The Yale journal of biology and medicine
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Historical Article
Research on smoking and lung cancer: a landmark in the history of chronic disease epidemiology.
This paper describes the history of the epidemiologic research on lung cancer prior to 1970 and its effect on chronic disease epidemiology. In the 1930s, epidemiology was largely concerned with acute infectious diseases. As the evidence grew that the incidence of lung cancer was increasing among men, however, epidemiologists undertook research into the etiology of the disease. ⋯ A controversy developed over the credibility of this finding and was increased in 1954 when a cohort study by Doll and Hill and another by Hammond and Horn each gave estimates that the risk of lung cancer was greatly increased among smokers relative to the risk among comparable non-smokers. An account is given of the disputes surrounding these and related studies. The controversy had a stimulating effect in fostering the developing discipline of chronic disease and epidemiology.
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Cryoprecipitate is frequently administered as treatment for hemostatic defects in patients with uremia. The only published data supporting this approach however, involves seven patients described by Janson and colleagues in whom bleeding times were shortened and bleeding complications reduced after cryoprecipitate infusion. We retrospectively reviewed our institution's experience with cryoprecipitate in this setting. ⋯ Three patients failed to shorten their bleeding time after cryoprecipitate infusion or, in one case, multiple infusions. One of these latter patients had correction of his abnormal bleeding time after subsequent administration of deamino-8-D-arginine vasopressin (DDAVP). We conclude that the hemostatic response to cryoprecipitate therapy is variable, and that cryoprecipitate therapy does not achieve restoration of normal hemostasis in some patients with uremic bleeding.