BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE A successful outcome after lumbar discectomy indicates a substantial improvement. To use the cutoffs for minimal clinically important difference (MCID) as success criteria has a large potential bias, simply because it is difficult to classify patients who report that they are "moderately improved". We propose that the criteria for success should be defined by those who re...

It remains unclear whether neoadjuvant therapy increases disease-free survival when compared with an approach in which chemotherapy is delayed until after surgery. However, the current rationale for neoadjuvant therapy is based on its usefulness in quickly evaluating the likely benefit of new approaches to treatment and tailoring therapy to the biological characteristics of the individual tumor...

Good sleep is essential to good health. Yet for most of its history, sleep medicine has focused on the definition, identification, and treatment of sleep problems. Sleep health is a term that is infrequently used and even less frequently defined. It is time for us to change this. Indeed, pressures in the research, clinical, and regulatory environments require that we do so. The health of popula...

The emergency department evaluation and management of patients who have potential acute heart failure syndromes (AHFS) has remained a significant challenge for decades. The emergency physician's diagnostic tools for heart failure have remained limited, and the complexity of the syndrome itself has led to risk-averse practice styles with extremely high admission rates. Recently, new diagnostic m...

In a recent study by Klijian et al. that evaluated angiotensin II in cardiac surgery patients with postoperative vasoplegia, the drug was associated significant increase mean arterial pressure (MAP) compared placebo.1Klijian A. Khanna A.K. Reddy V.S. al.Treatment is rapid blood response and vasopressor sparing vasoplegia after surgery: A post-hoc analysis of for treatment high-output shock (ATH...