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Too weird - merge Abdominal epilepsy into epilepsy?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

independent material found

---

Weird - I have never heard of it...good idea or....not? Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I think I'd have to disagree on this one. It's well referenced, albeit without the inline citations, but I can get round to that later, and refers to a specialised epileptic disease. There's nothing wrong with creating articles for rare conditions as long as they are well documented, which this one is as it has 484 PubMed hits (searching 'Abdominal AND epilepsy') and about 350 on scholar (using 'Abdominal epilepsy' on exact matching). Also, I'm not sure where we'd stick this if we merged it with epilepsy. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 10:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I would neither merge it. It is indeed weird, but documented so I feel it has its place in wikipedia. --Garrondo (talk) 11:09, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, fine by me. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 11:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Pathology for medical practitioners

I think we should make a Pathology section destined for medical students and practitioners. It should be organized the way pathology is studied in medical schools. Most of the articles are already there but they are not organized ... What do you think ? wlady 09:46, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is written for the general public. What you are suggesting might be more appropriate for v:Wikiversity:School of Medicine. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

the general public can understand medicine. The only thing that is hard is the vocabulary. Medicine is not hard to understand. I agree, we should drastically improve the pathology sections and articles. Use good writing, and the general public will understand and it can be modeled after how medical students are taught. Medical students are like the general public when entering medical school and pathology is taught right away... you can do it here and I will read your articles. 75.43.223.34 (talk) 05:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposing delisting of rabies as Good article

I was surprised to find rabies was listed as a Good article. In its present state, I believe it fails to meet the criteria, and would therefore propose delisting. Please add your comments to the appropriate section of the rabies talk page. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:51, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Scleritis Article

The article on scleritis was vandalized. I think I've fixed it adequately, but (1) I'm a patient WITH scleritis, not a medical professional, and (2) I've never done more than correct spelling, grammar or obvious spam before, so I would really appreciate it if someone more knowledgeable would review the article and make sure it's OK now. Thanks. Mutzwerg (talk) 16:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It looks OK to me - that is, I don't see any remaining vandalism. It looks like you did a good job cleaning it up. MastCell ^Talk 17:45, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Equestrianism

Talk:Equestrianism#Health concerns is a discussion of the merits of a medical journal article that suggests female pudendal injury may be caused by riding bicycles and horses. Extra eyes would be appreciated. --Una Smith (talk) 17:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've cast my eyes on the female pudenda. Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

You really had to go there, didn't you? :) Basie (talk) 21:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Medical acronyms; also, my brain hurts

G'day all. Today I am struggling with the acronym 'PICU', and related topics.

PICU stands for Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. It also stands for Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. In an arguably less-common (but every bit as valid) usage, it stands for Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit.

Recently, I created Pediatric intensive care unit. I redirected PICU to this page, as previously it went to Intensive care unit. I also redirected Paediatric intensive care unit. So far so good.

Here comes the tricky part. The page Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit has just been created. This morning I have placed Template:otheruses4 on Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit, and Template:redirect-acronym on Pediatric intensive care unit. Questions from an inexperienced wikipedian:

• Have I used the two templates correctly? Are there others which are better suited?
• Am I correct in thinking that the 'pediatric' usage is more widely-known and should remain the target of the PICU redirect?
• "Pediatric Intensive Care Unit" in the article name or "Pediatric intensive care unit"? I notice the psych ICU article uses the former style.
• "Pediatric Intensive Care Unit" in the article body, or "Pediatric intensive care unit"? Or "pediatric intensive care unit"?

I know what I'd use, but wanted to get a sense of what was preferred by the project. Cheers, Basie (talk) 21:34, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Depends where you are, services change from hospital to hospital, to get an accurate evaluation would involve reviewing loads of hospitals. I have also seen IPCU (for Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit) at the old Rozelle Hospital and other combinations. I wouldn't say one was more common than the other - eg Sydney (pop 4 million) has two big kids hospitals (where most childrens services are funnelled to) and loads of psych wards attached to bigger hospitals and 2 intensive psych units at least. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I used to work at the Westmead PICU (the paediatric one, not the psychiatric one). It was immediately adjacent to one of Sydney's psych hospitals (Cumberland) which I'm sure had an intensive care unit. However, I wasn't saying the units were less common, just the use of the acronym in general publications. When I tell people I work in PICU, most seem to assume I mean working with children. Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, Rozelle has now closed and moved lock-stock-and-barrel to Concord Hospital as well. Yeah, I take your point, though I suspect it would be somewhat tricky to back it up with a Reliable Source although maybe a peads textbook might use the acronym. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

If "PICU" is most commonly used to refer to a peds ICU (I'd personally never seen it used as an acronym for "psychiatric intensive care unit"), there's no reason why it shouldn't redirect to Pediatric intensive care unit, and a hatnote in each article suffices. Pediatric intensive care unit (sentence case) is also preferred per WP:CAPS, unless the article is about a particular PICU in a particular hospital :)

On another note, if you're looking for a RS for acronyms and abbreviations, I believe Stanley Jablonski's Dictionary of Medical Acronyms & Abbreviations is held in quite high regard. I don't own a copy, but someone might; perhaps Nbauman (talk · contribs) has access to a similar source. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for WP:CAPS, I hadn't found that yet. I will move Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit to Psychiatric intensive care unit and let the editor know. Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

add ictotest

please. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.40.12.37 (talk) 22:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Bilirubin#Blood_tests? Tim Vickers (talk) 22:36, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it's a urine test. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:06, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Aha! No wonder the lab techs keep looking at me funny. MastCell ^Talk 19:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Hypergranulation definition needed

Could someone please add a definition for Hypergranulation to the article Granuloma? The word hypergranulation is linked there from ingrown nail, but it is not defined in the granuloma article. It would also be helpful if the article could be "dumbed down" for non-medical experts to be able to understand! Thanks. Stephen! ^Coming... 16:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Short stature

Can a few people put Short stature on their watchlists? An anon keeps spamming a commercial website to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Watchlisted. MastCell ^Talk 19:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Ditto. Basie (talk) 04:52, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Video medical journal

I would be grateful for input from this project as to what should be done with Video medical journal. The current article is clearly promotional of a video website which appears to be run by the article's creator; however, the general topic of internet-published videos appears interesting and notable. Comments on the talk page about possibilities such as merging or renaming would be useful. Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 18:42, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggest merging into medical journal article. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Long term complications from blunt force abdominal trauma and hemoperitoneum

I need to find a review of the long term complications of blunt abdominal trauma and hemoperitoneum in children. Can you help? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.102.214.50 (talk) 22:16, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Pubmed is the place to go for such specific questions. It will probably be hard to find an article about the long term consequences of all blunt abdominal trauma. You can probably more easily find articles on specific injuries, such as in this case splenic, hepatic or renal injury. Let me know if you find anything, one of my main interests is pediatric surgery. --WS (talk) 01:10, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:medicine: all articles?

Should every article within the project have the navigation template at the bottom of the page? I've been unsure when to add it. Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No, it's much better to pick something more specific from Category:Medicine templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I see. Thanks! Basie (talk) 01:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Chinese herbology

I would like to make this article more NPOV, but I'm not sure where to start since there isn't much research available and TCM involves so many different herbs. If someone could give me some help with this I would really appreciate it. --Ships at a Distance (talk) 01:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you should start by finding a good general source on the subject. A book about TCM-in-general is going to be more useful to you than a research paper about this-herb-at-this-dose-in-specific. If you don't have anything, try your local library, Google books, or even an online bookstore. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Water fluoridation nominated as Good Article

I have nominated Water fluoridation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) as a Good Article. Suggestions for further improvements are welcome. If you have the time and the inclination to review it, please follow the reviewers' instructions at the top of Talk:Water fluoridation. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 08:55, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Water fluoridation has passed its good article review. Congratualtions to all the editors who brought this about. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

science and medical illustration website

from today's scout report Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/?collection=SeeingIsBelieving700&col_id=197

Brought together originally in 1999 for an exhibition held at the New York Public Library's Gottesman Exhibition Hall, this set of intriguing images covers the fields of astronomy, chemistry, geology, medicine, and physics taken from different engravings, lithographs, and manuscript illuminations. The images here range from the 16th to the 19th centuries, and they are culled from works such as the 1798 volume "Elemens de la philosophie de Neuton" and the important 1830 volume "Principles of Geology" written by geologist Sir Charles Lyell. All told, visitors can browse through ten crucial texts in their entirety, and they are all wonderful meditations on the skills and talents of unique scientists (and artists) throughout the ages. Finally, visitors looking for specific materials can also search through the entire collection, or even click on the "See all Images" button.Mccready (talk) 15:46, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Mechanical ventilation: copy edit

Could I have some experienced eyes on Mechanical ventilation please? I have just done a first pass on the head, going for a more declarative and concise style. Replies on Talk:Mechanical ventilation would be appreciated. Cheers, Basie (talk) 18:56, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Nurse practitioner edit warring

A medicine and nursing project article, Nurse practitioner, is receiving a fair bit of unwelcome attention from a user via various socks. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Nurse_practitioner_&_socks_of_User:Nrse. It may be worth a few kind people from here watchlisting the page for a few days. Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It's on my watchlist. We had problems with this editor over at Physician assistant; having that article locked down tightly is probably pushing the editor off to the NP article.

