the 1950s and 1960s concluded that prophylaxis was not helpful, many of these studies were poorly done, and the basic principles of appropriate prophylactic antibiotic use were not understood. In reality, patients often were given therapeutic antibiotics; that is, the infection had already occurred. S...

Multiple endocrine neoplasia 2a (MEN2a) syndrome is one of the rare genetic disorder where prophylactic thyroidectomy is recommended for RET mutation carriers due to increased risk for developing MTC during lifetime. We present a case report of prophylactic total thyroidectomy in a family based on genetic screening that proved to be MTC on histopathology. This is the first reported case in Indi...

The authors retrospectively examined the contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) rate among 100 women with ductal carcinoma in situ who are BRCA negative. Of 100 women with ductal carcinoma in situ, 31 elected contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM). Factors associated with increased likelihood of undergoing contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) among this cohort were: family hist...

663 skeletal muscle metastasis are uncertain. A previous report recommended that skeletal muscle metastases be treated palliatively if they occur together with systemic metastasis, but an isolated metastatic neoplasm can be resected operatively with or without radiotherapy [3,4]. Although some authors have proposed performing contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, randomized controlled trials t...