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Possible error on Parasympathetic Nervous System

The PNS article says the ANS has three divisions, whereas the ANS and SNS articles say there are only two. Is this an error? To the best of my knowledge the latter is true, but I am not a doctor and I would like somebody with the proper knowledge to make this correction.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.205.103.243 (talk • contribs).

I think the problem is the relatively ambiguous categorization of the enteric nervous system, which seems to function with a degree of independence from the PNS despite vagal innervation. The wording should be changed to reflect this relationship in the articles. Opinions, anyone else? -- Scientizzle 16:42, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I would have said that the autonomic nervous system has two subdivisions only - the parasympathetic and the sympathetic - which have usually, although not always, opposing functions within the organism. We might here trip over differences in nomenclature between USA and UK usage; in the UK the concept of a separate enteric nervous system is not recognised, the sympathetic/parasympathetic systems being regarded as all-embracing. --Anthony.bradbury 16:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Dr. Bradbury may be onto something. Nervous_system#Vertebrates shows three divisions of the autonomic nervous system; Autonomic_nervous_system#Motor_neurons explains that the enteric nervous system is the "is the only truly autonomous part of the ANS", sometimes called the "the second brain"; Parasympathetic nervous system, Sympathetic nervous system, & Peripheral nervous system don't link to the ENS article, & don't really discuss this. I stick to the brain in my research, so I've no strong opinions on the peripheral stuff...How common is it to refer to the ENS as an independent part of the ANS? Looks like we need a neurogastroenterologist in here, stat! -- Scientizzle 18:44, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I have read enteric nervous system, and do not agree with it. The point made therein that the "enteric nervous system" continues to function in the adsence of connection to higher centres is quite true, but fails to note the fact that the very same applies to the sympathetic system. Calling ganglia associated weith this system an autonomous nervous system also makes no sense, when we consider that there are a large number of ganglia, wholly indistinguishable in form which have very clear sympathetic system functions. Also, the vagus nerve, for instance which is ther tenth cranial nerve, and which ennervates the stomach among other things, has pure parasympathetic functions therein. Is there such a spciality as a neurogastroenterologist? If so, bring one on, but bear in mind that you will get one answer from an American and another from a Brit.--Anthony.bradbury 21:55, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

"Neurogastroenterologist" looks like a real term, just not widely used (no doubt partially because it's 9 syllables).[1] As I said, I've no strong inclination as to what's "right" here, and the neural physiology of the gut is out of my area of expertise...This paper describes the ENS thusly:

The vertebrate ENS is made up of an extrinsic and intrinsic component. The extrinsic component consists of a parasympathetic and sympathetic divisions. The parasympathetic innervation via the vagus nerves controls the motor and secretomotor function of the upper gastrointestinal tract, and via the sacral nerves regulates the functions of the distal colon and rectum. The sympathetic adrenergic fibres from the prevertebral ganglia are responsible for secretomotor neurons containing vasoactive intestinal polypeptide, presynaptic cholinergic nerve endings, submucosal blood vessels, and the sphincters of the gastrointestinal tract. The intrinsic component consists of myenteric plexus (Auerbach’s plexus) that is seen between the inner circular and outer longitudinal muscle layers, and two layers of submucous plexuses. The outer submucous plexus (Schabadasch’s plexus) is seen adjacent to the circular muscle layer and the inner submucous plexus (Meissner’s plexus) is seen close to the muscularis mucosae. The myenteric plexus primarily provides motor innervation to the two muscle layers and secretomotor innervation to the mucosa. The submucous plexuses innervate the muscularis mucosa, intestinal neuroendocrine cells, glandular epithelium and submucosal blood vessels.

That the ENS has both sympathetic & parasympatheic input as well as its own autopilot does make it hard to categorize...Frankly, I glaze over when talking of the peripheral nervous system. :) I'll support any valid plan to rectify the existence of two or three autonomic nervous systems--I'd just like to see all our articles agree on the subject. -- Scientizzle 23:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

In the UK the various plexuses in the bowel wall are all seen as parts of either the sympathetic or the parasympathetic systems. I am absolutely not going to argue at all, but as I say above we have a situation here where there is a difference of nomenclature and perception on the two sides of the Atlantic. I would suggest that we might think about extending WP:POLICY as it applies to UK/US spellings, and recognise that what is correct here is wrong there, and vice versa. In other words, whoever writes it, if it is otherwise a good article, leave it alone, but consider adding (USA) or (UK) where appropriate.--Anthony.bradbury 17:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Papilledema in need of cleanup

The papilledema article could use and addition. Papilledema is also found in Addison's Disease. This is significant because a positive diagnosis of Addison's would rule out a brain tumor (or at least make it unlikely). (Cited: "Ocular Manifestations of Systemic Disease" by Blaustein. ISBN 0-443-08883-7) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.89.16.66 (talk) 08:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

Peer review request - Gun violence in the United States

Lately, I have been working on criminology topics which is an area that Wikipedia sorely lacks. Often this topic is interdisciplinary and involves public health and medicine, as is the case here. Last weekend, I discovered there was no article on "Gun violence", so started one. Most of the research literature pertains to the United States, so the article has become Gun violence in the United States. Obviously, people have strong POV on this topic. To try and rise above politics, I have only included the highest quality reliable sources (mainly peer reviewed, scholarly journals, many from public health). Personally, I really don't have a POV on this topic, and am staying out of the Gun politics in the United States article. With the gun violence article, I have stayed with presenting the current state of research on this topic. I think is close to featured status, though some "gun rights" folks have already come along and place a neutrality tag on the article. I could really use some peer review on the article, at this point. Do you at all agree with the person who placed the neutrality tag? Any suggestions on making in more NPOV. In reality, I feel that the article deals fairly with both POVs, citing strategies advocated by gun-control folks as ineffective, while citing some strategies advocated by the Bush administration as effective. Do you have any suggestions on improving the article? are there aspects of the topic that are missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have filed a formal peer request here, though feel free to leave comments on the article talk page if you prefer. Thanks. --Aude (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Elsevier in need of cleanup

The biggest medical publisher, could really use a good overhaul. Just a head sup for the interested. Circeus 18:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Histopathology-india.net

I went on a campaign yesterday to remove all links to histopathology.net yesterday. As a layman, I find this site very suspect - it claims to be written by just one medical doctor (there are hundreds, if not thousands, of detailed pages) and it doesn't seem to be aligned with any university or medical institution like other external links used in medical articles on wikipedia. Also see user talk:Graham87 #Mass-removal of histopathology-india.net links and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam # histopathology-india.net. When I checked special:linksearch this morning, I found that links to the offending site had been added by 124.7.98.26, 221.135.212.9 and 61.0.138.194, all of which come from India. Should I continue removing these links - seeing as they've been added for the last 7 months or so - or just let them be? Graham87 00:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I say delete and it seems JFW also had problems with them.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

See this. I think it's resolved now. Graham87 01:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Article rating

Please help rating the articles as we have about 1100 untagged articles. You can help here. NCurse _work 20:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Please review merge proposal for Rickets and Osteomalacia

Hi there. I've proposed a merge of Rickets and Osteomalacia. I do not have a medical background, so this merge may be incorrect, but I was prompted to propose it because the Rickets article currently starts "Osteomalacia, also known as rickets" and I was surprised that Osteomalacia has its own article. I actually bolded Osteomalacia in the lead of the Rickets article before realizing this; it was previously normal text. Mike Dillon 03:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

After reviewing the history more thoroughly, it looks like the change from Rickets to Osteomalacia was a copy-and-paste move done by JSpudeman (talk · contribs) on January 5, 2006. Rickets then seems to have been recreated out of thin air on September 12, 2006 by 59.93.2.156 (talk · contribs) (with all sorts of spelling and character encoding issues)... I'm guessing this anonymous user is also Drsibi (talk · contribs) who was editing Osteomalacia around the same time. What a mess. Mike Dillon 04:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Here are some relevant diffs: [2], [3] Mike Dillon 04:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Medical equipment articles guidelines

