Journal of general internal medicine
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The usefulness of three components of the routine admission complete blood cell count (leukocyte count, hematocrit, and platelet count) was evaluated in 301 patients consecutively admitted to the internal medicine wards of a university teaching hospital. Using a consensus analysis approach, three faculty members reviewed the patients' charts to determine which tests were performed routinely, which tests were abnormal, and which routine tests led to diagnostic or therapeutic changes. Overall, 55.3% of the tests were considered routine admission tests. ⋯ However, treatment was changed for only three patients, all of whom had low hematocrits; this amounted to 0.6% of all tests. Furthermore, only one of the three patients received appropriate treatment that might have been withheld if a routine hematocrit determination had not been ordered. The authors conclude that the impact of routine admission complete blood cell counts on patient management is small and that the practice of ordering this test for all hospitalized patients could be eliminated with little adverse effect on patient care.
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Comparative Study Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Effects of diet and exercise interventions on control and quality of life in non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Evidence suggests that diet and exercise are associated with improved glucose tolerance for patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Seventy-six volunteer adult patients with NIDDM were each assigned to one of four programs: diet, exercise, diet plus exercise, or education (control). Each program required ten weekly meetings. ⋯ In addition, this group showed significant improvements on a general quality of life measure. These improvements were largely uncorrelated with changes in weight. The authors conclude that the combination of dietary change and physical conditioning benefits NIDDM patients, and that the benefits may be independent of substantial weight loss.
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Funding for medical care research in the interrelated fields of health services research, clinical decision-making, clinical epidemiology, the medical humanities and social sciences, and medical education has been unstable, and relatively little is available in the form of investigator-initiated grants. Stable funding for these fields is important to society and critical to the healthy development of academic general internal medicine. ⋯ Public funding is also needed for career development awards in these fields. Research support also could be enhanced by establishing a consortium of foundations interested in funding investigator-initiated grants through open competition, by developing a mechanism for reviewing proposals from small foundations, by developing consortia in the private sector to support focused research, and by developing endowments to support research.