The Medical journal of Australia
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To examine factors that influence medical practitioners' treatment decisions for patients with life-threatening or terminal illnesses. ⋯ Treatment provided is significantly determined by the individual characteristics of the doctor and not solely by the nature of the medical problem. Participation in the informed-consent process and in the preparation of advance health care directives would enable practitioners to be familiar with patient and family wishes and could reduce variations of treatment related to sociodemographic and medical training factors. Stronger empirical data on the way that treatment decisions are made could provide the basis for an informed euthanasia policy.
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To examine management of cellulitis in a tertiary teaching hospital, identify inefficiencies and suggest revised management guidelines. ⋯ Management of inpatients with cellulitis is inefficient, with excessive use of microbiological investigations, inadequate investigation and treatment of underlying disease, prolonged use of intravenous antibiotics, unnecessarily long hospital stays, questionable use of combination antibiotic therapy and excessive outpatient review (rather than review by a local medical practitioner).
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The incidence of new HIV infections in Asia and the Pacific will soon pass that in Africa and is projected to increase into the next century. The AIDS epidemic arising from these infections will have enormous consequences for the health and socioeconomic development of a region encompassing more than half the world's population.
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Inexorably, the epicentre of the global HIV pandemic is moving from Africa to Asia. Despite many years of much-publicised analysis of the African epidemic, most countries in Asia and many in the Pacific have not introduced the public health strategies known to minimise the spread of HIV. What must be done now, and how can the developed countries in the region, such as Australia, assist their neighbours?