Currently, Project Medicine has some guidelines on the writing of articles on drugs and diseases: what infoboxes to use, what sections to have, etc. I was wondering whether it would be helpful to develop similar guidelines for medical equipment articles. I tried looking into the list of featured articles, as well as A-class ones, and saw none on medical equipment, so I couldn't infer it from there. If this idea is supported, I would be happy to collaborate with someone on this and come up with certain guidelines. Gimlei 16:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Censorship of peer-reviewed depleted uranium facts

Talk:Depleted uranium#Comparison of the two versions contains a comparison of the current version of Depleted uranium with a recent major revision which replaced a lot of what some people had been taking out of it over the past several months. Please have a look and say which version you think should stand. If you want to make some or all of the revisions involved, please be WP:BOLD. LossIsNotMore 10:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Veterinary medicine

I'm not sure if I should post this here or at the clinical medicine wikiproject. Following a discussion at Talk:List of dog diseases, it's become clear that we need to decide whether to always have a separate article for the veterinary aspects of a disease, or if this can be tacked on to the main article (compare lymphoma in animals or cerebellar hypoplasia (non-human) to cryptorchidism or cleft). While there are a lot of diseases exclusive to vet med, such as pseudorabies or Collie eye anomaly, there are many more that affect both humans and animals. What's the best way to approach this? I suspect that there is not always going to be a definite way to do this, but a general guideline would be great. I know the ideal thing to do would be to set up a wikiproject for vet med, but that's more than I can do at this point. --Joelmills 02:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think maybe the best way to go would be to create a work group within the Medicine project dealing specifically with veterniary medicine. That way the new group could take advantage of the existing project's structure, and the lack of formal separation of the two groups would make cooperation between the two units easier. I could set up a work group, sub-project page for this purpose if there was agreement to the creation of it. Badbilltucker 17:48, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea, but I'm worried about how many people would participate. There are only three vets that I know of that regularly participate in editing, including myself, and two of those specialize in certain areas. However, if you feel it's worth trying, let's do it. What's your opinion on my original question? --Joelmills 03:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Two responses. (1) Right now I'm kinda busy updating the Project Directory, but I will try to add a proposed project on veterinary medicine on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals page and drop messages on the talk pages of many of the Tree of Life projects about the new project. (2) This I know a LOT less about. My personal opinion would be to maybe, to eliminate redundancy, make separate pages only for those diseases which manifest much differently, either in symptoms, frequency, treatment, or other factors, between the various species. For the other diseases which are kind of standard across genetic lines, maybe only one page with perhaps different sections of the page relating to the different manifestations. Corneal ulcer might (I stress, might) be an example of this sort of case in which one article for all the species might do. One of the things I think most all projects want to do is bring as many articles up to good- or featured-article status as possible. Consolidation of these articles might help make more of these articles eligible for a coveted status. Badbilltucker 21:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★TWO YEARS OF MESSEDROCKER★ 03:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Categorisation of medical (stub) articles

I notice a lot of medical stubs seem to have no "permanent" categories at all, just one or more stub types; the anatomy-stubs especially so. Is anyone here working (or keen to work) on categorisation of these? Would a list of the uncategorised articles, or a maintenance category populated with these be helpful to anyone? Alai 13:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hot flash / Hot flush needs work

Hot flash / Hot flush (menopause) is still basically just a stub. Obviously many people are interested in this topic. Anybody care to improve? -- 201.51.221.66 11:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Pharmacology

While looking for information on Pharmacology I found that Wikipedia was woefully lacking - just look at the article - with lots of stub articles lacking essential information in the Pharmacology Catergory. As I am sure the member of this project know the understanding of human pharmacology is the basis for most of modern medicine, as well as to some extent surgery and of course herbal medicine. Without understanding pharmacology - non-infective pathophysiology makes little sense.

So what I propose is to make a Wikiproject Pharmacology as a sub if this main project.

Is this a good idea? Are people willing to help? Your thoughts please. Cheers Lethaniol 15:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I should add, that when talking about pharmacology I am not so interesting in drugs or proteins which are covered elsewhere, but in the science of pharmacology - how we discovery/assess new drugs using pharmacological assays or discover the function of proteins and their place in molecular biology. Lethaniol 15:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There already exists Wikipedia:WikiProject Drugs (shortcut WP:DRUGS) - would not this be the place to use for this particular improvement drive request, although I accept a slightly tangential view on drugs/medical overall ? The list of existing "science of pharmacology" topics should, presumeably, be found at Category:Pharmacology. David Ruben ^Talk 16:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes and that is strange is it not - that there is a category for Pharmacology (am already working on sorting it out) but it is not associated with any Wikiproject. The problem with being part of Wikiproject:Drugs is that really drugs should be part of a Pharmacology Project not the other way round - not that am adverse to the suggestion I just thought Pharmacology would fit better as a subproject under Medicine. Pharmacology incorporates more of a meta view of drugs and systems - explaining how they work. Lethaniol 13:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Main page

I'm surprised no one from here has watched what has happened to Down syndrome during its stint on the main page, or discussed some of the changes proposed on the talk page. A lot of work and review went into the article; I'm surprised no one is tending to it while on the main page, and responding to some of the discussion and proposed changes. Sandy (Talk) 10:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the diff since TedE's last edit: [4] Sandy (Talk) 10:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Veterinary medicine project

There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

If the project should above is ever formalized, I would, as the putative founder, welcome the possibility of establishing it as a subproject of this project. Veterniary medicine is logically a subdivision of medicine, so it would to me make sense to have the project be a subdivision as well. Also, by doing so, we could help reduce the clutter of banners on talk pages. I would be very grateful for your response, positive or negative. Badbilltucker 14:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

New OMIM3 template for concise Medelian Inheritance cites

The existing {{OMIM}} template for citing refs to the Mendelian Inheritance in Man database was far too long-winded for any but the first usage on a page, while the {{OMIM2}} alternative was too short for ANY usage in my opinion. I've split the difference, and now present for your editing pleasure: {{OMIM3}}. Please feel free to copy this talk post wholesale and put it anywhere else it needs to be seen, e.g. WikiProject:Medicine subprojects' talk pages, etc. I don't spend much time in this dept. so I really don't know where the right places to post this might be. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Tilt Test may need review by Cardiologist

I just happened across the Tilt table test [sic] page, and noticed no reference to Atrial Fibrillation. As a recipient of this test in the diagnosis phase of my own AF, I was curious to know more about it. I hesitate to add to the page myself, as a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Maybe a cardiologist should give it a look?MArcane 04:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

What is a good article?

FYI, you may be interested in reviewing the subtle debates about "inline citations" over at Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?. And, if you have not already done so, you may want to review Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, and indicate consensus agreement (or not) on the talk pages there. linas 05:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

List of subjects in Gray's Anatomy: Alphabetical: W

I stumbled across this page, and I just wondered: what is the use, the purpose, the value of a group of articles that are basically just the index pages from a (probably important) book? Either you have the book, and then you have the index: or you don't have the book, and then the index is of no value either. Am I missing something or can these be safely put up for WP:Prod? Fram 20:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

FA candidacy of a related article

Hippocrates, an article related to this project, is a current Featured article candidate. Comment on the discussion are appreciated. Circeus 19:33, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Dwaipayanc has tried to help: I gave up, and struck my oppose (the nom was restarted in spite of several opposes on prose, comprehensiveness, and references). Sandy (Talk) 02:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

New article that needs help

I recently set up the article List of notable organ transplant donors and recipients, but it still needs a lot of help. I thought people involved in this project might be interested in making this page better. Remember 13:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I did a bit of cleanup - some things to be aware of:

• MEDMOS on notable cases
• WP:DATE on correct wikilinking of dates
• WP:MOS and WP:GTL
• I expanded your refs to full bibliographic entries, and put the list in alphabetical order
• There is inconsistency in use of dashes - some are entered as dashes, some as ndashes.
• Many of the entries aren't yet referenced
• The table at the top shouldn't be in the lead, rather incorporated into the body of the article - see WP:LEAD.

