BMJ : British medical journal
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To review the beneficial and harmful effects of laughter. ⋯ Laughter is not purely beneficial. The harms it can cause are immediate and dose related, the risks being highest for Homeric (uncontrollable) laughter. The benefit-harm balance is probably favourable. It remains to be seen whether sick jokes make you ill or jokes in bad taste cause dysgeusia, and whether our views on comedians stand up to further scrutiny.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Impact of autologous blood injections in treatment of mid-portion Achilles tendinopathy: double blind randomised controlled trial.
To assess the effectiveness of two peritendinous autologous blood injections in addition to a standardised eccentric calf strengthening programme in improving pain and function in patients with mid-portion Achilles tendinopathy. ⋯ The administration of two unguided peritendinous autologous blood injections one month apart, in addition to a standardised eccentric training programme, provides no additional benefit in the treatment of mid-portion Achilles tendinopathy.
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To investigate the safety and efficacy of durable polymer drug eluting stents (DES) and biodegradable polymer biolimus eluting stents (biolimus-ES). ⋯ The newer durable polymer everolimus-ES and Resolute zotarolimus-ES and the biodegradable polymer biolimus-ES maintain the efficacy of sirolimus-ES; however, for safety endpoints, differences become apparent, with everolimus-ES and Resolute zotarolimus-ES emerging as the safest stents to date.
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To develop and validate a risk algorithm (QStroke) to estimate risk of stroke or transient ischaemic attack in patients without prior stroke or transient ischaemic attack at baseline; to compare (a) QStroke with CHADS2 and CHA2DS2VASc scores in patients with atrial fibrillation and (b) the performance of QStroke with the Framingham stroke score in the full population free of stroke or transient ischaemic attack. ⋯ QStroke provides a valid measure of absolute stroke risk in the general population of patients free of stroke or transient ischaemic attack as shown by its performance in a separate validation cohort. QStroke also shows some improvement on current risk scoring methods, CHADS2 and CHA2DS2VASc, for the subset of patients with atrial fibrillation for whom anticoagulation may be required. Further research is needed to evaluate the cost effectiveness of using these algorithms in primary care.
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Review Comparative Study
How different are NHS systems across the UK since devolution?