Clin Med
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Clinical research contributes to the evidence base for the planning of improved healthcare services and creates an excellent environment for the delivery of healthcare and the recruitment and retention of excellent and well-motivated staff. In this paper, we consider the evidence that a research-intensive healthcare system might yield improved outcomes as a result of the impact of the process of research on the provision of care. We review progress in establishing clinical research networks for cancer and the evidence of the impact of the conduct of clinical cancer research in the National Health Service.
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With a steadily increasing healthcare burden, all physicians must be aware of methods to manage the complications of chronic liver disease, including hepatic encephalopathy. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration in the USA and several European countries as a treatment for recurrent hepatic encephalopathy an increasing number of patients are now receiving rifaximin for this condition. This ‘lesson of the month’ highlights the dramatic effect that rifaximin may have on hepatic encephalopathy.
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Medicine has always striven to personalise or stratify approaches towards individual patients, but recently these terms have been applied particularly to denote improved disease sub-classification achieved through new genetic and genomic technologies. Techniques to analyse a person's genetic code have improved in sensitivity exponentially over recent years and at the same time the cost of such analyses has become affordable to routine NHS care. This article highlights the significant opportunities that genomics brings to healthcare, as well as some of the practical and ethical challenges.
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Asthma patients often try some form of alternative medicine. This article questions whether this is good or bad. ⋯ Thus the risk-benefit balance fails to be positive. Patients are often mislead to believe otherwise and physicians should inform their asthma patients responsibly about the value of alternative medicine.