Sandy (Talk) 15:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Alert

Please help support and protect this List of articles related to quackery from the current attacks by those who are attempting to suppress development of this resource. By avoiding any labelling of the items listed, we can avoid NPOV problems. Please read the embedded cautionary notes when editing. They are only visible in the editing mode. -- Fyslee 23:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've left some comments on the talk page. I'm afraid the only "alert" I see is of an unsourced list heading rapidly towards AfD. Colin°^Talk 12:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm no fan of quackery, but I believe this list is fundamentally misguided. I don't believe it successfully avoids POV problems and the attempts to do so are leading to violations of other policies, principally verification. Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of articles related to quackery. -- Colin°^Talk 17:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hysterectomy

Hysterectomy, and (to a lesser extent) Oophorectomy could really use some expert attention and cleanup, in the wake of some biased editing. In particular:

• The references added need to be checked to see if they are good.
• The literature needs to be searched to see if there are any responses to the studies cited, or other (preferably more recent) studies coming to different conclusions.
• Benefits of hysterectomy need to be described with references.
• Make the article less biased without removing good information. Dfeuer 09:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention: It would probably be wise to read this article's talk page before editing it. Dfeuer 09:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Separate orchiectomy from castration?

Castration seems to be more a social, psychological, and cultural phenomenon than a medical procedure. It would be nice to have a proper Orchiectomy article (not a redirect) to discuss the procedure in a medical context, leaving Castration to deal with other contexts, and other notions of castration. Dfeuer 09:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. Orchiectomy should not redirect to castration. That's actually insulting. Having one testicle surgically removed because you have cancer does not mean you were castrated. MoodyGroove 00:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)MoodyGroove

Nanomedicine

The Nanomedicine page is full of facts that are not true. Most of the false information has been caused by vandals. please fix. Thank you. - Tiplickhahaha

Stillbirth

An expert opinion could be used at Stillbirth and Miscarriage to help resolve uncertainty over whether the medical definition of "stillbirth" includes miscarriages prior to 20 weeks. Thank you. -Severa (!!!) 00:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

A Problem

I have just determined to become active in the project, having been a practising physician for some 39 years, and having been nearly one year on wikipedia.

A problem. A very high percentage of medicine-stubs, which I am wholly competent to expand, carry a {{Unreferenced}} tag. When I want to write something which I have known for 20-30-40 years, I can't quote references. I would like to write "personal experience", but that sounds very like a breach of WP:OR. How do I make a reference for something that i have always known?--Anthony.bradbury 22:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed a problem on many levels:

1. It is essential to WP:Cite in order that others may WP:Verify. Whether what is claimed in the citation is true or not is not up to wikipedia to decide (nor indeed as you correctly point out one persons WP:OR), that is the point of citing from WP:Reliable sources - it is the peer-reviewed journals' job to vet the information printed, wikipedia is merely reporting and summarising on this material.
2. It is not possible within wikipedia's current structure to verify that you are whom you claim to be or to therefore have the experience and knowledge base either. Similarly I claim to be a UK based GP, but unless I were to meet up with another editor and show both my passport and GMC certificate, this can only be taken on trust (WP:Assume good faith). So experts are welcome, but they need to be able to cite material everyone else can access to confirm details.
3. Finally not all expert knowledge is correct. Medical science progresses and treatment approaches change. I recall well the dose of diazepam to give in impending eclamptic seizures and then the infusion rate of phenytoin, problem is that 6 months after I completed my Obs&Gynae SHO post, a better treatment of magnesium sulphate injection was introduced. Similarly epidural analgesia used to confine a pregnant women to bed with essentially paralysed legs, now low-dose combination drugs allows for "mobile epidurals" (they can remain mobile during 1st stage of labour). Final example from last year was the demotion in the UK hypertensive guidelines of beta-blockers as 1st line option (now about 4th in the list). So if one had retired 2 years ago, experience and editorial help would be invaluable to wikipedia, but one's knowledge for hypertension therapy would already be outdated - finding current sources in researching edits would though alert one to such changes.

Its not actually that bleak - as a doctor you will know what information is missing or needing improving. This then allows you to search specifically for that information (you are already at the top of the learning curve, unlike most non-medics).

• A realy good place to search is at PubMed abstracts of 1000's of international biomedical journals, just go to this search page - see also PMID and Wikipedia:PMID for details. You should find identifying likely suitable papers easy with your medical experience. Details on the most recent citation system, cite.php, is at WP:Footnotes and User:Diberri has this tool to take a PubMed abstract number and generate the full Template:cite journal mark-up to copy & paste into an article.
• Also the Template:Infobox Disease that should appear at the top of most medical disorder articles has space for eMedicine links - so provided there is a suitable article there (go to http://www.eMedicine.com), any of your own knowledge that you find also mentioned in the eMedicine article, can be added without having to add specific further citations (good idea in the edit-summary to comment source eMedicine, and check that one is not then plagiarising that website).
• For information from UK sources: for therapeutics we can obviously cite from the BNF (NB on line access is not freely available to non-medics, so cite relevant version, e.g. <ref>{{cite book | title=[[British National Formulary|BNF]] | date=Sept 2006 | edition=52}}</ref> and the NICE website (http://www.nice.org.uk/) or the more accessible Scottish SIGN website (http://www.sign.ac.uk/) can give current guidelines.

Personally I find the need to review research and interact with other editors in writing clear articles has helped refresh and sometimes update my own clinical knowledge, so not just a process of giving to wikipedia :-) Hope this helps, and look forward to your further contributions, and experience shining through :-) Yours David Ruben ^Talk 02:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Not to doubt your competency, but I am 77, and I have seen medical opinion swing back and forth over and over again. Apparently docs change their minds about most things about every 15 years. Butter was good for you, then marg was better, now neither, but marg is worse. Long bed rest for cardiac patients gave way to exercise therapy. Perhaps some modesty is called for? Too Old 00:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Tilt-table test

The article for the tilt-table test does not appear to provide any complete explanation of what a tilt-table test is, and only includes criteria for diagnosis and an incomplete list of diagnostic applications. This is kind of thing is rampant throughout wikipedia as many authors i fear will tend to flex their their eloquence rather than their articulation. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smooerman (talk • contribs) 18:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Assistance needed on Dolorimeter

I have run across the article dolorimeter, about devices for measuring pain. Does anyone want to help? It is in sort of sad shape. And I need good reference materials/reviews to work from.--Filll 16:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

As you say, the article is in bad shape. Speaking as a Medical Practitioner of some 38 years experience, my inclination is to put the thing up for {{AfD}}; I have not yet decided. The essential point is that pain is wholly, totally subjective, and is therefore intrinsically unmeasurable. Not only will different people experience pain to varying degrees, but also an individual will experience pain in wildly differing degrees in different circumstances. Trying to measure pain is like trying to measure joy, or sadness, or any other sensation. Good luck with the article, but I would suggest forget it.--Anthony.bradbury 17:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Category: Diabetics

Members of this project may be interested in Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_27#Category:Diabetics. Note: this does not concern deletion; it is a question of style. Our proposed guidelines at WP:MEDMOS have been cited, which of course, are always subject to further discussion. Colin°^Talk 16:34, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

67.123.250.229 promoting Phage therapy

The IP 67.123.250.229 has made no edits other than promoting phage therapy as an alternative treatment to antibiotics on every article he/she encounters. I've gone through and removed claims that it is "highily effective", but I think someone with more experience than me might want to examine whether or not it should be included in articles at all. --Wafulz 01:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Certainly phage therapy is not part of accepted treatment modalities currently used. As such it is not a notable treatment in such infectious diseases and therefore doe not belong in encyclopaedic entries under treatment. That is not of course to say that the treatment of surface bacterial infections by viruses is not intriguing, and certainly some researches in Russia have researched into this. This though is speculative research or speculation as to what might be novel treatment approaches - for now counts as trivial minority opinion or personal opinion (original research). Discussion of the topic at all perhaps would be best as a "Research" section of bacteria, or pharmacology etc, rather than in individual disease articles. David Ruben ^Talk 01:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the quick reply. Also, add Glenalpine as a promoter of the treatment. --Wafulz 01:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

