BACKGROUND AND AIM: We sought to carry out a systematic review and meta-analysis of the diagnostic value of ‎epicutaneous patch testing in patients with oral lichenoid lesions (OLLs).‎ METHODS: Bibliographic searches were conducted in electronic databases such as PubMed, the Cochrane library, ‎EBSCO, Scopus, Web of knowledge and Google scholar from January 1990 to December 2011. Search terms re...

Items such as physical exam findings, radiographic interpretations, or other diagnostic tests often rely on some degree of subjective interpretation by observers. Studies that measure the agreement between two or more observers should include a statistic that takes into account the fact that observers will sometimes agree or disagree simply by chance. The kappa statistic (or kappa coefficient) ...

Primary care providers often are asked to perform the preparticipation physical exam and cardiac screening of pediatric athletes. It can be challenging to evaluate which athletes may require further cardiac evaluation and specialist referral based on a focused history and physical. There is considerable controversy surrounding mass electrocardiogram (ECG) screening of athletes in the United Sta...

Use of dual-processing has been widely touted as a strategy to reduce diagnostic error in clinical medicine. However, this strategy has not been tested among medical trainees with complex diagnostic problems. We sought to determine whether dual-processing instruction could reduce diagnostic error across a spectrum of experience with trainees undertaking cardiac physical exam. Three experiments ...

introduction: septal deviation is the chief cause of chronic nasal obstruction. in order to treat such cases, nasal septoplasty surgery is usually performed based on patient complaints and a surgeon's examination, both of which are subjective. this study aims at using the objective parameters of acoustic rhinometry and rhinomanometry to evaluate the effectiveness of septoplasty surgery.   ...

OBJECTIVE Physicians are taught that the pelvic exam is a key part of the evaluation of a woman presenting with abdominal pain or vaginal bleeding. However, the exam is time consuming and invasive, and its use in the emergency department (ED) has not been prospectively evaluated. We evaluated how often the findings of the pelvic exam changed management in a cohort of consecutive female patients...

OBJECTIVES Georgetown University has a student run Emergency Medical Services (EMS) organization with over 100 emergency medical technicians (EMTs). We set out to determine whether implementing an electronic patient care report (ePCR) system was associated with improved physical exam documentation. METHODS This study evaluated documentation of the physical exam on prehospital patient care rep...