Journal of general internal medicine
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To compare the relative risks of alcohol abuse and cigarette smoking. ⋯ These results and a literature review suggest that insufficient alcohol abuse histories may lead clinicians to underestimate the mortality risk of alcohol abuse.
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To investigate whether a limited teaching intervention, based on principles of adult education, could change residents' literature reading attitudes, behaviors, and knowledge. ⋯ Journal clubs are important to residents, and their effectiveness in teaching critical appraisal and promoting reading of the literature may be augmented by applying principles of adult education.
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Comparative Study
Utilization of hospital resources by alcoholic and nonalcoholic patients: a prospective study.
To measure any difference in the utilization of hospital resources between alcoholic patients and nonalcoholic patients (controls) in a department of internal medicine. ⋯ The authors' results suggest that alcoholics do not use more hospital resources per admission than do nonalcoholics. Moreover, alcoholics tend to use less frequently some procedures, such as the ICU, electrocardiography, and x-ray examinations. Several hypotheses are developed to explain these results in relation to those of previous studies, which showed more use of medical care by alcoholics than by nonalcoholics.
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To develop and validate a predictive model that would allow clinicians to determine whether an electrophysiologic (EP) study is likely to result in useful diagnostic information for a patient who has unexplained syncope. ⋯ These five identified predictive factors, available from the history, the physical examination, and the initial ECG, could be useful to clinicians in selecting those patients with unexplained syncope who will have a serious arrhythmia identified by EP studies.