JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Comparative Study
Racial variation in cardiac procedure use and survival following acute myocardial infarction in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
To examine whether blacks admitted to Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) with an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) are less likely than whites to undergo cardiac catheterization or coronary revascularization procedures and to determine the impact of these differences on patient survival. ⋯ In a health care system designed to provide equivalent availability of care to all eligible patients, blacks received substantially fewer cardiac procedures after AMI than whites. Despite undergoing fewer interventional procedures, blacks had better short-term and equivalent intermediate survival rates compared with whites.
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To assess risk factors for high-grade cervical dysplasia among southwestern Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women. ⋯ The strongest risk factor associated with high-grade cervical dysplasia among clinic attendees was HPV infection. Although most of the risk factors we examined showed similar associations for dysplasia for both ethnic groups, our data suggest that several different risk factors may be relevant to the development of cervical dysplasia in Hispanics compared with non-Hispanic whites who attend the same clinics.
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To evaluate the effects of oral contraceptives (OCs) as a possible risk factor for early diabetic renal and/or retinal complications. ⋯ The use of OCs among young women with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus does not pose an additional risk for the development of early diabetic retinopathy and/or nephropathy.
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The United States National Library of Medicine's (NLM) MEDLINE database is the largest and most widely used medical bibliographic database. MEDLINE is manually indexed with NLM's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary. ⋯ This article reviews the structure and use of MeSH, directed toward the nonexpert, and outlines how MeSH may help resolve a number of common difficulties encountered when searching MEDLINE. The increasing importance of the MEDLINE database as an information resource and the trend toward individuals performing their own bibliographic searches makes it crucial that health care professionals become familiar with MeSH.