FDA has recently approved use of bacteriophages on food; there is significant literature on the topic. You can go here for medical/scientific references: http://www.phageinternational.com/phagetherapy/humantests.htm. The Western literature is old but still relevant -- unless of course only the subset of recent and Western scientific literature is considered relevant by this group. Glenalpine 29 January 2007

User:67.123.250.229 you have just edited a posting submitted as Glenalpine (see this edit). Either you are different editors in which case you should not edit another user's talk page postings, or you are the same user with continued editing as 67.123.250.229 being a sockpuppet of Glenalpine. Please clarify or seek guidence on wikiquette. David Ruben ^Talk 02:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

67.123.250.229 and glenalpine are one in the same. No fake names here. Perhaps I should find the proper way to ID myself, so that I don't create further confusion. Please answer this question, so that I don't waste my time and yours: Are only references to recent Western literature considered acceptable to Wikipedia's panel of medical experts, or are 40-50 year old Western journals and Polish, Georgian, and Russian literature also considered to be credible by your group?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.123.250.229 (talk • contribs)

OK, I think I now know how to sign a post. chris 02:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok thanks. (Your contributions will be more clearly identifiable and user-talk page discusion directed at you, vs some anon URL address that changes each session. Also registered users identities are more hidden than the URL's which may be traced (assuming of course that you do not feel that your chosen username is not too "open")). There are two aspects to your main question:

• Is a source credible - Wikipedia:Reliable sources discusses sources that may be used to WP:Cite to WP:Verify. So yes these journals, if RS, could be used to cite in order to verify a fact. This though takes us only to something along the lines of "A previously line of research was phage therapy" with then a footnoted citation to a 40 year old paper.
• Secondly is "only references to recent Western literature" - the issue here is one of WP:Notability. A single paper, even in a reliable source of a peer-reviewed journal, does not solely in itself establish an accepted approach, nor even necessarily of the viewpoint being more than a "trivial minority" opinion (only "significant minority" opinions must be included under WP:NPOV policy, albeit not necessarily with equal article space).
• Phage therapy is clearly intriguing, was definitely researched into (mostly in Russia if I recall correctly), and phage viruses clearly also exist. So articles on these are clearly appropriate. the issue becomes whether they are extablished current therapies, and 40-50 year old papers on their own do not suggest it has has current notability as a treatment. Blood letting was clearly previously used and there are many sources attesting to its use from hundreds of years ago, but the absence of recent papers does largely follow from it nolonger being a generally practiced therapy.
• Personally some mention of phage therapy in bacteria and antibiotic resistance#Alternative therapies seems not unreasonable, but not in specific disease articles. NPOV balance of a non-majority approach will though require current such mention be short (if new research comes along or clinical practice changes then wikipedia's description would of course need to change to reflect this)
• It will be interesting to see what other editors have to contribute to these points. David Ruben ^Talk 03:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the need to use 40-year-old references suggests a problem with how widely used or accepted the therapy is. The foreign medical literature is acceptable but needs to be available in translation; otherwise it's impossible to verify. The bottom line is that phage therapy for bacterial infection is not utilized anywhere in the English-speaking medical world that I'm aware of (sources proving me wrong would be appreciated), and is certainly not viewed as a viable alternative to antibiotic therapy. I agree with David that mention will have to be constrained to reflect that. MastCell 23:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Wristop

I've put a Speedy Deletion notice on Wristop. It appeared to me to be an advert. Could someone from here with more medical knowledge than me have a quick look and comment on it's discussion page as to wether I was correct? - X201 14:03, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Organ systems - hematopoietic system missing?

To my eyes, it looks like one organ system is missing in human anatomy#Systems of the human body, Template:Organ systems and Category:Organ systems: the hematopoetic/hematopoeitic system. Am I missing something? I am not sure to what extent the concept "organ system" has one clear cut definition, or if there are several. Hematopoietic system is a MESH heading, though. // habj 15:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Haematopoiesis is discussed as part of the skeletal system. Although it's not 100% accurate and haematopoiesis can occur elsewhere, I think this is where it should be. --Scot^t 21:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

warning template

I remember there use to be a warning template at the top of pages about medications telling users to not use Wikipedia to make medical choices. Does anyone know why it has stopped being used? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:General disclaimer and WP:MEDMOS SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Clinical reference drive!

I think it'd be a smashing idea, if, for the next few months and years we aim to make wikipedia an excellent clinical reference for medical professionals. I'm getting out my drug information documents and expanding Hydroxyzine, so it's both factual, interesting, but also a resource for medical professionals above and beyond those found at web-based sites. If anyone wants to start it, just reply and tell me how! :-P James.Spudeman 12:21, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

You might find the manual of style for medicine related articles helpful. Do try and remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and articles should be for the general reader. Check out Paracetamol for an example of a featured drug article, this should give you something to go on. You've made a great start so far, will try and give you a hand where I can --Scot^t 13:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Chagas disease and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome are both undercited or uncited and will need to go to WP:FAR soon if they aren't referenced. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I've expanded it quite significantly, with guidance from the medical guidelines, and yes -- i've made it more available to the average reader. James.Spudeman 19:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

List of medicinal herbs

Does anyone mind if I expand the list? Thanks--LtlKty^{talk | contribs} 01:06, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to modify it! We'll definitely watch it. :) NCurse _work 12:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!--LtlKty^{talk | contribs} 21:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Drug information pages.

I've started doing them; first off with hydroxyzine. Just like there are chemical data articles, i'm making them which detail the general information for prescription, etc. Still! It's under wikipedia guidelines; relax. James.Spudeman 16:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

It is nearly 11 months since we established this review process as a minimal process after we failed to reach consensus about a number of matters. During that time it has been largely left alone with nobody really keeping a close watch on it. A couple days ago I cleaned everything up. I archived old reviews, corrected the tags on talk pages and made minimal changes to the process based on what I had learnt. I also reviewed how it had operated. There were some reasonable reviews and some that attracted no interest what so ever, but I guess that is the case even with Wikipedia:Peer review. Some entries may have missed some attention since they were not properly formatted, or had no tag on the article's talk page and hence did not appear in the category. See Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review for my review and report on the clean up.

Of course, in hindsight, I wonder whether we, and particularly I, could have done better a year ago. In hindsight, does anyone have ideas how we progress this review process. To be worthwhile, it must attract reviews that perhaps would not go elsewhere such as Wikipedia:Peer review and it must attract expert reviewers to add to what might be achieved by the general Wikipedia:Peer review. If it can not do either, perhaps we should close it down and just encourage articles to go to Wikipedia:Peer review. Articles for review are listed on the science WikiProjects such as this one, but they are transcluded in so changes do not appear on watchlists. I have also added recent reviews to Wikipedia:Peer review in the same way that WikiProject reviews such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review are added. In this way both review pages refer to the same page for the review discussion and hopefully more editors will be attracted. The key point is attracting expert reviewers who might look at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review but not look at Wikipedia:Peer review.

If you have any ideas on this, please add your views at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review. --Bduke 03:04, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Gillian McKeith

The article Gillian McKeith has WP:BLP concerns and quackery concerns as detailed here. WAS 4.250 09:30, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Autistic spectrum disorders

Input is needed regarding a category rename at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_11#Category:Autistic_people. Doczilla 05:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Can Dry Heaves lead to Seizures?

