e read with interest the insightful and balanced perspective put orth by Dr. DeMaria concerning the collective futures of specialsts involved in the care of patients with cardiovascular disease (1). lthough we agree that as new technologies are introduced and ecome incorporated into the care of patients there will be a ontinued blurring of traditional boundaries between specialists, e also beli...

Many natural and artificial systems can be described abstractly as a collection of interacting entities that must meet two requirements for survival. First, entities must maintain their individual viability through some homeostatic process that consumes resources obtained from other entities in their environment. Additionally, the system must produce a pattern of resource flows among entities t...

The American Academy of Pediatrics, with the collaboration of the Surgical Sections of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has created referral recommendations intended to serve as voluntary practice parameters to assist general pediatricians in determining when and to whom to refer their patients for pediatric surgical specialty care. It is recognized that these recommendations may be difficul...

AIM Assessing acceptance of controlled drinking (CD) among French alcohol specialists. METHODS On-line survey of 547 French alcohol specialists. We searched factors associated with acceptance of CD, and factors that affected the specialists' selection of treatment goal. Criteria for success used by specialists in clinical practice were compared with criteria expected to be used in clinical tr...

OBJECTIVE To determine the attitude of cleft care specialists working in Africa towards pre-surgical orthopaedics. DESIGN A cross sectional study. SETTING Pan-African conference on cleft lip and palate in Nigeria. SUBJECTS Sixty cleft care specialists working in Africa. RESULTS The general attitude towards pre-surgicalorthopaedics was positive. Majority of the specialists employ pre-sur...

In studies of forest fragmentation, birds of scrubby, early-successional habitats are considered edge specialists. Because these birds are assumed to thrive in fragmented, edge-dominated areas, their landscape ecology has received little attention from ecologists. With populations of shrubland birds declining throughout the eastern United States, the question of whether or not these birds reall...

AIM To investigate differences in access to services and health outcomes between people living with Type 1 (T1DM) and Type 2 (T2DM) diabetes in rural/regional and metropolitan areas. METHODS Diabetes MILES--Australia was a national postal/online survey of persons registered with the National Diabetes Services Scheme. Selected variables, including utilisation of health care services and self-c...