It appears that the editor in question has also picked a name that is remarkably similar (three L's instead of two) to another user, User:ChillyMD (who appears to be undoing the mess created by the possible sock). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks :) Cheers, Basie (talk) 03:32, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

List of causes of death by rate: What is color coding?

List of causes of death by rate has charts with some causes of death color-coded and others not. I can't figure out what this is supposed to indicate. Can somebody please take a look at this? (Also note at Talk:List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate#Color_coding_in_charts). Thanks. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 23:43, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone have the time to review a GA candidate?

Phagocyte is currently a GA candidate. I cannot review it for GA because of a potential conflict of interest; I am mentoring a young Wikipedian who has worked on the article as part of a school project. Any offers? Graham Colm ^Talk 22:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll give it a shot between today and tomorrow. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 23:23, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you :-) Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 23:46, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

That took a lot less time than I thought. Very good article, passed. Check the review Talk:Phagocyte/GA1 :) —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 00:14, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Many, many thanks. Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 08:53, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Aawww, I told Mastcell he should do it :) Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

What's a GA? 24.5.78.220 (talk) 16:31, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh... "good article", I guess. /me goes to read up. 24.5.78.220 (talk) 16:32, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Use of the words "conditions" and "diseases" in category names

I am currently discussing the renaming of a category at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_January_10#Category:Diseases_of_skin_appendages and wanted to know if more medicine editors would look at the entry and discuss the use of the words "conditions" and "diseases" in category names so a solid consensus can be reached. Thanks.kilbad (talk) 22:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a good discussion going on at the link above, but I would appreciate if some more editors were involved so a solid consensus can be reached. If you have not particiapted in the discussion, perhaps you would consider doing so? kilbad (talk) 13:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

List of dosage abbreviations

What should be done with the list of dosage abbreviations. Not only is the article mis-named, but it's mess. Delete? Merge? Ignore? —G716 <^T·_C> 07:42, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge to List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions. "Ignore" is not an option!!! :D Fvasconcellos (t·c) 11:23, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge. Most are already included in List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions anyway. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 16:58, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Merge. Wikipedia: the one place where you never have to struggle to interpret a doctor's handwriting on your drug chart! ;) Cheers, Basie (talk) 22:02, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

 Done - claimed to be list abbreviations of dosages, (which would be T, TT for 2 tablets, tab, inj, inh, ml etc) rather than what it was of "frequency of dosing". Small subset duplication of larger article. Almost all already included, so I've redirected the page, and the remaining items put up for discussion on Talk:List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions David Ruben ^Talk 00:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Out of courtesy, thought I better let article creator know - blow me, one of our new ArbCom members ! I can't find "subset duplication of a Wikiproject supervised page" listed at WP:SPEEDY, but then this only an editor's redirect, not an admin page deletion (I'll let someone else consider proposing AfD). David Ruben ^Talk 01:14, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Heh, I'll keep John in line ;) Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

PS: FWIW I agree with merge. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

My page was first :P I've explained more at User_talk:Jayvdb#List_of_dosage_abbreviations, but I am more than happy that there is a better list available now. Thanks everyone for reorganising what was once a long ugly list. I recommend that these pages also make use of {{section}}, as I have done here, so that they can be used in redirects like this. Cheers, John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:28, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Sanity check: Sudden antenatal death syndrome merge

Proposed here. Might be useful to have someone check my suggestion as the Stillbirth page seems to have been quite a battleground in the past. Cheers, Basie (talk) 04:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Bile acids and colon cancer

Could someone more familiar with cancer studies review this paragraph I added recently. I think I correctly summarized the sources, but I'm confused by the fact that DCA, which causes apoptosis, is a cancer promoter. Xasodfuih (talk) 00:14, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it is rather speculative. Some of your statements seem to be based on in vitro studies on aritifical cell lines. JFW | T@lk 01:15, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is outside my area of knowledge, but the thinking is probably as follows. Bile acids (like DCA) can cause DNA damage (e.g. PMID 1775385), but they also promote apoptosis, which serves as a check against the development of cancer. As with most cancers, multiple "hits" are probably necessary here - that is, if the colonic epithelial cells become resistant to bile-acid-driven apoptosis, then the DNA-damaging effects of the bile acid may accumulate to generate a cancer (take a look at PMID 8603388, which indicates that loss of sensitivity to bile-acid-driven apoptosis is a key event in colon carcinogenesis). I guess it's a bit odd that all of this work seems to originate from a single center, but who knows. MastCell ^Talk 18:00, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, something like that. They formulate a hypothesis here: "We have proposed that frequent exposure of the colonic epithelium of an individual to high concentrations of cytotoxic bile acids can select for an apoptosis-resistant cell population, making that individual at risk for colon cancer". Same AZ group, of course :-) Thank you both for your time, Xasodfuih (talk) 00:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

N.B.: They publish in good enough journals though. Carcinogenesis has IF > 5. So I guess other experts find it plausible. Xasodfuih (talk) 00:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I was taught there were primary bile acids and secondary bile acids - secondary had been converted by bacteria in the colon. I was taught that the secondary bile acid was thought to be carcinogenic. My 2 cents. Tkjazzer (talk) 04:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The confusion here was around the carcinogenesis mechanism(s) of secondary bile acids. There doesn't seem to be a definitive answer, only hypotheses advanced by researchers in this area. Thanks, Xasodfuih (talk) 18:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

MCOTW (or should that be 6 weeks?)

JFW | T@lk 15:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I've always thought of it as the 'Medicine Collaboration of the [Whichever period is useful]' :) LeeVJ (talk) 15:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Head and neck anatomy

Looks as though part of Anesthesia ended up here. I left a question on the talk page, bit then thought this may be faster. Could s.o. plse. check and correct if necessary.76.97.245.5 (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Paracetamol

Paracetamol is listed as a feature article. It however is very light on references. Wondering if this status should be reviewed.

It also states that paracetamol is an anti inflammatory in dogs. Controversial statement. No reference.

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:11, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

If you're concerned, take it to WP:FAR. Although I share your concerns, you might want to bring it up with WP:PHARM beforehand. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 07:51, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Could someone please check I've understood correctly with this effort to bring more plain English.[1]. Thanks.Mccready (talk) 07:56, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Now at FAR (long overdue, might I add). Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:01, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Jmh649 has nominated Paracetamol for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Anti-surgery editor

We have a POV push at Hyperhidrosis, Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy, Compensatory hyperhidrosis, and who knows what else. I've barely had any time to review the (medical journal) sources, but I suspect general misrepresentation and/or using primary sources to debunk reviews.

If you've got time, interest, or energy, I'd be happy to have more eyes and hands involved. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like Endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy has some pro-surgery (or just WP:SPAM editors) as well. Nbauman (talk) 00:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jumped in with both feet (only way to fly)! Cheers, Basie (talk) 04:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I've started a detailed review of some of (her?) sources at Talk:Hyperhidrosis. The "sympathectomy only harms" theory appears to be based on experiments in dogs, case reports involving sympathectomy for unrelated diseases, a few unusually outdated sources, and other simply unacceptable publications. We'll see what the response is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, almost all the proffered sources are less than stellar. I do think we should be careful not to come down resoundingly on the side of the surgery though, or at least make it clear that the recurrence of symptoms is extremely common.

My impression is that the editor has a close personal interest in the subject and has a hard time staying objective. We'll see what happens. Good on you for being patient! Cheers, Basie (talk) 13:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

"Less than stellar" is an understatement. I think the 1973 surgery involving five dogs (which cannot sweat) is my favorite proof of side effects in hyperhidrosis patients, but about 80% of the proffered "scientific proof" in Hyperhidrosis is single-patient case studies, people with unrelated diseases, and similarly pathetic sourcing. And the editor says that she's relying on these studies because the current, mainstream papers don't sufficiently support her POV.