Can anyone tell me if Dry Heaves lead to a seizure? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.233.142.238 (talk) 05:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

In my opinion and in the light of my experience, the answer is essentially no. Two corollaries; if the subject is a poorly controlled epileptic then it is barely possible that vomiting, or dry heaving, might bring on a convulsion (seizure is not a generally accepted clinical description); and if the subject is a child with a pyrexia caused by a gastrointestinal infection causinf vomiting, then the pyrexia might induce associated febrile convulsions. This is a personal opinion, and I do not accept medico-legal responsibility for any actions undertaken in response to this opinion.--Anthony.bradbury 15:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

On its own, the word seizure is imprecise, can be ambiguous and in lay parlance may refer to such things as a stroke, heart attack or even a fit of rage.[5] Modern medical use of the term is largely restricted to the epileptic kind and usually there is no doubt as to the intended meaning when the word is used by a physician. The word convulsion is not, however, a synonym for seizure as it refers to only one aspect of a particular kind of epileptic seizure. Not all epileptic seizures produce convulsions. The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) define:[6]

• convlusion – Primarily a lay term. Episodes of excessive, abnormal muscle contractions, usually bilateral, which may be sustained or interrupted.
• epileptic seizure – Manifestation(s) of epileptic (excessive and/or hypersynchronous), usually self-limited activity of neurons in the brain.

Other causes of vomiting, e.g. alcohol abuse, could also lead to seizures. Colin°^Talk 19:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

If you are saying that the original querent should define his/her terms, that's fine by me.--Anthony.bradbury 22:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Dry Heaves causing Seizures continued....

This is what happend..The gentlemen was sleeping and out of no where started Dry Heaving and he was asked to get up and he did not respond. Finally he had opened his eyes when he was asked to sit up, his response was "I can't." He does have a history of long term smoking. Also he is taking different medications. Does that help any?? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.233.170.46 (talk) 04:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC).

I don't think the wiki is an appropriate place to obtain a diagnosis. The gentleman should contact his physician.203.173.146.59 02:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Lung cancer

66.222.50.11 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) has been making a few edits to the lung cancer page which, er, don't exactly conform to WP:NPOV—our WikiDocs may want to add it to their Watchlists. Fvasconcellos 22:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. These edits should be reverted. Wrongfooting 06:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Electrocardiogram

Could someone please assess the quality and importance of the electrocardiogram article? Best, MoodyGroove 00:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)MoodyGroove

Some missing topics

I have a list of missing topics related to medicine. I've tried to find any appropriate redirects or similar articles but I'd appreciate if some experts could have a look at the list. - Skysmith 11:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you can merge the list to Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Applied_arts_and_sciences/Medicine and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/Missing_diseases. I made some redirects and started a few stubs. --WS 21:12, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Artificial Limbs

I just expaned the article on Artificial limbs (it had been a stub) and would appreciate any feedback in order to improve the article Nfk17 21:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Help on Fetal alcohol syndrome

I'm traveling, with limited internet access, and noticed this issue when a link was (incorrectly) changed on tourettism; I don't have time to correct and work on everything alone, and am hoping someone can help. Links to the recognized medical condition, Fetal alcohol syndrome have been redirected to a non-recognized medical condition, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder on at least 50 articles. The links from referenced literature on tourettism (referring to fetal alcohol syndrome) were redirected to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder—not supported by the literature. Surely Wikipedia should link to the recognized diagnosis rather than a speculative diagnosis. I'll do what I can to correct the links and repair the original article, but have limited internet access. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The article is still incorrectly named; I've left a long list on the talk page, and would appreciate help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

As a layperson, I've done as much as I can to sort out the mess at Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). I believe (not sure?) that there are still aspects that need to be cleaned up at FAS, with respect to text that does not apply to the recognized diagnosis of FAS, but extends to the hypothesis of FASD. It would be helpful if physicians would comb through both articles and see if I've adequately sorted out the two. I know nothing of the topic; just trying to correct the incorrect move of FAS to FASD, with combined text. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Rx Dosage Instructions in Wikipedia

Hello all. Please take a minute to look at this email thread. Also, please consider actively stripping medical advice from Wikipedia. Thank you, GChriss <always listening><c> 22:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for linking this. We must not show any kind of dose related information. I'll make a bigger search for doses in the articles. NCurse _work 06:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't read the whole thread yet, but I don't think we should remove the doses from all drug articles. That is actually important information and the same disclaimers as for all medical articles apply to these articles as well. --WS 23:31, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Then this medical disclaimer should be much more visible. NCurse _work 07:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

See WP:NDT for why there are no disclaimer templates. --Scot^t 19:45, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

MCOTW

I'm not going to change the medicine collaboration of the week this time, as I want to wait one month before refreshing it and we'll see how many edits are being made. NCurse _work 06:15, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Teenage pregnancy

The teenage pregnancy article could do with a medical viewpoint. Fionah 17:33, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Autistic category already revisited

Category:People with autistic spectrum disorders, which recently got renamed through CfD, is already undergoing another CfD and needs comment. Over the last four days, the discussion has mainly been between two people disagreeing with each other. [7]. Although I expressed my own opinion about it a few days ago, I'm actually okay with either outcome. I just feel more people need to weigh in on this. Doczilla 19:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Getting the wind knocked out of you

What would be the correct medical term for this? Does anyone here know? Having an expression that refers to the reader ("you") seems out of place in an encyclopedia. Reswobslc 02:36, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I would go with Winded or Diaphragm spasm. This was the best resource I could find, which defines it as a "blunt trauma to the solar plexus". --Scot^t 15:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Does anyone else agree with this? I do, but I've also got dissenters for both - "winded" having a meaning of "out of breath", and not being able to find "diaphragm spasm" as a discrete term listed anywhere. Is there a Latin-based or Greek-based term for it? Reswobslc 19:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

P.A.N.D.A.S.

NPOV tag placed, could use input. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know much about it, but just looking at the acronym, the label looks like it describes a broad class of "disorders". The emphasis on whether or not PANDAS is hypothetical seems inappropriate, since I'd expect controversy over a specific disorder, not about a word that seems to refer to a class of disorders in general. What exactly is the focus of the controversy? The streptococcal part? The neurological part? Whether the "disorder(s)" is/are all in one's head? The article should make that clear. Reswobslc 02:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Some of your assumptions may be wrong, perhaps because the NIH didn't name it well (it does apply to a rough constellation of conditions). It's not a broad class of disorders; perhaps it's just too loosely-defined as a hypothesis. The entire hypothesis is controversial—there is no part of it that isn't (pls do read some of the links sourcing that statement - this one is full text, but PMID 12842229 is probably the better paper, if you can get the full text). Encephalon had started to rewrite it at one point, but he hasn't been around Wikipedia much, and I have no interest in expanding on an article that is an unproven hypothesis. As far as I know, there is no one else on Wikipedia who knows PANDAS, which isn't unusual, since few physicians do (I seem to run into this problem every time I ask for medical help on TS-related articles). The concern is the POV tag: where's the POV? It is an unproven hypothesis, and the article is well-referenced, albeit brief. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:09, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I'll go see if I can scare up Encephalon; he'll understand. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's some excerpts I had typed into a sandbox, when Encephalon was going to help. User:SandyGeorgia/PANDAS SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Still hoping someone out there understands the issue, which is the inappropriate tagging of the article as POV. I've written up something at Talk:P.A.N.D.A.S. Since there are no other editors on Wiki (that I'm aware of) who understand PANDAS (and I can't write the rest of the article myself), I'll need additional input in resolving the POV claim. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I would have tagged the article as POV myself, because it clearly demonstrates an attempt to persuade the reader that PANDAS is quackery. The bias is obvious to me. If the article were rewritten to say "PANDAS stands for this and refers to this... criticism includes allegations that PANDAS is unproven..." then it wouldn't be so POV anymore. See WP:NPOV Reswobslc 17:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

