Guide to medical writing;

Mode of access: Internet.

Medical writing; the technic and the art

An extensive revision of the Art and practice of medical writing, by George H. Simmons and Morris Fishbein. cf. Pref.

Curricular internship report in medical writing at Blueclinical, Portugal

The contents of this report are a summary of the activities carried out during the 8-month internship as an Associate Medical Writer at Blueclinical Ltd, Matosinhos, Portugal. Mainly my activities were related to medical writing, particularly writing the clinical research protocols, clinical study reports, writing manuscript and preparing poster presentations. In addition to these activities, I also participated in performance of a clinical trial from beginning to end. During the period of its realization, I was able to familiarize myself with all the steps of the Phase I clinical trial.

Effective writing for health professionals : a guide to getting published

Written by a best-selling academic author, Effective Writing for Health Professionals provides insights and strategies for publishing designed for nurses, midwives and health professionals

Applied medical bibliography for students.

Mode of access: Internet.

Suggestions to medical authors and A. M. A. style book, with a guide to abbreviation of bibliographic references;

Mode of access: Internet.

Between Herbals et alia: Intertextuality in Medieval English Herbals

This study reports a corpus-based study of medieval English herbals, which are texts conveying information on medicinal plants. Herbals belong to the medieval medical register. The study charts intertextual parallels within the medieval genre, and between herbals and other contemporary medical texts. It seeks to answer questions where and how herbal texts are linked to each other, and to other medical writing. The theoretical framework of the study draws on intertextuality and genre studies, manuscript studies, corpus linguistics, and multi-dimensional text analysis. The method combines qualitative and quantitative analyses of textual material from three historical special-language corpora of Middle and Early Modern English, one of which was compiled for the purposes of this study. The text material contains over 800,000 words of medical texts. The time span of the material is from c. 1330 to 1550. Text material is retrieved from the corpora by using plant name lists as search criteria. The raw data is filtered through qualitative analysis which produces input for the quantitative analysis, multi-dimensional scaling (MDS). In MDS, the textual space that parallel text passages form is observed, and the observations are explained by a qualitative analysis. This study concentrates on evidence of material and structural intertextuality. The analysis shows patterns of affinity between the texts of the herbal genre, and between herbals and other texts in the medical register. Herbals are most closely linked with recipe collections and regimens of health: they comprise over 95 per cent of the intertextual links between herbals and other medical writing. Links to surgical texts, or to specialised medical texts are very few. This can be explained by the history of the herbal genre: as herbals carry information on medical ingredients, herbs, they are relevant for genres that are related to pharmacological therapy. Conversely, herbals draw material from recipe collections in order to illustrate the medicinal properties of the herbs they describe. The study points out the close relationship between medical recipes and recipe-like passages in herbals (recipe paraphrases). The examples of recipe paraphrases show that they may have been perceived as indirect instruction. Keywords: medieval herbals, early English medicine, corpus linguistics, intertextuality, manuscript studies

Niemann-Pick disease type C symptomatology: an expert-based clinical description

Niemann-Pick disease type C (NP-C) is a rare, progressive, irreversible disease leading to disabling neurological manifestations and premature death. The estimated disease incidence is 1:120,000 live births, but this likely represents an underestimate, as the disease may be under-diagnosed due to its highly heterogeneous presentation. NP-C is characterised by visceral, neurological and psychiatric manifestations that are not specific to the disease and that can be found in other conditions. The aim of this review is to provide non-specialists with an expert-based, detailed description of NP-C signs and symptoms, including how they present in patients and how they can be assessed. Early disease detection should rely on seeking a combination of signs and symptoms, rather than isolated findings. Examples of combinations which are strongly suggestive of NP-C include: splenomegaly and vertical supranuclear gaze palsy (VSGP); splenomegaly and clumsiness; splenomegaly and schizophrenia-like psychosis; psychotic symptoms and cognitive decline; and ataxia with dystonia, dysarthria/dysphagia and cognitive decline. VSGP is a hallmark of NP-C and becomes highly specific of the disease when it occurs in combination with other manifestations (e.g. splenomegaly, ataxia). In young infants (<2 years), abnormal saccades may first manifest as slowing and shortening of upward saccades, long before gaze palsy onset. While visceral manifestations tend to predominate during the perinatal and infantile period (2 months–6 years of age), neurological and psychiatric involvement is more prominent during the juvenile/adult period (>6 years of age). Psychosis in NP-C is atypical and variably responsive to treatment. Progressive cognitive decline, which always occurs in patients with NP-C, manifests as memory and executive impairment in juvenile/adult patients. Disease prognosis mainly correlates with the age at onset of the neurological signs, with early-onset forms progressing faster. Therefore, a detailed and descriptive picture of NP-C signs and symptoms may help improve disease detection and early diagnosis, so that therapy with miglustat (Zavesca®), the only available treatment approved to date, can be started as soon as neurological symptoms appear, in order to slow disease progression.