There are certainly both short-term and long-term side effects and complications from sympathectomy, but we don't have to rely on these pathetic sources to demonstrate that. Limitations and side effects are addressed at some length in solid, up-to-date medical reviews and textbooks. There's absolutely no need to use these cherry-picked sources to paint the picture worse than it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Pharmacology in Wikipedia Signpost

Just a heads up that our colleagues at the Pharmacology project are the subject of this week's The Wikipedia Signpost report on Wikiprojects. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-01-17/WikiProject report. David Ruben ^Talk 22:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Will someone straighten out article title, redirects

I am not sure, but I think the article CHILD, known as Congenital hemidysplasia with ichthyosiform erythroderma and limb defects syndrome, also found through Congenital_hemidysplasia_with_ichthyosiform_erythroderma_and_limb_defects_(CHILD)_syndrome, and possibly other redirects, may need some cleanup of its article title and redirects to conform to accepted naming conventions? Could someone help fix this if it needs fixing? Thanks again! kilbad (talk) 00:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Redirects are cheap, and anything that a reasonable reader might search for (including capitalisation confusion) may exist. Of course they should be pointing to one single correctly-formated-titled article. The article title needs to be medically correct (vs common lay term) as per WP:MEDMOS, but then as commonly used in medical cicles, and "Congenital hemidysplasia with ichthyosiform erythroderma and limb defects" just ain't going to be what any expert in the field uses in their day-to-day speach. That said consider CREST syndrome which is much better known and similarly only by the abbreviation (vs "Syndrome of Calcinosis, Raynaud's syndrome, Esophageal dysmotility, Sclerodactyly and Telangiectasia"). That said, we refer to "CREST syndrome" not "CREST", and so I would move CHILD to CHILD syndrome. David Ruben ^Talk 01:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

As the article creator, I have no objection to the proposal. I've moved it to CHILD syndrome. --Arcadian (talk) 05:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Usog

Someone interested in obscure psychiatric topics may want to have a look at this article. It was written largely by User:FadulJoseA who was indef blocked. The article seems quite speculative. Xasodfuih (talk) 04:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Based on the shining bio that Jose Fadul has here, I'd say that user was him or closely related to him. Half the Usog article is his theory on the condition. Xasodfuih (talk) 05:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Drug dosage

I've received a few e-mails about why we don't include drug dosage information in WP entries. I know WP:MEDMOS states:

Do not include dose and titration information except when they are notable or necessary for the discussion in the article. Wikipedia is not an instruction manual or textbook and should not include instructions, advice (legal, medical or otherwise) or "how-to"s; see WP:NOT#HOWTO.

But some physicians said WP shouldn't be that paternalistic. You can follow the discussion on Twitter. Others asked why we can't include such information plus attaching an additional disclaimer.

What do you think?

NCurse _work 13:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a member here, but I have an opinion. The clause "except when they are notable or necessary for the discussion" seems to be interpreted liberally, and that is as it should be. For example when "large doses" or "small doses" are mentioned, some range may need to be presented for it to make sense. Also many drugs when new (for example birth control pills) contained high doses which since have come way down, and that would be a valid part of the discussion. To conclude, I think the paragraph you quote is reasonable as it stands.

Also, I think one shouldn't begin with "additional disclaimer[s]", as where might that end? If you have one in article A, then you certainly must at B, but whether needed at C needs discussion. Better not to start on that, IMO. - Hordaland (talk) 14:29, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I can see where it would be problematic to have dosing information in an article if people read it and then take whatever dose the article says. Mistakes or vandalism could lead to ODing. But including dosing information straight from a PI sheet, to me that doesn't fall under "instructions, advice, or 'how-to's" - it's descriptive information about the drug. Being able to say "the usual dose for condition x is 2 mg" or 200 mg tells the reader about the strength and efficacy of the drug in a quantitative way, which is better than simply stating that the drug is potent or some other ambiguous statement. Titration information, on the other hand, is instructional and shouldn't be included. But I don't see the harm in being able to say, for example, "The usual dose of propranolol for hypertension is 120-240 mg per day.[2]</ref>" My sister was watching ER the other day and I saw a doctor order 1 mg of propranolol for a hypertensive patient. Had I not been around to inform my sister that 1 mg is barely enough to affect an infant, she should be able to go on Wikipedia and see that the ER writers made a mistake, rather than believing that 1 mg of propranolol is going to lower an adult's blood pressure. Wikipedia is intended for a general audience - a PI sheet is not. Articles should include the useful, descriptive information about a drug from reliable sources (e.g. PI sheets) stated in a way that a general audience can easily comprehend. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 17:28, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe if there was a dose template and only people with 500 or more edits could edit it, it would work. Vandalism can already happen. There is nothing to stop someone adding in misinformation on dosage now.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I have seen typos happen in text books. One book I have has an induction agent listed at 1 mg / kg when it should have been 0.1mg / kg.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Here is why we don't include drug dosage and titration information on WP:

Propranolol

From the British National Formulary (adults)

• By Mouth
  • Hypertension, initially 80 mg twice daily, increased at weekly intervals as required; maintenance 160–320 mg daily
  • Prophylaxis of variceal bleeding in portal hypertension, initially 40 mg twice daily, increased to 80 mg twice daily according to heart rate; max. 160 mg twice daily
  • Phaeochromocytoma (only with an alpha-blocker), 60 mg daily for 3 days before surgery or 30 mg daily in patients unsuitable for surgery
  • Angina, initially 40 mg 2–3 times daily; maintenance 120–240 mg daily
  • Arrhythmias, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, anxiety tachycardia, and thyrotoxicosis (adjunct), 10–40 mg 3–4 times daily
  • Anxiety with symptoms such as palpitation, sweating, tremor, 40 mg once daily, increased to 40 mg 3 times daily if necessary
  • Prophylaxis after myocardial infarction, 40 mg 4 times daily for 2–3 days, then 80 mg twice daily, beginning 5 to 21 days after infarction
  • Migraine prophylaxis and essential tremor, initially 40 mg 2–3 times daily; maintenance 80–160 mg daily
• By intravenous injection
  • arrhythmias and thyrotoxic crisis, 1 mg over 1 minute; if necessary repeat at 2-minute intervals; max. total dose 10 mg (5 mg in anaesthesia)

From the British National Formulary for Children

• Arrhythmias
  • By mouth
    • Neonate: 250–500 micrograms/kg 3 times daily, adjusted according to response
    • Child 1 month–18 years: 250–500 micrograms/kg 3–4 times daily, adjusted according to response; max. 1 mg/kg 4 times daily, total daily dose not to exceed 160 mg daily
  • By slow intravenous injection, with ECG monitoring
    • Neonate:20–50 micrograms/kg repeated if necessary every 6–8 hours
    • Child 1 month–18 years: 25–50 micrograms/kg repeated every 6–8 hours if necessary
• Hypertension
  • By mouth
    • Neonate: initially, 250 micrograms/kg 3 times daily, increased if necessary to max. 2 mg/kg 3 times daily
    • Child 1 month–12 years: 0.25–1 mg/kg 3 times daily, increased at weekly intervals to max. 5 mg/kg daily
    • Child 12–18 years: initially 80 mg twice daily; increased at weekly intervals as required; maintenance 160–320 mg daily; slow-release preparations may be used for once daily administration
• Tetralogy of Fallot
  • By mouth
    • Neonate: 0.25–1 mg/kg 2–3 times daily, max. 2 mg/kg 3 times daily
    • Child 1 month–12 years: 0.25–1 mg/kg 3–4 times daily, max. 5 mg/kg daily
  • By slow intravenous injection with ECG monitoring
    • Neonate: initially 15–20 micrograms/kg (max. 100 micrograms/kg), repeated every 12 hours if necessary
    • Child 1 month–12 years: initially 15–20 micrograms/kg (max. 100 micrograms/kg), repeated every 6–8 hours if necessary; higher doses rarely necessary
• Migraine prophylaxis
  • By mouth
    • Child 2–12 years: 200–500 micrograms/kg 3 times daily; max. 4 mg/kg daily, usual dose 10–20 mg 2–3 times daily
    • Child 12–18 years: 20–40 mg 2–3 times daily; maintenance 80–160 mg daily

Have a I made a mistake? Who knows! Colin°^Talk 19:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Good point! . I have no objections to mentioning dosages, but only when they are worth discussing. I disagree with Twirligig that it says something about the drug's strength in a quantitative fashion. Discussing how omeprazole is usually given at 20 to 40 mg is a mindless uninteresting fact. Discussing the colors of warfarin tablets, or the difficulty of preparing adrenaline/epinephrine in the right dosage for iv bolus in anaphylactic shock, those are examples where the dosage has notability per se.

This is obviously a spin-off of the recent publication in Annals of Pharmacotherapy, see also previous discussions here and on the more relevant WP:PHARM. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: nice seeing you around NCurse!

I'm a little concerned about including dosing info - I realize we took a beating in that journal article for not including drug dosing, but nonetheless. The problem with dosing info is that it's often not particularly cut-and-dried, as Colin points out. What's the proper dose of intravenous haloperidol, for instance? As far as I know, IV Haldol is still not FDA-approved, so there is no "approved" dose. The doses used in practice vary substantially. The other problem has to do with currency - drug dosing information changes occasionally, and it creates a major maintenance problem when we're already stretched thin. Is there a freely available, reliable dosing guide out there on the Web that we could include as an external link on our drug articles? Maybe that would work? MastCell ^Talk 21:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I have added a Daily Med field to Template:Drugbox (context here). I believe that this may help address this issue. Click here to see what Pregabalin looks like with this field in the infobox, or click here to see the external link. --Arcadian (talk) 21:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Colin, and if people don't think that's suitably WP:NOT#HOWTO to be avoided in articles, he did rather simplify things ! For the BNF appendicies also need referring to:

• Appendix 2: Liver disease p 783 "Propranolol - reduce dose"
• Appendix 3: Renal Impairment p798 "Manufacturer advises caution - dose reduction may be required" and for "Principles of dose adjusment in renal impairment" there is a whole page 787 in eye-straining size-10 font to be digested. Of course that in turn needs to combined with "NICE clinical guideline 73 Chronic kidney disease: early identification and management of chronic kidney disease in adults in primary and secondary care" (only some of its 204 pages of relevance here) as to what counts as "renal impairment"

Twirligig, as above indicates 1mg intravenously is propably a good adult dose, so appologise to ER writers and your sister :-) Seriously though this all shows just how problematic including simplified adult oral dosage is, eg of "40mg once to thrice daily in anxiety & 80-160mg twice daily for hypertension" (PS I generally try hard not to prescribe for anxiety directly at 40mg - patients generally complain of light headiness, so prefer to issue as 10mg 1-4 thrice daily as required, and then step up to 40mg if so needed/tolerated).