PANDAS is not quackery by any means; it is a well-studied, well-published unproven scientifically-based hypothesis that has engendered massive controversy and doesn't enjoy widespread support of specialists outside of the NIH. Nothing about it is quackery. To my eyes, the article does say PANDAS is this, the controversy is this; a more specific example of adjustments needed would be helpful, keeping in mind that undue weight would actually require more to be written about the controversial aspects (text I don't feel qualified to expand). This is quite difficult without an expert on board, but NPOV requires mentioning the controversy, which is currently understated if anything. If you see attempts to persuade, pls give me some concrete examples of where to adust. The facts are the facts; it is massively controversial, and that is undermentioned in the current version of the article. (I do appreciate that someone is at least looking at it, since there are so few editors on Wiki who can examine this topic, and we have an editor placing an POV tag based on anecdotal personal experience—thanks for helping.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The article's opening statement calls PANDAS a hypothesis, but the NIH reference it attributes it to does not. In fact, the article appears to be plagiarized word-for-word from the NIH site, and then altered to say it's a hypothesis. Don't get me wrong, it's OK to plagiarize the US Government, as copyright doesn't apply to its works. But right now, the article calls PANDAS a hypothesis, and attributes that assertion to a source that clearly does not say that. We can't have that. You can attribute the idea of PANDAS to NIH in the article, and then attribute the dissenting viewpoint to the dissenters, but the article cannot narratively call PANDAS a "hypothesis" (nor can it refer to it as "fact") when that is a matter of disagreement between NIH and others. Reswobslc 08:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know who wrote the original article, but the NIH is public domain, so it's not a problem. Please produce an ICD or DSM code for PANDAS, and the word hypothesis can be dropped. Here's a starting place for searching for diagnostic codes; note what they say about PANDAS. [8] Listed under complications of the strep diagnosis, they state: "existence of PANDAS as a distinct entity is controversial: autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders have been described after streptococcal infection, overall evidence weak based on small case series and case reports." Again, in the absence of a diagnostic code, it's a hypothesis (not the same as quackery), as recognized by an enormous body of journal-published research. Alternately, maybe someone here can suggest a better word. Either it is a recognized medical diagnosis, or it's not. That's not an issue of POV; it's a matter of fact. I'll be traveling for the next two weeks, so replies will be sporadic. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

This may help: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547096?rss There is no diagnosis; only diagnostic criterion proposed by the NIH. "The study investigators were concerned that the PANDAS diagnosis had been widely adopted in the community without confirmatory scientific evidence, ..." Studies are based on the criteria proposed by Swedo/NIH ("The center used diagnostic criteria for PANDAS that were based on research criteria established in 1998 known as the Swedo criteria for their founder, Susan Swedo, MD, from the National Institute of Mental Health."). (Just a note, Murphy is one of the few non-NIH proponents of the theory; this article quotes her more extensively than others—even as a proponent, she says, "The gap reflects the fact that PANDAS still has nebulous criteria that may need more refining.") SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:20, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the article is neutral and shows no undue weight now. TimVickers 18:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Very nice adjustments from both Tim and Reswobslc. Thanks so much for the effort; I'll travel better without being concerned that I've left/caused POV on Wiki. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Low-protein diet

This article is a single sentence and has not been edited for two years. It has come up on Wikipedia:WikiProject Abandoned Articles in the block I am trying to recover. I'm not sure about it. Does it make sense? Can it be expanded into a proper article? Can be be merged somewhere? Should it be deleted. Please advise or just do something about it. --Bduke 10:44, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Only three articles link to it, but Google gives signficant hits, including this one, which seems to suggest it should be an article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps one of our kidney specialists at WP:Nephro could have a look? Fvasconcellos 16:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Your wish is my command FelixFelix ^talk 23:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Humm, it does have a fair number of results on Google. I would suggest leaving it as an article. Maybe someone, somewhere, sometime will be looking into this and expand on it. --Scot^t 08:09, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Aspartame controversy

Could someone possibly take a look at this article and consider making it less POV? At the moment it's full of big pharma conspiracy allegations and other such stuff:) I will try too:)Merkinsmum 21:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Coenzyme Q10

Could someone knowledgeable take a look at Coenzyme Q10? Much of the article reads like an advertisement for supplement companies that sell this chemical compound. Some of the external links appear to be spam. Even some of the "references" are spam-like links to a ad-heavy Wiki site - hardly a reliable source. I'll take a crack at cleaning it up if someone more knowledgeable doesn't step in first. Thanks. Deli nk 13:53, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems that most of the content I found inappropriate was added not too long ago by one individual, so I removed that person's edits, and performed a bit more cleanup. The article could still use the attention of an expert, though, if anyone is interested. Deli nk 14:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Help on Multiple chemical sensitivity

Although my field is chemistry, I started an attempt to overhaul this article today. It reflects the POV of clinical ecologics—those who believe MCS is a strictly physical disease, who are in an extreme minority. I began with what I believed were modest changes. Anyhow, it seems that User:Dr. Meggs has taken ownership of the article. I don't want to get near three reverts myself, but any attention you could give this article would be greatly appreciated. Cool Hand Luke 07:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Alternative medicine

I added a WPMED template to Alternative medicine, as that subject needs expert edits from people with knowledge of medicine. Right now, the article is a terrible mess. If it's outside the scope of WPMED, the template may be removed. --Another question, can anyone give an article assessment rating, or only handpicked editors? Narssarssuaq 13:16, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The article assessment rating is open for everyone. Feel free to rate the article! NCurse _work 18:40, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! What about the importance rating, is it free as well? Narssarssuaq 10:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Vanishing twin needs attention

Is anyone knowledgeable enough to help clean up the Vanishing twin article? It is a mess. A new user just added a bunch of reference material, which is great. However, this user said that they have just published a review article on this topic and the papers they are citing are the references they used in their review paper. I don't have access to all the publications so I am not sure if this is (a) an expert in the field contributing their work to Wikipedia or (b) someone who is too close to the subject using Wikipedia to advance their ideas on the subject. It may be a bit of both. There are some comments on the article's Talk page. Can someone help out, please? Johntex\^talk 16:12, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Unit 731

The above article is currently linked to WikiProject Medicine. Is this appropriate? It seems to me that 731 were occupied with biological warfare research, not medicine. Without this distinction, could not Josef Mengele also be linked here? RomaC 16:27, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, it shouldn't be linked to the medicine project. BetacommandBot tagged it by chance. I removed the tag, thanks for the note. NCurse _work 18:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Schmidt Sting Pain Index

Can some of you knowledgable and discerning medical and scientist Wikipedians take a look at this please? This article has currently been getting some coverage in popular "gee whiz funny link of the day... how goofy!" type blogs ( I hate it when this happens and the article in question is dubious... I think it gives a bad impression of wikipedia), but it seems to be mainly based on the idea that this one insect scientist guy wrote some goofy comments for an insect sting pain index one day. Ok, I agree that insect scientists are allowed to have senses of humour (WITHIN LIMITS, for the sake of us all), but I am concerned that 1) this scale is not really widespread and may be just one scale promoted by one guy without much acceptance in the insect expert and/or medical community. 2) the pdf article linked which this wikipedia entry seems to be based on does not seem to say that Schmidt actually wrote those goofy comments. Its a bit ambiguous, but its seems to say that "the media" (without specifying what media) came up with the goofy comments to append to Schmidt's original dry scale(I think this may be another case where people exaggerate or misinterpret what an article is saying). I dont have any access to science or medical journal databases, and am certainly no science or insect expert. But these concerns and quick scans of google books and google scholar led me to bring this issue to wiser heads. Thanks very much for checking this out. 88.109.1.60 16:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Need better Anatomy images

Gray's images are awful for anatomy. Please find better ones. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.205.92.132 (talk • contribs)

True. Copyright rears its ugly head over attempts to download images from a lot of more recent publications. Not all, I concede, but Gray is so amazingly available!--Anthony.bradbury 01:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

And if you have any idea, don't hesitate to tell us! NCurse _work 09:25, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Medicine Portal: recruiting

After Steven Fruitsmaak left to Wikinews, I need a new maintainer as I can't do this job alone. Is anybody interested in maintaining the medicine portal with me? I'd help in any ways and would describe the tasks more deeply. NCurse _work 09:24, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Should Inhaler Become A Disambiguation Page?

