Given the nature of clinical research, it is not uncommon for gravely ill participants to succumb to their underlying disease in the course of a trial. However, in September, 1999, the gene transfer research community was alerted to the report of the death of a young man enrolled in a gene transfer trial at the University of Pennsylvania.1 In this case, the research participant was not in extre...

heart failure (hf) is one of the main causes of death and disability in the world. the prevalence of hf in developed countries is between 1% and 2% of the adult population and approximately between 6% and 10% in the elderly, giving rise to high costs of care and treatment. indeed, in the united states, the direct and indirect costs exceeded 23 billion dollars in 2002.  hf is typically character...

Community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common illness and potentially life threatening especially in older adults and those with co-morbid disease. It is a major cause of morbidity and death worldwide. Recognising the clinical importance of CAP, many countries have developed national guidelines for the management of this conditionl",3.4.5,6.7. In Malaysia, the Malaysian Thoracic Society togeth...

In 1968, an Ad Hoc committee at the Harvard Medical School advanced new criteria for determining death. It proposed that patients in irreversible coma with no discernible central nervous system activity were actually dead. The committee paved the way for the "whole brain" definition of death, which has reached broad public acceptance and legal enactment in many countries. Despite this, the phil...

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women in the United States.1 To combat this phenomenon, professional guidelines for primary and secondary prevention as well as sex-specific guidelines for women have been developed and promulgated.2–4 Despite these efforts, there remains some controversy surrounding the benefits of statin therapy in women,5 although a 2004 meta-analysis clearly de...

This article reviews current guidelines for death by neurologic criteria and addresses topics relevant to the determination of brain death in the intensive care unit. The history of brain death as a concept leads into a discussion of the evolution of practice parameters, focusing on the most recent 2010 update from the American Academy of Neurology and the practice variability that exists world...

Get With The Guidelines (GWTG) is a hospital-based quality improvement initiative created by the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Stroke Association (ASA) to improve the care of patients with cardiac diseases and stroke. It supports the AHA mission to reduce death and disability due to cardiovascular diseases and stroke. It is evidence-based and founded on the American College ...

Extra- and transcranial sonography of brain-supplying arteries is accepted worldwide in brain death protocols as a valid "ancillary" method of proving brain circulatory arrest. Color-coded duplex sonography and CT angiography have been newly incorporated in the fourth update of the German Medical Association's guidelines for the determination of the irreversible cessation of brain function ("br...

The importance of bacterial cultures in autopsy has been controversial since Filippo Pacini and Robert Koch's early investigation into the etiology cholera. Death-war / or post-mortem invasion by patient's native flora poses a problem with respect to intervals, selection anatomical location containing blood, CSF, number specimens required be bought collected Microbial Laboratory for processing....