Drug information sheets are no help either, as can vary significantly between countries, eg cardioprotection dosage of aspirin is typically 75mg in UK, but very different I believe in the US.

Even where we could agree on a global dosaging, the range of strengths is frankly meaningless to the average reader: Atorvatatin 40mg tablet is of a size that bears no relationship to the drug quantity (being similar in size to a Paracetamol 500mg and not that much larger than Doxazosin 1mg). Nor is potency given by the dosage weight where large differences might be equi-potent (eg Lisinopril 2.5mg is not disimilar in effect to Irbesartan 75mg) or wildly different as in Morphine 10mg m/r twice a day being approx equivalent to 2 tablets of the combination codeine/paracetamol 30/500mg taken 4 times a day - an apparent weight ratio 1:212 - and thus a cancer patient on Morphine 90mg twice a day will be in a totally different league of pain control from just 2x500mg paracetamols for a headache ! And yes I have encountered patients seeking "less agressive treatment" because they have looked up online various members of a drug class and seen that one seems to come in a lighter tablet size <sigh>

Finally as Twirligig correctly states "Articles should include the useful, descriptive information about a drug ... stated in a way that a general audience can easily comprehend" and a general audience does not mean the targeted audience of patients wishing to take a drug who should have discussed with their doctor, had a pharmacist check with them that they understand the indication & instructions (having checked the prescription for being reasonable in its details, eg Digoxin 125mg is a 1000-fold overdose vs Digoxin 125mcg), and then bother to read the enclosed, and totally-free, drug leaflet. Doh! how naiive I am, patients should be freely deciding for themselves to self-treat their arthritis with methotrexate ordered illegally over the internet and taken unsupervised (if you need to ask, this great drug has potentially life-threatening side effects) David Ruben ^Talk 22:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's also worth noting the monumental amount of work we'd be adding to an already busy editing schedule! But maybe I'm just lazy ;)

I really don't want to be responsible for some poor emergency department registrar having to explain to a patient, "Yes, I know Wikipedia said I should give you two grams, but that would kill you!" Cheers, Basie (talk) 22:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I just don't see the encyclopedic value. I mean, we could list the drug registration milestones for each drug with each agency, too, as that's also information that some readers will really want to know and which directly affects their personal medical care, since "ain't registered here" means "you can't take that drug". But that's also a violation of WP:NOT#STATS. We're supposed to provide meaning and context, not create a database.

And as for the physicians: have they really thought through the implications of an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit"? Do they really want patients demanding higher doses of opiates, because an addict-vandalized "Wikipedia says you gave me a very low dose"? Do they really want patients to cut back on their antihypertensives because a noncompliant patient vandalized Wikipedia to make his/her family think that the normal dose was so high that it's dangerous? Think about the negative effect of the worst internet chat board, and now add the authority of the information coming from an encyclopedia and one of the most popular websites in the world, instead of from Natural_Joe@hotmail.com, who joined the chat board four days ago.

Sure: vandalism can happen now. But if 95% of the time, there's no information given at all (and therefore no incorrect information given), with the result that most of the time, people will have to look at more secure sources for that information.

And it would be a maintenance nightmare. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Without a reliable source of dosing information I do agree it's better to not include it. However, I think if the argument is going to be made that we're responsible for people who decide to use Wikipedia as a primary source of information about their medication, which I'm sure will continue to happen regardless of how much information we include, then I have to ask, is the information on Wikipedia supposed to be censored simply because people might make poor decisions based on it? twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 23:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Umm lets see, if you test edit an article with a truely stupid certainly-fatal dose (i.e. just marginally less than that for gastric rupture) then yup I'll happily award you a WP:TROUT :-) and indeed Wikipedia:Village stocks seems appropriate thereafter when the vandal-brigade decide to follow suit :-) Nothing wrong with what I would prefer to term self-restraint; we have in {{drugbox}} infobox the ablity to link to product licensing literature which gives all the dosing information anyone could want, just use the licence_EU, license_US, and now DailyMedID parameters... David Ruben ^Talk 00:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess I'm exposing myself as a social Darwinist (of the Darwin Awards variety). I just don't believe in sacrificing the exchange of knowledge for the protection of people lacking in the ability to use that knowledge. Anyway, since it appears that no one in favor of including dosing information in articles cares enough to participate in this discussion, I think the more important issue is that {{drugbox}} or the links mentioned above are missing from many drug articles (e.g. Adderall, Olanzapine, and Risperidone). Correcting that should be sufficient to bring this debate to a close. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 01:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

From what I've seen people are doing just fine killing themselves off without our help! Seriously though, I take your point and it is a fine line between saying what we say already in the articles (knowledge people could use to hurt themselves) and specifying exact numbers. The line is there though, and I'd rather not cross it. (By the way, I like correcting TV medical shows too. Grays Anatomy drives me nuts: none of the surgeons I work with are that pretty!) ;) Cheers, Basie (talk) 02:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(r to Twirligig) The thing is, there is so much work for us to do here, without doing work that is already done, and done well, elsewhere. I don't see linking to an authoritiative source for dosing info as any form of sacrifice. --Una Smith (talk) 05:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, guys, so much for your valuable comments. It seems we can stick to the former concept and we won't include drug dosage-related information in entries. I also think that is the best decision. Wikipedia has an entry on bombs, but not an instruction about how to create one (sorry for the bad example). NCurse _work 00:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Sock at Nurse Practitioner

We seem to have a new User:Nrse sock at Nurse Practitioner. I've tagged the account, but I don't have time to figure out the RFCU process and will probably be offwiki for ~16 hours. If someone wants to start the sockpuppet investigation (or just to prevent the revert-to-my-previous-account's-last-version POV pushing), I'd appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Got it. Cheers, Basie (talk) 20:21, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Note two socks, not one: User:FetktNP and User:FetktNPP. Might as well have a pair, I suppose. I tagged the other one. Basie (talk) 21:02, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm at 3RR and falling asleep after my night shift. I'll try to file the case before I hit the sack. Basie (talk) 21:30, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Done. *yawn* sleep! Basie (talk) 22:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Outcome: the above users, and some others I didn't know about, were blocked. Also refer Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Nrse. Basie (talk) 02:38, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. I wonder if we could just run a checkuser on every new editor at that article. Probably not... but if this gets out of hand again, we should look into semi-protection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, it doesn't end there. There are two new socks, one an IP and one new user account. When I reported them, the user counter-accused myself and another editor of being socks, presumably to waste checkuser time. This is getting rather old :) Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Nrse Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:26, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I have requested admin assistance at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Nurse practitioner, ongoing sockpuppetry. I think I should stop reverting now, until the spurious sock allegation has been cleared up. What a mess! Basie (talk) 00:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry too much about that. I've blocked the most recent sock, Ewalsh842477 (talk · contribs), and semiprotected the page to slow the onslaught. I'll watchlist it; I'm happy to block obvious, disruptive socks without a lengthy SPI/checkuser process, but feel free to leave me a note on my talkpage if you'd like me to look at something specific. :) MastCell ^Talk 00:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

What's our guess at the next targeted article? User:Nrse has an axe to grind, and will doubtless be back. Here's a short list of previously edited articles that might be bear watching:

• Nurse practitioner (semi-protected due to Nrse)
• Physician assistant (fully protected due to Nrse)
• Nursing
• Clinical officer
• Physician
• Licensure
• License
• Licensed practical nurse‎
• Family medicine
• Medicine
• Residency (medicine)
• General practitioner
• Family medicine
• Electronic signature
• Medical prescription
• Primary care
• Radiation therapy

I'm betting on Nursing or Clinical officer, but all of these appear to have held Nrse's attention for a while in the past. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:33, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah. Suspect we won't know until it happens. Really sad if this person actually is a nurse, but I guess in every profession there is a 'wide cross-section of humanity' :( Basie (talk) 02:24, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Disease navigation templates - emphasise disease vs. causative agent

The navigation templates Template:Zoonotic viral diseases and Template:Viral diseases have become increasingly virology templates rather than disease templates. (For the versions I am commenting on, see [3] and [4])

While the name, title, categories and wikiproject information indicate that they are about diseases, the viral causes of the disease and the taxonomy of the viruses are being emphasized, and the diseases buried.