I believe the Inhaler page needs to become a disambiguation page because it omits the types of inhalers such as nasal inhalers (e.g. Vics Vapor Inhaler, sprays,NasalCrom,...). I know it may cause a few stub articles but once going it may take a much informative form. Anyone else care for comment?

--RonEJ 10:10, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

• Inhalers are, by common understanding & definition, drugs inhaled into the lung. NasalCrom etc are sprays sprayed into the nose whilst sniffing and delivers their drugs to the nose, not the lungs. Nasal sprays require just partial respiratory effort (to sniff in), whereas all inhalers used for asthma should be with full effort (from a deliberate fully expired lung to full total capacity). Furthermore with inhalers the breath should ideally be held for 10 seconds to allow drug deposition (use of spacers as secondary volume is a side issue here), whereas once a nasal spray has been sniffed-in, a person is free to immediately exhale through their mouth. Not all asthma inhalers are aerosol, having instead dry powder in many products. Whilst all asthma inhalers deliver a pre-defined fixed dose for each activation, Meter Dose Inhaler (MDI) is a term generally reserved for aerosol inhalers. David Ruben ^Talk 12:48, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually an inhaler device is very often used for sinus decongestants otherwise Vics Vapor Inhaler would not be perceived or even be called an inhaler. That is what the Disambiguation Page is for. BTW see- Dry Powder Inhaler. --RonEJ 15:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Epilepsy vandalism

I'd appreciate if some of our American editors could put Epilepsy on their watch lists. It lay vandalised between 00:41 and 07:48 UTC this morning. It isn't a heavily vandalised article, but going 7 hours undetected is a bit embarrassing. Thanks, Colin°^Talk 08:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

• Can others watchlist Tourettism pls? It got hit with vandalism that stood for a very long time while I'm traveling. Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I added it to my watchlist. NCurse _work 05:39, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Expert advice wanted

Hi there. A discussion is proceeding on the Talk:Antioxidant page about the validity of a recent review of clinical trials of antioxidant supplements. Expert advice would be much appreciated. Thank you. TimVickers 15:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Will you check my Amaurosis fugax article

I have been working on expanding the Amaurosis fugax article. It is still extremely inadequate/incomplete, and I will continue to work on it in the coming days; but, I wanted to get feedback on the work I have done. Would you be willing to give me some feedback? This is my first article. Kilbad 20:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you've made a great job. It's now a referenced, well-structured article. NCurse _work 05:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Qualifications for Contribution

I'm currently studying to be a medical technologist, and I've noticed that a number of articles in my primary fields of interest (immunohematology, hematopathology, and genetics) are stubs. Is the consensus here that contribution should be limited to doctors and/or professionals, meaning that I should wait until I have my licensure, or may I expand as my studies permit? SkepticalGal 21:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Please feel free to join in—I'm a layperson, and there's plenty of ways to contribute. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sugarman syndrome needs your help

Sugarman syndrome has been tagged "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards" since November 2005. "The oldest cleanup requests are the highest priority, to prevent embarrassing problems from going unfixed for an indefinite length of time." [9]. Article is a very short stub: "Sugarman syndrome is the common name of Oral-facial-digital syndrome type III." One of the two external links provided seems to be dead. Thanks for your attention. -- Writtenonsand 06:19, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Please check a user's contributions

Per Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Dereks1x, Doc United States (talk · contribs) is merely a sock puppet of Dereks1x. Doc United States has, however, been editing medical articles over the last several days in what I suspect was an attempt to bolster his false medical credentials. While some of Doc United States' edits were sourced, others weren't. I hope the participants in this project will take some time to check Doc United States contributions for accuracy given the circumstances. · j e r s y k o talk · 12:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

The only condition I'm semi familiar with in his contribs is Wilson's disease; his contrib there looks valid. PMID 10864623 [10] [11] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

List of medical abbreviations

I'm curious to know if the following listed at List of medical abbreviations is real or a hoax:

FIBD Found in Bed Dead FLK Funny Looking Kid (suggesting an unspecified syndrome, should now be termed "dysmorphic features") FOF Found on Floor (Patient fell out of bed)

If not real, perhaps someone should delete them. If real, then it sure is educational.Heliocybe 12:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

FLK (Funny Looking Kid) was a real term used in the UK to describe infants/children with odd appearances suggestive of an unspecified or yet-to-be described syndrome or genetic disorder. It certainly was inserted as a discrete abbreviation into notes when I was training (as a warning to other doctors to consider that seemingly unrelated problems might have an underlying single cause). Nowdays with more PC (as well as ability of paraents and in due time the child themselves to have access to the notes), the term "Dysmorphic features" would be used but there will be hardcopy notes out there still having "FLK". David Ruben ^Talk 02:04, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Cortisporin

Can someone please take a look at this article and tell me if what I am doing is correct. Cortisporin is just a drug brand name so it really shouldn't be a drug article? Should I get rid of all the info and just refference it? How would I go about refferencing it, when it is made up of 3 different drugs (Neomycin, polymyxin B, and hydrocortisone? Sorry for the dilema made, I saw it as a request to make the article and automatically created it, but now I am having doughts. Any comments or help would be greatelly appreciated. Thanks. petze 14:49, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)

The proposed guideline WP:MEDMOS has been declared "historical" due to lack of activity. Please can we push towards consensus and make it a formal guideline. If we think it is close, we can advertise on the Village pump. Discuss on the talk page. Colin°^Talk 15:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Physical diagnosis

Is there a category for physical diagnosis that lets me browse all articles tagged as such? Badgettrg 21:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

You mean: Category:Medical signs? NCurse _work 15:23, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

References to PubMed

What is the prognosis on fixing the system of creating references to citations at PubMed? While simply typing "PMID ########" is easy to do and works, it does not provide citation information at the bottom of the article. While http://diberri.dyndns.org/wikipedia/templates/?type=pmid helps, it still requires busy authors to become conformatable working with tags and markup language. Technically, we should be able to let the author simply type "PMID ########" at the appropriate spot in the article and the citations are collated and the reference list is built automatically. I have suggested this as a project for WP's participation in Google's summer of code (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2007/proposals).

Is there anything else that can be done to improve this system? It is really painful as if you adequately cite your sources, you may create paragraphs whose source content has more text inside of the ref tag that outside. These paragraphs become very hard for subsequent authors. I suspect this either keeps a lot of docs from being authors, or prevents some authors from citing the sources. Badgettrg 21:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds useful, but I can see some problems. BTW it is quite acceptable/encouraged for editors who are inexperienced to insert a basic citation (such as just the PMID) and for more established editors to format it for them. If editors avoid the template, and format their citation by hand, the text isn't particularly bulky. I keep thinking about asking Diberri to create an option to output wiki markup rather than the template.

Would the lookup and replacement of text occur at initial edit time, or every time the HTML version was created from the markup (I understand this is cached)? The latter seems to be what you want wrt keeping the edit size down. However, this could have a significant performance hit and place a continual dependency on a third party for data. The PubMed site is sometimes slow or even down. What would happen if you tried to submit an edit while PubMed was down?

Another issue is which citation style you would pick? WP positively encourages anarchy in this regard. The {{cite journal}} template has a home grown format that doesn't match any third-party guide, let alone the medical AMA or URM styles that most WP Medicine editors will be familiar with reading. PubMed also lists all three-hundred co-authors for these big international collaborative articles. I suppose the tool could be engineered to truncate and stick an et al on.

