The journal club.

As the body of medical literature continues to expand, physicians must develop the necessary skills to keep up with the vast amount of information available. The journal club provides a forum to allow residents to remain current with the literature while also teaching them the methods to evaluate it critically. Those readers wishing to start a journal club or revive an existing one should begin by designating a leader and defining the conference goals. Emphasizing the importance of this conference in the educational process while allowing it to be structured to optimise resident interest and attendance will help to ensure its success. Periodic evaluation of this conference will allow the organisers to assess the concordance of the resident''s goals with those of the faculty. Formal evaluation will also provide an objective assessment of the knowledge gained by the house-staff through participation in journal club.     

Characteristic features of MR truncation artifacts

Truncation artifacts occur in MR imaging because Fourier transforms are used to process MR signal data. These artifacts may alter the intensity, shape, and anatomic detail of structures in the spine. Ring artifacts (Gibb phenomenon) occurring near highly contrasting interfaces represent but one manifestation of truncation artifacts visible on MR images. We review truncation phenomena by providing graphic and phantom models. Ways in which truncation artifacts alter the MR appearance of the spine are discussed. We found that truncation phenomena are reduced most effectively by using a 256 x 256 matrix whenever feasible.     

A survey of the use of special food products by diabetics

A food frequency of consumption questionnaire was completed by 137 diabetic outpatients attending the University of Wales Hospital in Cardiff, to provide information about the use of special dietary products.
Seventy-four per cent of the diabetics used special dietary products, the most popular of which were artificial sweeteners (45%) and preserves (47%), followed by squash (34%), sweets (31%) and chocolate (31%). Twenty per cent of diabetics consumed biscuits and tinned fruit. Cake and other products (e.g. jelly), were used by less than 10% of the respondents. Over half of all the diabetics consumed one or more products on a daily basis. The use of special products bore no significant relationship to the sex of the respondents, nor to the duration of the diabetes. However, a significantly higher proportion of the Insulin Dependent Diabetics (IDDM) group used dietary products compared with the Non-Insulin Dependent Diabetics (NIDDM) group. This can be explained largely by the differences in age between the diabetics; the under-18-year-old age group (who were all IDDM respondents) were the greatest users of sweets, chocolate and squash.
Forty-three per cent of diabetics who did not use special food products cited at least one reason for non-use. The reasons included dietetic advice (NIDDM respondents only), high cost, poor palatability, lack of availability and unsuitability for other members of the family.