I think we should move it back to dealing with diseases (i.e. disease first), group items by disease characteristics, and remove taxonomic information on the causative organism (since the templates have grown so large).

If want to keep the focus on viruses, then the name, title, category, color scheme, etc. should be changed to make them virology templates (e.g. viruses that affect humans).

Thoughts? Suggestions? Is there previous discussion/consensus on whether disease templates should list disease or causative agent first, and whether groupings should favor disease or agent characteristics?

(Please note that before starting this discussion I did revise Zoonotic viral diseases to try to re-emphasize the disease aspect, but upon realizing how widespread the issue was I decided it would be well to seek input before pursuing further.) Thank you. Zodon (talk) 01:29, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with many of the assumptions underlying your arguments, but rather than debating them individually, could you create a model in your userspace of what you would consider to be ideal? --Arcadian (talk) 01:02, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Which assumptions? What is unclear about the suggested edits?

An additional template with the same problem is Template:Protozoal diseases (see [5] for current version).

Protozoal diseases is so overweighted with taxonomy that most of the screen space is empty, and the diseases are off the screen. (Just imagine looking at it on a mobile internet device with a small screen).

The purpose of wp:navigation templates is navigation. Infoboxes, taxonomic navboxes and other aids exist for taxonomy. Or perhaps the navboxes should be split - one for virology/parisitology (emphasize taxonomy), and one for medicine (diseases). Zodon (talk) 02:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I think Template:Zoonotic viral diseases is fairly good format. ie. DISEASE (agent). The Protozoan template could be changed to follow a similar fashion - at the moment it is Parasitic agent (disease).

Taxonomy could be further reduced by removing the columns with taxanomic division (eg. virus family names).--ZayZayEM (talk) 06:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The examples are not straight taxonomic templates, but they are classification schemes and they are complicated. Checking some of the entries, I see their categories do not begin to reflect what is in the templates. Eg, each virus could be in a category referring to its host, its own taxonomy, and possibly one or more disease categories. --Una Smith (talk) 09:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Notability 2009

WikiProject Notability has us down for thirty-two articles with unclear notability. One's already been deleted, and some may have been improved since the list was generated (in October), but we need to evaluate these 31 remaining 26 20. Here's the list:

• Clinical Transaction Repository EMR AfD: discuss
• Peruvian Cancer Foundation (December 2007) talk page
• Registered Psychiatric Nurse (December 2007) talk page
• T K Sreepada Rao (December 2007) talk page
• Boarding for Breast Cancer (February 2008) talk page
• Emerson Hospital (February 2008) talk page
• Exinct (April 2008) AfD: discuss
• Shin-bang (April 2008) prod
• Sulzberger Institute for Dermatologic Education merge discuss
• Colin G. Goggin prod
• Stroke Network, Inc. borderline: msg on talk
• Medical News Today prod Prod removed
• American College of Pediatricians borderline: msg on talk

Note that anything that has been tagged in the last three months isn't on this list, so the "real" list is likely longer. Please feel free to edit the list with whatever comments you want to make, and just delete any item that is clearly notable (after removing the tag from the article, so it won't reappear in future lists!). WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm striking through the prods too, gives me a feeling of satisfaction as I tick them off the list. I'm a simple creature, really. Cheers, Basie (talk) 11:40, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! Any approach that's clear to other editors works for me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think some edits to this section might have been lost during recent vandalism. Or else night shift is making me crazier than usual. In any case, you're welcome, I seem to be learning a lot about WP process from this little exercise! Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Update

Only six left to review!

• Giovanni Vacca (doctor) (kept)
• Grant Stevens (doctor) (February 2008) discuss
• PM&R Residency Programs in the United States prod
• Virtualized patient informatics (February 2008) prod
• Sudden antenatal death syndrome (September 2008) merge discuss

Please could you list all the articles that are proposed for deletion or at AfD at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Medicine so that the wider community outside this project can participate. Thanks, Espresso Addict (talk) 19:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that's probably my fault. I knew about adding the AfD's but hadn't seen the section for prods at the bottom of the page. Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

 Done.

Also, the prod at Foundation for Active Rehabilitation was contested, with a link to a news article in Polish. It's probably okay, but I'll drop a note to ppWP:WikiProject Poland]] to ask someone to double check it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Prod at Sulzberger Institute for Dermatologic Education contested, left a note at the editor's talk page to discuss options. Basie (talk) 21:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Result: merge suggested by DGG. Talk:American_Academy_of_Dermatology#merge.

Prod at Medical News Today was removed because someone found a source. Honestly, I can't tell if that makes it notable or not. Basie (talk) 15:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to make of that, either. The website was used a 2005 study about how medical news is disseminated on the internet. It's pretty borderline, but not out of the question. Perhaps we'll let it go this time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I've prodded the PM&R program directory, I've merged the dermatology outfit, and I've established notability for the last bio on the list. Except for routine clean up (looks like there's an AfD-merge that needs to be done, and we have to keep an eye on the various prods for a few more days), then I think that this is probably the end of the clean up work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. Now there's nothing to distract me from... all that cleanup work over at WP:NURSE... *sigh* Basie (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Graph from the CDC

Am I allowed to import a graph from the CDC? It is part of the federal government and therefore is public right? Added it to the page on Childhood obesity.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhanes/growthcharts/set1/chart15.pdf

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:41, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

That seems fine, but I've replaced with SVG versions: File:BMIBoys_1.svg and File:BMIGirls_1.svg. I hope you don't mind, but my sense is that SVGs are preferred for images --Scray (talk) 17:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Stub sorting (cross-posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience)

I've noticed that there are a lot of articles in Category:Neuroscience stubs which would be more properly placed into Category:Neuroanatomy stubs. I started doing some of this myself but I'm not an expert in the field, and I may make mistakes. You folks should have a look at this. --Eastlaw ^talk · _contribs 06:27, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

eMedicine template usage and Infobox Disease

Just a quick heads up, eMedicine website been restructured, don't worry, the current Wikipedia external link templates still will work as eMedicine internally redirects to its new /article space.

Anyone now searching eMedicine for links to use with our templates of {{eMedicine}}, {{eMedicine2}} and {{Infobox Disease}} will need set 1st parameters as the fixed literal text of "article" (vs previously the medical field of say 'emerg', 'med', 'pmr' etc) and use as the second numerical parameter value the new-style eMedicine article-numbers.

I've edited the above external linking templates to be backwards compatable and rephrased their documentation accordingly. David Ruben ^Talk 06:50, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

It should be possible using some if statements to use the new url structure when no second parameter is present (i.e. {{eMedicine|12345}}). I gave it a try earlier, but I am not that good with the template magic. Could you make them behave that way? --WS (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Good thought, but what of providing the additional parameters for article name or subpage ? (i.e. {{eMedicine|12345|Asthma|treatment}}) Whilst the article numbers have more digits than the older topic numbers (and so presumably a useful test distinction), I was sort of hoping for preserving the text topic name parameter, as I for one thought it has been useful to see ped/1234 neph/5423 previously in the {{Infobox Disease}} - one link clealy pediatric and other nephrology

As presumably I can test that second numerical parameter to see if of more than 4 digits (and thus a new-style article number), one option was for the 1st text parameter to be used merely as a display text option rather than being directly used now to generate the url link address (eg {{eMedicine|Pediatric immunology|12345|Asthma|treatment}} would show as "Paediatric immunology: Asthma at eMedcine" or something similar.

The new eMedicine style webpages clearly exist in a structured series of content pages, with a style of "pediatric >> radiology >>" being shown above the header disease name. So I wrote to eMedicine/Medscape to see if the article number can be automatically linked to the section location (eg all "8-" being orthopaedic, "7-" being rheumatology or whatever, or indeed automatically getting more article details from just an article number). I've had a nice initial email reply back from Erin Michael Kelly, Editorial Director, so I'll let you you what transpires. David Ruben ^Talk 22:14, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

PS I also was trying to maitain current 2parameter usage seen at {{Infobox Disease}} with its eMedicinesubj & eMedicinetopic parameters. Also whilst the infobox allows setting up of a search list, the direct external link templates do not, and it might be simpler for long term maintenance to give {{eMedicine2}} this functionality (and hence 2 parameters required, so that can specify "search|<search expression>"). We would then nolonger need to duplicate esoteric coding for old & new style eMedicine links across the current 3 templates, but instead just make {{eMedicine2}} a metatemplate used by {{eMedicine}} & {{Infobox Disease}} (only issue is if Infobox should not have very long link names, but that's a separate issue to consider). David Ruben ^Talk 22:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

In the long run, the links will have to be converted anyway (one day the old links might stop working). For simplicity, we might have a bot converting all links and setup the new template exactly the way we want it without having to preserve backwards-compatibility and making things mroe complicated. --WS (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

ICD coding inserted into article body

I saw this happen in two apparently separate instances in two days, wondering if there could be any reason or connection... diff1 diff2 Anyone else seen instances?