Finally, there is the issue of reliably extracting the info. Diberri is great but doesn't always work. Sometimes it fails to pick up the year, for example, other times the PubMed data is lacking authors when they are clearly listed in the paper. The advantage of inserting humans into the process is that these minor glitches can be overcome. Colin°^Talk 07:39, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The use of the template is important for maintainability, but if a user is having trouble with it, they can always use User:Cacycle/wikEd to hide the refs while editing. --Arcadian 11:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The maintainability argument is the reason I wouldn't consider generating wiki markup rather than template code for citations. I'd forgotten that wikEd allows you to hide refs; this should make palatable the extra length of the generated template code. IMO, what would be nice would be the ability to highlight a PMID while you're editing, click a bookmarklet, and then have the template code auto-filled in for you. A while back I worked on a .js file to do just that; I'll dig it up and see if I can't get it working. Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 14:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Whilst I (currently) use the templates, I'm being drawn to hand-formatting for various reasons. The layout of {{cite journal}} is non-standard and the code too simplistic to format perfectly. I detected a "not invented here" attitude towards adopting an established standard. I fail to see how:

{{cite journal |author=Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL, ''et al'' |title=Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999-2002 |journal=JAMA |volume=291 |issue=23 |pages=2847-50 |year=2004 |pmid=15199035}}

is more "maintainable" than

Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL ''et al'': Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999–2002. ''JAMA''. 2004;291:2847–50. PMID 15199035

The latter also has the benefit of working on all languages of WP and on any other MediaWiki based site. There are lots of editors who don't use (and even despise) the templates. Shouldn't editors have the choice? Colin°^Talk 19:43, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally I like the templates, and whilst I agree their current display is not standard to biomedical journals (which have an internationally agreed referencing style - see my failed attempt to suggest observing this at Template talk:Cite journal#Publication volume number in bold / additional data / descriptive labels), at least if wikipedia agreed to standardise citation formating it would only require a tweak to the relevant citation template and not require a trawl through hundreds of thousands of articles. Finally copying over a blank citation template at least helps show what fields are available and perhaps rather more parameters will be specified by some editors (no reflection intended of course on anyone above). Yes diberri's template filler fails add the year if the date has a month range eg "2007 Jan-Feb" - but is this not just a reason to ask Diberri as a "wish list" upgrade rather than abdandon the (optional) citation templates ? David Ruben ^Talk 20:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The flaws in the tool would be a problem whether it generated template or wiki code. I merely pointed them out since the proposal was for a fully-automated system. At least with Diberri's tool, you can check the output and add in the extra couple of fields (e.g. URL for freely available papers).

I believe that Wikipedia will never standardise citation formatting (it might have, if at the start it enforced all refs to use one machine-readable format). We have editors from all disciplines, many of whom have entrenched habits for how they wish to cite their text. As I noted on the cite news talk page, WP:CITE/ES says "please use the citation style of your choice" (their emphasis). It is also an established practice to encourage editors to cite their source using whatever means they can manage (e.g raw URL, book/author name) and for more experienced editors to tidy up later. Colin°^Talk 07:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Using the example above:

Hedley AA, Ogden CL, Johnson CL et al: Prevalence of overweight and obesity among US children, adolescents, and adults, 1999–2002. JAMA. 2004;291:2847–50. PMID 15199035

Wouldn't it be nice if simply inserting something like "PMIDV 15199035" automatically generated the citation in Vancouver format with doi and publisher links?

Diberri and Cacycle are great, but I do not think they are enough here. We are all relatively early adopters of WikiPedia, but to really get quorum going to achieve the effect of Linus's law, we need to make editing easier. I just taught an informatics elective to 21 senior medical students. Their final project was to do an EBM-style edit (with references) in WP. Although these were self-selected students from a class of 200, only 1-2 students used the complete reference template (I probably should have taught them your free text method above).

In addition, we still are not addressing reusing a citation multiple times in a page. Do we expect authors to search the whole wiki page to see if an article is already cited and to use the same ref name attribute? Aren't we going to end up in a mess with one article appearing multiple times in a bibliography?

Regarding the implementation, when WP finds the trigger string "PMIDV 15199035" in a page being saved, it would look in its database of already used PubMed citations. If not found, it would use PubMed's e-utility to retrieve the xml for the citation and add it to the local database for use in the current page and for any future pages calling the citation. I suppose you could allow other formats so that PMIDA would be in the APA format. Regardless the markup would only have "PMID 15199035" or "PMIDV 15199035" or "PMIDA 15199035" .

Authors not wanting to use this system can still use other existing methods (although at risk of a single citation appearing multiple times if authors are inconsistent in their naming the ref tag.Badgettrg 01:35, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you are trying to merge the ref system with the citation format. Are you saying that writing PMIDV 15199035 would automatically put something like <ref name=15199035>...</ref> in so that multiple refs to the same article would be tied by ref name. The editor can achieve this by hand. I don't think merging the ref system is a good idea. There are cases when editors wish to cite a paper outside of the footnotes. They might be general (bullet-point) refs for the whole article, or a historical paper that is actually fully cited in the body text.

The problems you mention with multiple refs aren't Wiki's biggest worry. They are fairly easily sorted by asking someone to review your article. Encouraging editors to supply well sourced and well written content is far and away the most important issue. Wrt medical articles, I'm sure plenty project members would be happy to help tidy the refs for a well written article, if asked nicely. Colin°^Talk 07:04, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am proposing that there is a solution that simultaneously solves the display of citations and the numbering system. It would not create "<ref name=15199035>", but rather something like "(pmidv 15199035)" to avoid colliding with other systems. I admit that WP has bigger problems to address than references; but eventually the clunkiness of creating references will limit our pool of authors, or limit the pool of authors who take the time to cite their references and willing to edit paragraphs where there is more markup text than displayed text. This problem will grow as paragraphs become better referenced. This process can be automated and should not have to rely on asking other authors to create our tags.

[edited above paragraph to change <ref...> to &lt;ref...&gt; to avoid Cite error. –Dan Hoey 16:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Inflammation - to merge or not to merge?

Just searching for some input here. Inflammation as it stands is a messy, half-done article focusing more on acute inflammation from a clinical standpoint. Chronic inflammation is a little stub at the moment. I'm in two minds at the moment over what to do with them. I would prefer to have Inflammation as a general introduction to both with each having their own pages, rather than having both in one article. What do you guys think would be the best course of action? -- Serephine ♠ talk - 11:50, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

It would probably be best if the Inflammation article was expanded and worked on, and then having a seperate page for both chronic and acute inflammation. Hopefully in time someone can end up putting effort into working on the articles, but maybe if no progress is done, for the time being just do redirects for chronic and acute inflammation into just inflammation? petze 05:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Review request: Meralgia paresthetica

Having been diagnosed with Meralgia paresthetica, I read the wikipedia article and informative articles on emedicine.com, aaos.org, mayoclinic.com, neurosurgery.ucla.edu. The wikipedia article was notable for failing to mention the site of the nerve constriction that usually causes this condition. I added the information that I had gleaned from the other sites, and edited some wikicommons pictures from Gray's anatomy to illustrate the text. I invite professional review to make sure the article conforms to WP:MED standards.

I also noticed an article on chiroweb.com suggesting that chiropractic treatment is often effective for this condition. I do not know how chiropractic medicine is treated in this venue, and I have no authoritative references for such treatment, so I have not added any mention of such treatment in the article. I bring this up in hopes that an informed professional has something useful and encyclopedic to add. –Dan Hoey 22:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to User:Davidruben and User:Arcadian for the cleanup. By the way, the note on exercise came from http://neurosurgery.ucla.edu/Diagnoses/PeripheralNerve//PeripheralNerveDis_3.html ; I don't know how reliable that's considered. –Dan Hoey 00:22, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - I've added above ref to the details (and also added suggestion for trial NDSAIDs) David Ruben ^Talk 00:47, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

And thanks again for the good work. It doesn't look like a stub any more, so maybe Talk:Meralgia_paraesthetica is due for a rating change, though I don't know enough to give it a grade. The only really annoying part (and this is probably true of a lot of infoboxes) is that printing the article, which wisely expands the external links, makes the infobox picture so wide that the first page is half empty. We would need someone with deep knowledge of template design to work on that. –Dan Hoey 15:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

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