Teflon injection in stress incontinence

Forty-six patients, 28 females and 18 males, underwent periurethral or perurethral Teflon injection. The results in females were satisfactory, especially where resting anatomy was normal. Male results were disappointing, no patients with post-prostatectomy stress incontinence being cured.     

Super fractionation in glioblastoma multiforme-results of a phase II study

A suquential series of 30 patients who were referred to a cancer treatment hospital with glioblastoma multiforme were treated with superfractionated cobalt 60 y radiation, three treatments per day, 100 rad per fraction. Their survival was compared to that of a historical group of 90 patients who had been referred for the same disease. Survival of the study patients was significantly longer than the historical patients, both for those who underwent resection (48.6 weeks median survival vs. 35.1 weeks), and for those who did not (35.1 weeks vs. 11.7 weeks). A retrospective survey of the historical group led to the following conclusions about this group: 1. Survival for patients who were well enough to be referred was unchanged after steroids came into general use; 2. Younger patients (under 50 years) did not have a longer survival than older patients; 3. The size of the dose of irradiation did not affect survival over the range of doses employed; 4. The size of the treatment volume employed did not affect survival over the range of treatment volumes employed.     

Syncope associated with pain as the presenting feature of neck malignancy: failure of cardiac pacemaker to prevent attacks in two cases

Two patients are described in whom syncope was the presenting clinical feature of an undiagnosed neck malignancy. Both patients also had attacks associated with paroxysms of severe neck pain. Neither patient responded to cardiac pacing.     

Preevent vaccination against smallpox: a survey of pediatric emergency health care providers

BACKGROUND: In January 2003, smallpox vaccinations were offered to health care workers to create hospital-based teams prepared to care for patients with smallpox as part of national bioterrorism preparedness activities. METHODS: An anonymous survey of pediatric emergency health care workers was conducted in November and December 2002. Two mailings were sent to physicians, nurses and ancillary staff at five academic pediatric emergency departments in major US cities. We assessed the willingness to receive preevent smallpox vaccine. In addition we measured the prevalence of vaccine contraindications, perceived likelihoods of a local smallpox outbreak or a vaccine-related adverse event and reasons for or against wanting to receive the vaccine. RESULTS: Overall 72% of respondents were willing to receive the smallpox vaccine. Individuals who were willing to receive the smallpox vaccine, compared with those not willing, believed a local outbreak was more likely to occur (odds ratio, 1.29; 95% confidence interval, 1.16 to 1.44). One-fifth of respondents reported a contraindication to smallpox vaccine; however, more than half indicated they would still be willing to receive vaccine. Individuals who perceived themselves at high risk for vaccine-related adverse events were less willing to receive the preevent smallpox vaccine. Self-protection was the most common reason cited for wanting to receive the vaccine. CONCLUSIONS: A majority of pediatric healthcare workers were willing to receive preevent smallpox vaccine before the onset of Phase I of the CDC Smallpox Vaccination Program. A greater understanding of the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of pediatric health care workers toward preevent smallpox vaccination will assist in the development of future bioterrorism preparedness programs.     

PDBLIG: classification of small molecular protein binding in the Protein Data Bank

It is known that proteins can adopt different folds while sharing similar features for recognition of similar substrates or ligands, for example, in the binding sites of enzyme cofactors such as ATP. On the other hand, proteins that have highly flexible binding sites or belong to large and diverse protein families can bind structurally dissimilar ligands, as, for example, in the case of the matrix metalloprotease family. We have developed a database, PDBLIG, that classifies protein domains and ligands. The information stored includes each protein's function, domain class(es), which ligand(s) it binds, and so on. The database can provide valuable knowledge for drug discovery, supporting the answering of questions such as whether the same drug molecule can bind different target protein families and whether these families are related functionally or structurally, which ligand classes (such as metabolites or organic molecules) bind to a particular protein family and whether the ligands are druglike, and which target families bind a wide variety of ligands and whether different ligands are associated with different subfamilies.