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 14:19, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Cleaned up contributions by STLCoder now. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 14:29, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Rather odd for numerous accounts to be doing this in conjuction. Revert on sight, may require checkuser if becomes disruptive. JFW | T@lk 19:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

please add lamina propecia

please add. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.40.12.37 (talk) 22:14, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

lamina papyracea -nvm, just can't spell. Maybe do a redirect ?

Myopia Myth at AfD

This article, I believe, centers, or should center, around teh book but veers into propagating the myth presented at times. Any insight into cleaning it up or otherwise welcoem at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Myopia Myth. -- Banjeboi 12:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ulcerative dermatitis

I just started this article. I have little-to-no dermatalogical background and am looking for some aide. Anyone "itching" to help wtih the article? -- Levine2112 ^discuss 17:17, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Kilbad (talk · contribs) is the guy to talk to for that kind of stuff. Leave him a message at his talk, I doubt he'll mind taking a look. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 17:27, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I am almost certain that Kilbad is aware of it now. And given your recommendation, I am happy that the article is in good hands with Kilbad. Thanks for the response. :-) -- Levine2112 ^discuss 17:36, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Osteitis Fibrosa Cystica

I'm sure no one here has this information just laying around, but on the off chance... does anyone know how often hyperparathyroidism turns into osteitis fibrosa cystica, or where I could find such information? And furthermore, if anyone is willing to or looking to write a GA Review, OFC is up and one would be immensely appreciated, if only so I could focus my edits. Thanks again, guys. Strombollii (talk) 03:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

"The distinctive bone manifestation of hyperparathyroidism is osteitis fibrosa cystica, which occurred in 10-25% of patients in series reported 50 years ago. " - Loscalzo, Joseph; Fauci, Anthony S.; Braunwald, Eugene; Dennis L. Kasper; Hauser, Stephen L; Longo, Dan L. (2008). Harrison's principles of internal medicine. McGraw-Hill Medical. p. 2382. ISBN 978-0-07-147691-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). Unfortunately, it doesn't give any clues as to the identification of that series, and if it's from 50 years ago, it isn't available online. In modern contexts, the earlier the condition was detected, the less likely it would progress. --Arcadian (talk) 05:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Brain herniation other meaning

Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask etc, but I was wondering, is brain herniation the same as coning? 94.192.52.244 (talk) 21:21, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Essentially, yes. The brain can herniate in various ways, but "coning" is jargon for the herniation of temporal lobe under the tentorium, leading to compression of the mesencephalon. In general, please direct general questions to the reference desk, where able Wikipedians will answer questions. JFW | T@lk 22:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Will do! Thank you for the response! :) 94.192.52.244 (talk) 21:13, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

no brainer?

Merge of Sundowning (dementia) and Sundown syndrome - vote discuss at Talk:Sundowning_(dementia)#Merger_proposal - 'nuff said. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:12, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Merged. --Una Smith (talk) 14:50, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections - ethics issues

Following the death of a Brazilian woman, there has been a debate at Talk:Pseudomonas aeruginosa‎ about the propriety of including details of the case within the article. The debate raises questions of rights to privacy and the notability of certain types of sufferers (i.e. celebrities) A similar although less rational debate is also going on at Mariana Bridi da Costa about the same case. Independent views would be greatly welcomed. Velela (talk) 10:38, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

To put it bluntly, I don't think this merits inclusion in the Pseudomonas aeruginosa article. P. aeruginosa infection is very common, and its treatment can be notoriously difficult. Sepsis is not really a rare condition, death from sepsis is not rare at all (quite the contrary) and many people are afflicted in dramatic ways such as hers (people who develop necrotizing fasciitis, for instance). Our article on necrotizing fasciitis actually includes a "List of famous victims", but that's a whole other story—we're talking about adding this information to the article on the bacteria that may have caused the infection that led to her death! I think that's a stretch. While this case has brought much-needed attention to the dangers of sepsis (still a surprisingly little-known condition) and multidrug-resistant bacteria, Wikipedia is not the place to further add to that attention. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 15:20, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I think this would be interesting info to add to the article on this woman. That article can than link to the condition. But adding this info to an article about a bacteria or disease is trivia. And shouldn't be done. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:42, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Per Pseudomonas aeruginosa‎, her infection might have been due to this particular bacterium; that does not belong in Pseudomonas aeruginosa‎. --Una Smith (talk) 15:59, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

James is right—it's trivia. And Fvasconcellos hits the nail right on the head; deaths from sepsis are not rare. Graham Colm ^Talk 19:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Fvasconcellos and Doc James - discussing the woman's death in the article about her and linking to sepsis and P. aeruginosa would be a good way to increase awareness, but mentioning her in those articles would not be appropriate. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 21:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Publisher's Pushback against NIH's Public Access and Scholarly Publishing Sustainability

This latest PLoS article is worth a look. It notes that Bush's last days tried to derail public access to science via the innocuous sounding “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (HR 6845) introduced into the House by John Conyers, Jr. (DEM-MI). The push is likely to continue and may not be stemmed by Obama [6] Mccready (talk) 06:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess Bush was making one last try to return the world to the stone age. Not only an economic depression but an intellectual depression. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Articles in both nursing and medicine wikiprojects

I have an idea that some articles don't really belong in the nursing wikiproject. I'd like to consider removing some of them where WP:MED has already got their banner up, and where there does not seem to be a need for both projects to be attached.

An example for discussion: National_Health_Service_(England). Now, don't get me wrong: the NHS is a huge employer of nurses, but does that make this a nursing article? I don't know. I would be tempted to leave articles like this under the WP:MED banner, and assume that some nurses (like me) will be working in both projects anyway.

Of course, the reverse tends to be true. Should Florence_Nightingale be in both projects? Clearly she has had an impact on medicine, but in terms of Wikipedia she is of course the iconic nurse and one might expect WP:NURSE to be the relevant project.

It just seems that there's quite a bit of dual-tagging between the two projects, and I wonder whether it is really necessary. Cheers, Basie (talk) 12:44, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

And then there are those articles that probably shouldn't be in either, like School_head_lice_policy! Basie (talk) 13:15, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Errr poor choice of example - I would think that very much should be under Nursing project, for at least in UK, this would be something for school nurses to take overall lead of this health issue :-) David Ruben ^Talk 19:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I see now I'm woefully ignorant on the subject! The most contact I have with the 'wee beasties' is when they're found hitch-hiking on one of our patients! Er, lice... not school nurses :)

Would it be appropriate for me to start a list of articles here that I boldly remove from WP:MED, and one over at WP:NURSE where I have removed articles from that project? That way if there are any objections we can discuss it (without laboriously considering each individual case). Cheers, Basie (talk) 00:24, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes that seems good compromise, allowing bold actioning, but allowing project members an easy means of quick scanning the list for anything felt appropriate to have kept in :-) If you have in mind a huge number of article changes, perhaps set up a proposed to-do list, and then remove 5 days later items that others have not removed from the list ? David Ruben ^Talk 03:06, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I doubt there will be many proposed changes. If I see something I'm pretty sure of, I'll de-tag it and post up here; it can always be reverted, after all. Cheers, Basie (talk) 03:46, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Amygdalohippocampectomy, anyone? :) Removed from WP:NURSE. Basie (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Fundamentally, a WikiProject gets to tag whatever it wants. Nobody can force it to accept an article, or to reject an article. So if there's something that WP:NURSE wants (or doesn't), they can tag it (or not) -- no matter what else other projects might do. As for WPMED: We take a lot of things simply in default of a more appropriate project (e.g., a 'WikiProject Human Physiology'). But you wouldn't believe how much some people fuss when I pull WPMED tags from articles that really have only the weakest connections. This section of the assessment page addresses some of the common issues. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I hadn't noticed that section before. Basie (talk) 03:46, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Removed from WP:MED

The following articles have been removed from WP:MED as they are a better 'fit' with WP:NURSE. I am open to having these changes reverted if you feel they should remain tagged by the medical project.

• Nursing Standard: UK nursing journal Basie (talk) 05:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
• Nursing in the United States: covers US degrees, training, regulation Basie (talk) 06:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
• Nursing process: definitely needs a rewrite, but 'core business' for WP:NURSE. Basie (talk) 23:24, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
• Paediatric Nursing: journal. Basie (talk) 09:21, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

New GA nomination

Have started a discussion on Osteitis_fibrosa_cystica at Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations#Osteitis_fibrosa_cystica about weather this qualifies as a WP:GA. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:40, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I left a comment there. We could improve it together. NCurse _work 14:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

orthopedics abbreviations

can someone please make a list of abbreviations used by different specialities. For example, in an ortho consult note, what might FA WB mean? I know WB is weight bearing but what is FA? LLE is obvious, but FA is not. Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.40.12.37 (talk) 18:33, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, please consider asking direct questions at the reference desk.