Evidence-based clinical use of insulin premixtures

Brazil is expected to have 19.6 million patients with diabetes by the year 2030. A key concept in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is establishing individualized glycemic goals based on each patient’s clinical characteristics, which impact the choice of antihyperglycemic therapy. Targets for glycemic control, including fasting blood glucose, postprandial blood glucose, and glycated hemoglobin (A1C), are often not reached solely with antihyperglycemic therapy, and insulin therapy is often required. Basal insulin is considered an initial strategy; however, premixed insulins are convenient and are equally or more effective, especially for patients who require both basal and prandial control but desire a more simplified strategy involving fewer daily injections than a basal-bolus regimen. Most physicians are reluctant to transition patients to insulin treatment due to inappropriate assumptions and insufficient information. We conducted a nonsystematic review in PubMed and identified the most relevant and recently published articles that compared the use of premixed insulin versus basal insulin analogues used alone or in combination with rapid-acting insulin analogues before meals in patients with T2DM. These studies suggest that premixed insulin analogues are equally or more effective in reducing A1C compared to basal insulin analogues alone in spite of the small increase in the risk of nonsevere hypoglycemic events and nonclinically significant weight gain. Premixed insulin analogues can be used in insulin-naïve patients, in patients already on basal insulin therapy, and those using basal-bolus therapy who are noncompliant with blood glucose self-monitoring and titration of multiple insulin doses. We additionally provide practical aspects related to titration for the specific premixed insulin analogue formulations commercially available in Brazil.

Historical cohort study examining comparative effectiveness of albuterol inhalers with and without integrated dose counter for patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

This study was supported financially by an unrestricted grant from Teva Pharmaceuticals, Frazer, PA, USA. The authors thank Jenny Fanstone of Fanstone Medical Communications Ltd., UK, and Elizabeth V Hillyer for medical writing support, funded by Research in Real-Life. We acknowledge with gratitude Dr Ruchir Parikh for his review of and contributions to the manuscript.

Revisiting the origin and development of pleonastic that in English

The origin of pleonastic that can be traced back to Old English where it could appear in syntactic constructions consisting of a preposition + demonstrative pronoun (i.e. for þy þat, for þæm þe) or a subordinator (i.e. oþ þat). Its diffusion with other subordinators is considered an early Middle English development as a result of the standardization of this item as the general subordinator in the period, which motivated its use as a pleonastic word in combination with all kinds of conjunctions (i.e. now that, gif that, when that, etc.) and prepositions (i.e. before that, save that, in that). Its use considerably increased in late Middle English, declining throughout the 17th century. The list of subordinating elements includes relativizers (i.e. this that), adverbial relatives (i.e. there that) and a number of subordinators (i.e. after, as, because, before, beside, for, if, since, sith, though, until, when, while, etc.). The present paper pursues the following objectives: a) to analyse the use and distribution of pleonastic that in a corpus of early English medical writing (in the period 1375-1700); b) to classify the construction in terms of the two different varieties of medical texts, i.e. treatises and recipes; and c) to assess the decline of the construction with the different conjunctive words. The data used as sources of evidence come from The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing, i.e. Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT for the period 1375-1500) and Early Modern English Medical Texts (EMEMT for the period 1500-1700).

Myth creation in textbook writing : the case of randomised controlled trials in medical research

Textbooks, across all disciplines, are prone to contain errors; grammatical, editorial, factual, or judgemental. The following is an account of one of the possible effects of such errors; how an error becomes entrenched and even exaggerated as later textbooks fail to correct the original error. The example considered here concerns the origins of one of the most basic and important tools of to­ day's medical research, the randomised controlled trial. It is the result of a systematic study of 26 British, French and German history of medicine textbooks since 1996.

The writing of medical papers

Mode of access: Internet.

The writing of medical papers,

"Standard abbreviations for medical journals": p. 117-146.

Direct writing of chitosan scaffolds using a robotic system

Purpose – This paper aims to present a novel rapid prototyping (RP) fabrication methods and preliminary characterization for chitosan scaffolds. Design – A desktop rapid prototyping robot dispensing (RPBOD) system has been developed to fabricate scaffolds for tissue engineering (TE) applications. The system is a computer-controlled four-axis machine with a multiple-dispenser head. Neutralization of the acetic acid by the sodium hydroxide results in a precipitate to form a gel-like chitosan strand. The scaffold properties were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, porosity calculation and compression test. An example of fabrication of a freeform hydrogel scaffold is demonstrated. The required geometric data for the freeform scaffold were obtained from CT-scan images and the dispensing path control data were converted form its volume model. The applications of the scaffolds are discussed based on its potential for TE. Findings – It is shown that the RPBOD system can be interfaced with imaging techniques and computational modeling to produce scaffolds which can be customized in overall size and shape allowing tissue-engineered grafts to be tailored to specific applications or even for individual patients. Research limitations/implications – Important challenges for further research are the incorporation of growth factors, as well as cell seeding into the 3D dispensing plotting materials. Improvements regarding the mechanical properties of the scaffolds are also necessary. Originality/value – One of the important aspects of TE is the design scaffolds. For customized TE, it is essential to be able to fabricate 3D scaffolds of various geometric shapes, in order to repair tissue defects. RP or solid free-form fabrication techniques hold great promise for designing 3D customized scaffolds; yet traditional cell-seeding techniques may not provide enough cell mass for larger constructs. This paper presents a novel attempt to fabricate 3D scaffolds, using hydrogels which in the future can be combined with cells.