October 15, 1998

Only 1 percent of patients with lymphadenopathy who are seen in a primary care setting will have a malignancy as the underlying cause.

The report of the Sixth Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure provides useful guidelines for appropriate management of patients with hypertension and suggests drugs that may benefit patients with coexistent conditions.

The second part of this two-part article reviews the principles of judicious antimicrobial therapy for cough, pharyngitis and the common cold in children.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., primary care) provides family physicians with algorithms to be used in the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. The algorithms accommodate the clinical needs of family physicians.

New recommendations from the American Diabetes Association and the World Health Organization include a change in the nomenclature identifying two of the major types of diabetes mellitus, a simplification of the diagnostic criteria to include two fasting plasma glucose…

Use of a low-dose oral contraceptive during the perimenopausal years appears to provide both birth control and estrogen supplementation in selected patients.

Intrauterine growth retardation occurs in 4 to 7 percent of all pregnancies. Early detection and prompt management usually assure a good fetal outcome.

(Australia—Australian Family Physician, May 1998, p. 354.) Although most women notice some cyclic variation in mood and physical symptoms, only 12 to 16 percent have significant symptoms associated with the menstrual cycle, and only a small proportion of these seek medical…

If you're like me, you may be feeling a bit of jet lag after your trip home from San Francisco. Perhaps you were one of the more than 20,000 attendees at the AAFP's recent Annual Scientific Assembly who gathered to participate in CME events, rekindle friendships, touch base…

Selected policy and health issues news briefs from AAFP News Now.

After more than 2,000 years, the mystery of Alexander the Great's death may have been solved. According to an analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine the likely deliverer of death was typhoid fever, rather than poisoning or malaria as was popularly believed…

In this issue of American Family Physician, Mayfield1 summarizes recent recommendations of the American Diabetes Association (ADA), which broaden the diagnostic criteria for diabetes mellitus and advocate routine screening. Under the new guidelines,2 the threshold fasting…

In the United States today, diabetes mellitus is a public health nightmare.Consider the following:

Dramatic decreases in hypertension-related mortality from strokes and heart attacks have occurred in the 25 years since the National High Blood Pressure Education Program (NHBPEP) began: a 59.0 percent reduction for stroke mortality and a 53.2 percent reduction for coronary…

Every physician has his or her own bag of tricks—a collection of remedies, insights or diagnostic aids through which he or she sifts to have just the right approach to each individual patient. Today, JRH was able to use one of these on a patient: a young mother of two who is…

(31st Annual Meeting of the Society for Epidemiologic Research) Results of a retrospective study show that the risk of giving birth to a premature or low-birth-weight infant is increased in women who have been treated with conization for cervical carcinoma in situ, compared…

Photo Quiz presents readers with a clinical challenge based on a photograph or other image.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in collaboration with experts on iron deficiency, has developed recommendations for the prevention, detection and treatment of iron deficiency. The recommendations, published in the April 3, 1998, issue of Morbidity and…

The Committee on Educational Bulletins of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has released a report titled “Antimicrobial Therapy for Obstetric Patients” (Educational Bulletin No. 245). The report summarizes current information on the use of…

A report in the July 10, 1998, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report summarizes information about cases of imported dengue in U.S. residents during 1996. Most of the patients with a diagnosis of dengue for whom a travel history was known probably acquired the infection…

Also Received

A runny nose usually starts when a cold is starting to get better. When the cold virus first infects the nose and sinuses, the nose starts making lots of clear mucus. This mucus helps wash the virus out of the nose and sinuses. After two or three days, as the body fights back…

Diabetes mellitus is a serious, chronic condition of high blood sugar. If left untreated, it may result in blindness, heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and amputations. Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. More than 178,000 people die each…

Very-low-dose birth control pills (brand names: Estrin 1/20, Alesse) are also called oral contraceptives. They have less estrogen than regular birth control pills. These pills have 20 micrograms of estrogen, compared with 30 to 50 micrograms in regular birth control pills. Even…

IUGR stands for intrauterine growth retardation. This means that your baby is growing slowly and doesn't weigh as much as your doctor expected for this stage of pregnancy. If your unborn baby weighs less than most babies at this stage, your baby might have IUGR. IUGR is also…