Secondly, I would like to point out that medical jargon varies highly between various areas or even within health care facilities, and that this information is very unlikely to be encyclopedic. JFW | T@lk 19:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Also, to the OP, have you read List of medical abbreviations? What you are looking for may well be on there. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 21:24, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it is Full Assist Weight Bearing... FA WB, but not sure. I think that if they can make a boook called surgical recall which lists commonly used medical chart abbreviations, then we can start listing those abbreviations on wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.40.12.37 (talk) 22:35, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

"<field> health" vs greek

I have an article naming problem over at WP:NURSE, but the issue affects many health sciences articles so I assume it's been discussed before.

Field names in the health sciences

From the greek	Alternatives
psychiatric	mental health
geriatric	aged care, care of the elderly
pediatric	child health

"Pediatric nursing" is a phrase I identify with. I am more than just a "child health" nurse; some of the kids I work with are very sick indeed. I see "pediatrics" as an inclusive term, "child health" less so.

It's not as simple as that, because while I believe "pediatric" lacks negative connotations, "psychiatric" and "geriatric" have a certain stigma attached. Of course I speak of the general audience here; both terms can be seen as pejorative. Does that mean they shouldn't be used in article or category titles? I'm a bit inconsistent myself, as I tend to use "pediatrics" and "mental health" to describe the two fields.

I refer you to two discussions. A move proposal at Talk:Child health nursing, and a discussion of the rather unwieldy article name at Talk:Psychiatric and mental health nursing. Cheers, Basie (talk) 23:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Usually we use the medical term. You are a neonatologist not a baby doctor for example.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:17, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Image

Another question about copyright. I have found a picture of a painting from 1680 at www.esst.org/newsletter2000.htm of Prader-Willi syndrome. Can I use it? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Only if the photographer has licensed the picture under the GFDL, CC-BY-SA, or to the public domain. You can ask them to do so and then you can use it. This page might help. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 17:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's not necessary. For Wikimedia's purposes, all faithful photographic reproductions of two-dimensional works of art are considered to be in the public domain if the work of art itself is in the public domain; see COM:ART. Anyway, in this case, it's really not necessary because we already have a high-resolution, color image of that painting right here :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:16, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow you are good. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

AfD notice: post-cycle therapy

Input and feedback welcome (and requested) at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Post-cycle therapy. Cards on the table: I think this article is dangerous. Additionally, please see this thread higher up the page; I'm deeply concerned that our articles on anabolic steroids are degenerating before our eyes. MastCell ^Talk 17:53, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Scary article. Added to medicine deletion sorting for (hopefully) broader discussion. Basie (talk) 21:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Biological psychiatry‎ hat note for the journal?

I unfortunately wrote Biological Psychiatry‎ (journal) because I could not find the existing Biological Psychiatry‎ entry. Should there be a hat note atop of Biological psychiatry‎ to disambiguate from the journal name give that article names differ only in capitalization? Xasodfuih (talk) 18:11, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Done and done. MastCell ^Talk 18:41, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Acetaminophen

This article has been under review for a couple of weeks. I still see many concerns. One of the main one is its basis on primary research rather than on reviews. Wondering if it should go to FARC?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:15, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The article needs more work, but I think progress has been and is being made. I don't see why we should move to delist it right now. Compared to other FAs like anabolic steroids is nowhere near as bad. Xasodfuih (talk) 01:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

And I should add that debates about the presentation of association studies crop up on other FAs, see Talk:Schizophrenia for a recent one (cannabis as risk factor in that case). Xasodfuih (talk) 01:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I think toxicity is not covered enough. including liver failure and suicide usage.

Medical jargon

Perhaps a sign that we are trying to use plain English, but I'm surprised an article on medical jargon is missing (contrary to military slang, legal English, mathematical jargon). I think it would be challenging too -our medical jibberish might be PRODed for suspected complete nonsense. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm still looking for the Physician handwriting article ;) Basie (talk) 00:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

LOL. If needed, I could collect pictures for that article. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 00:17, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I was recently reading medical records in Thai, and they were approximately as legible as English medical records. The great thing? You just ask the translator, and it's their problem to figure out what the nurse wrote! SDY (talk) 06:56, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Here in Norway there was a period of a year or two when everyone complained that the GP never looked at the patient, but only at the monitor and the keyboard. (Someone should do a study on any effects of that; maybe it's been done.) Now my GP does his scribbles by keyboard, and it works, both for journal and prescriptions, while he is mostly looking at me! Any paperwork concerning me is scanned into my journal. Legibility is one advantage. Another is that the program may complain that no blood pressure has been entered for ages, etc. It also suggests date/time for follow-up visit and knows whether I've already paid the maximum for the year, or not.

But back on topic, Medical jargon is a great idea. "The patient presented with" is not everyday English. - Hordaland (talk) 14:34, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

We have medical slang and medical abbreviations, so the subject is not entirely absent from Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikidocs again

Wikidocs.og has added images in the area of cardiology. Now as they are under the same copyright as Wikipedia I presume we can just borrow them?

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:46, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

You'll have to check each individual image for specific permission, and as they seem to be rather sloppy about their copyright work, I suspect that you're going to be frustrated by the process. You might be able to get the information you need directly from the uploader. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

But is it not part of wikipedia's copyright that any material created from wikipedia must be under the same license as wikipedia?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes (as far as I know). But placing your own image next to text from Wikipedia doesn't change the copyright status of your image. More importantly, if the uploader doesn't actually have the copyright, then it doesn't matter: they don't have the right to add the image in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Anti-CCP

Does anybody else think that the Anti CCP antibody and the Anti-citrullinated protein antibody articles should be merged? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.140.56.163 (talk) 01:43, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please merge them. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Done —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.158.214.38 (talk) 03:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Can someone keep an eye on 71.244.121.113?

He is deleting reliable info from pharma articles wrongly claiming "unreliable sources". For instance: this. At the bottom you'll see that it's based on a paper from Nature. He's adding misleading quotes on psychiatrist biographies, e.g. this; I'm not making a stand for Dr. Bling-bling, but he only resigned as chair. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:44, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It's never lupus

Well, guess what: currently it is lupus. Or, rather, systemic lupus erythematosus is up for WP:MCOTW. This weird and wonderful disease is not particularly common but affects practically every organ system and has recently become a lot more understood. There have been some significant therapeutic advances. There are some high-profile cases and there is some gentle controversy on its formal diagnosis. In other words, a perfect candidate for intensive collaboration! I have proposed some useful sources on the talkpage. You are all invited! JFW | T@lk 11:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Images

Can we use images from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000435.htm? They are part of the federal government. And they have lots of great photos.

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay figured it out it is copyrighted. Anyone have a photo of SLE?

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:21, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Leave it to me... --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:19, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Sjögren's syndrome and self-promotion

I've got an anon IP Special:Contributions/68.97.224.238 who is (1) apparently located in Oklahoma and (2) apparently determined to use this article to make a specific researcher in Oklahoma famous.

Can I either get another editor involved in this slow-motion edit war, or an admin to semi-protect the page for a couple of weeks? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:03, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't think protection is warranted, but I have added it to the 1374 items already on my watchlist... --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Toxic headache

Hello. The article Toxic headache has no references. I'm not even sure if "toxic headache" is a genuine medical term. I'm not an expert, but some of the content seems a bit wacky. Another editor has also complained, on the talk page. e.g. "Common hazards in our environment also cause toxic headaches with exposure. These include chemicals, fumes, pollution, allergens and other health hazards. These toxins can be found in our communities, workplaces, and homes." Can someone with some more medical knowledge have a look at this, please? Thanks. Sam⁵ (talk) 11:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The article clearly has issues, not least because it opens with "the least common type of vascular headache", which it certainly is not. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 12:17, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Guess what I've done with it? JFW | T@lk 13:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

That coming a from someone displaying "This is user is a physician" and "This user has published peer-reviewed articles in academic journals" userboxes is rather bizarre. Why don't you, mighty rouge admin, delete vascular headache as well? No sources there either, OMG, WTF, BBQ!!!!111! It must be original research. Xasodfuih (talk) 05:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Why the seemingly unprovoked combativeness?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

FYI: most of the info on that page came from NINDS website. Xasodfuih (talk) 05:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I seriously doubt that, I see little similarities between that page and the original article (see article history). --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 08:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Still, watch out for the dreaded rouge admin. Basie (talk) 08:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I have looked through uptodate and am unable to find any reference to toxic headaches. Find suitable references and it will not be deleted. How hard is verifying what you add?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Google books search finds mostly references from the early 1900s. Looks more like a historical term.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Xasodfuih has insulted my userboxes. I'm very disappointed. At any rate, whoever wrote that page misconfuses "toxic" with "due to poison". In which case pregnancy toxaemia, toxic megacolon, thyreotoxicosis and toxic confusional state should of course all be blamed on chemicals. The deletion is no vote on the veracity on the concept. The deletion is because the current content is erroneous and based on original research. I hope this is clear, and I hope my userboxes will be rehabilitated. JFW | T@lk 23:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

No, I did not insult your user boxes; if anyone insulted them it was you. See my talk page, I won't rehash that here.

