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Suicide rates among patients with lung cancer are higher than the general population. This study aims to identify patient and disease characteristics associated with suicide in patients with lung cancer. ⋯ Patients with lung cancer have a higher risk for suicide compared with the general US population, especially within 3 months of diagnosis. Despite the higher SMR among patients with a poorer prognosis, a concerning proportion of suicides occurs in potentially curable patients, highlighting the need for effective screening strategies to avoid this preventable cause of death.
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Most current classification schemes for COPD use lung function as the primary way of classifying disease severity and monitoring disease progression. This approach misses important components of the disease process. ⋯ A COPD severity score that includes components in addition to lung function and allows for both improvement and worsening of disease may provide additional guidance to COPD classification, management, and prognosis.
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Physicians are moving increasingly from self-employed, private practices to at-will employment relationships. This historic change in the organizational administration of medical services is likely to accelerate as the Affordable Care Act is implemented and as accountable care organizations permeate the medical marketplace. Physicians vow an ascendant oath to safeguard patients' welfare, but as they become employees, they may sign legal contracts that also oblige obedience to the institutions that hire them. What happens when an employer makes a decision that is not in the best interests of patients and the physicians fulfill their Hippocratic obligation to voice dissent on their patients' behalf rather than abiding by their contractual obligation to obey their employer? This article explores the philosophical and legal ramifications of this potential collision of obligations to patients and to employers.