As for classification, the are more splittist classifications that NIH's, but I don't see those being followed on Wikipedia. E.g. ICHD-2 has more categories 7.1.2 Headache attributed to intracranial hypertension secondary to metabolic, toxic or hormonal causes, Headache as an adverse event attributed to chronic medication <code to specify substance>, Immediate alcohol-induced headache, Monosodium glutamate-induced headache, etc. However, the current article on toxic headache is a resonable start-class overview article until those get written. It is NIH's orginal research. Bye. Xasodfuih (talk) 04:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

This is what the NIH site says "After migraine, the most common type of vascular headache is the toxic headache produced by fever." http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/headache/headache.htm--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:07, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Passive smoking

Anyone interested in taking a look at Passive smoking (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)? There has been a recent influx of new editors who have raised concerns that the article is biased because it presents secondhand smoke as harmful. I think that wider input might be useful. MastCell ^Talk 04:33, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal: HSIL and LSIL into Bethesda System

I've put up merger templates. Anyone can feel free to do it in a couple of weeks. Mattopaedia (talk) 06:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

PathologyAtlas.ro and pathology on Wikipedia

Take a look at Cirrhosis#Pathology and then here. Part of it seems a copyright violation. I removed multiple links to pathologyatlas.ro today. See also User talk:Mdanciu.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 19:56, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Mdanciu released the content under the GFDL, but that is not clear at all from his edits at the time. We should be using more reliable sources anyway. JFW | T@lk 20:54, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

We should probably clarify by indicating that different etiologies of cirrhosis can show different pathologic patterns (e.g. zone 3 predominance with alcohol; nutmeg liver with cardiac cirrhosis; zone 1 with bile spilling in PBC, etc.) -- Samir 21:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not about cirrhosis, it's about how we relate to pathologyatlas.ro . I don't have any problem if the edits were released under the GFDL. I've removed inline external links, because we just don't do that. I've removed the website from the External Links sections because I don't think we should. I'd like to hear from other editors here, and if we decide that pathologyatlas is a resource we want to link, then I'll be happy to put back the links. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:57, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

PS: have a look at my talk page and User talk:Mdanciu for some of our concerns.

Oh. Ok. I rewrote the cirrhosis pathology section anyways. The application of the link was incorrect there. There are probably more reliable sources that this -- Samir 22:07, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

YMMV on this. That Romanian site, which surprisingly doesn't have any ads, seems to have some pictures not freely available elsewhere. E.g. on Wilm's tumor we had a link to [7]. It doesn't appear objectionable to me. Perhaps the links should only be removed when a better alternative is found, not before? Replacing all those links with a DMOZ link, which doesn't even include them, seems a bad idea. Xasodfuih (talk) 01:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The content is excellent, but at www.pathologyatlas.ro it is difficult for the reader to validate the provenance. If we could persuade Dr. Danciu to host the images at his university (Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy), then the decision would be much easier. --Arcadian (talk) 02:59, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Well my friends, I have some observations: 1. I don't have to defend my credibility, and I won't. You have my identity, so I won't post on internet photos with me near a patient in the SR (with or without the patient's written consent) as a credential or a CV. But I have a proposal to you: if you are not pathologists, you can show my explained pictures to your Pathology Professors, so they may decide. 2. I was the one to start the Pathology chapter for some diseases. Parts of the text I wrote here were first on pathologyatlas, and not vice-versa. Of course, Wikipedia improves every second, and I agree that everything I wrote there can be done better and in a perfect English, as well. 3. At that time, I put the links immediately after the microscopically description, because I considered that one might want to read and see the pictures, without any other effort to search for link at the end of the topic. This is to be decided by Wikipedia's rules. 4. I am sure you all have good intentions. But I don't think it is a benefit for Wikipedia to remove a link (especially when you are not sure it is an unreliable one) without putting something else instead. To be short, Xasodfuih's observation was right. Thank you and sorry for more than 100 words. mdanciu Mdanciu (talk) 10:37, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to remember everyone about WP:ELNO#1: we should avoid "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article." A featured article would contain a pathology description without incomprehensible jargon, and would contain a picture. When it comes to external links, I admit to being a deletionist. Yet since we include so many other external links that also violate the ELNO#1 principle (e.g. virtually any MedlinePlus or eMedicine link), maybe this can be considered as a valid external link. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:32, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

MDanciu: Actually, with medicine-related articles, we tend to err on the side of caution, which means we tend to reject external links until we are sure that they are reliable.

In general, I think that WP:ELNO #1 is both very important and routinely violated. If no path images are available for the article, then I might accept the links. But in general, I'm with Steven on this issue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:09, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

ELNO rule #1 is utterly pathetic. "Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a Featured article". Most article will never become FA. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Is good to live according to rules, but now I understand that you prefer to hide the mistake of deleting my link behind some rules and words (e.g. reliable). None of you have the qualification to analyze the images on pathologyatlas and find the eventually mistakes, which would label the site as unreliable? None of you can say: “It is (un)reliable!”? Therefore, you chose to use “we need something more reliable” and suggested to me to put my site under Iasi University’s umbrella. Question: is Iasi University more reliable than Cornell University ([8]), The American Society for Cell Biology ([9]), The University of Auckland, and others? You should have done some research before, Steven! Primum, non nocere! It’s a must, if you want to become a doctor. I wonder how many other useful links you deleted. Mdanciu (talk) 14:55, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to interrupt here to warn User:Mdanciu. It is a decidedly low blow to say that removing links to your website will make another user a poor doctor. I ask you not to do that -- Samir 02:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll try and completely ignore yet another personal attack on me, and ask this question: everyone agree on the compromise of adding the website back on articles where good pathology images are otherwise lacking? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 16:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear Steven, it is nothing personal. I consider that an admin should act as a reviewer, so I ask from him/her to be profound and responsible. Admins are not robots, they first have to analyze. It is a hard job. This is what I'm trying to explain. If this is against the WP's laws, I'll shut up, but not before saying Sorry! Mdanciu (talk) 17:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Mdanciu, Steven is trying to work within Wikipedia's "rules". He doesn't get to make those rules any more than you or I do. And Steven is 100% right: the rules very clearly discourage links that would duplicate the contents of an excellent article. This rule is written for the purpose of motivating editors to improve articles instead of taking the lazy approach of simply listing a website at the end. If you do not like the rules, then I ask you to leave a message at the page where those rules are made and explain that your website is so valuable, and getting good information added to the Wikipedia articles is so unimportant, that your website should be linked at the bottom of many articles even though doing so would violate the standards set by WP:ELNO #1. I suggest that you read WP:NOT#LINKS first.

Steven, I support your compromise as a temporary solution until such a time as an adequate number of high-quality path images are available on Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

No one is 100% right. Maybe sometimes, or maybe from some points of view. But, for sure, at that time and in that matter, Steven was wrong when deleting my links from Wilms’ tumor page. His reason: we have plenty of pathology images available on Commons. Hmmm, plenty... So, I checked. There were none (zero) images about Wilms tumor. Or, look at the crescentic glomerulonephritis in Commons. Where are the crescents? Were these two articles excelent? Let me doubt about. Then, why deleting my links? Which was the gain? Not to mention the decision to blindly delete all the links to pathologyatlas. You don’t want a collection of external links? OK! Is that DMOZ external link better than a direct link to an image? Only one click and the user has the explained microscopical image. I don’t really like what DMOZ offers to the user, but maybe I’m subjective. Anyways, Wikipedia is not mine, nor yours, and we spent too much time with this discussion. Do what you want, but it is sad that you first send someone to gallows and only after that you organize the trial. So, if you find better images, go ahead. All the best to all of you. Mdanciu (talk) 14:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that pathologyatlas can be a very useful EL. It should be linked to if it supplements the article appropriately, and better than our current content, or the content of other links. I'll cite another couple of examples. The secondary biliary cirrhosis slide above here is excellent unquestionably, and should be linked to the secondary biliary cirrhosis article when it is made (as I doubt there is free content better than that online). The Helicobacter pylori FA, on the other hand, has an excellent silver stain image of Helicobacter, and this link: [10] does not add much to the article and shouldn't be included. -- Samir 02:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

BIG headache!!!

As far as I can tell, all articles on headaches in Wikipedia are a complete mess! The conflicting NIH, ICD, and the completely missing ICHD classifications ([11]) are mostly responsible for this. There seem to be no active editors in this area, only active deletionists. Xasodfuih (talk) 06:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, there are some active editors in this area: chiropractic promoters! Xasodfuih (talk) 07:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, all of us who have voted in that AfD for toxic headache are actually productive editors here, we all edit articles to make them better more than we delete. However, we can only work on a few at a time as a relatively small project, and as such things like headaches get pushed aside for the bigger topics that people enjoy writing about more. We will get round to them eventually, it just takes a lot of time. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 07:57, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

ICHD code in infobox

Should I add this as an optional field to Template:Infobox_Disease or should I make a new template? If I make a new template, is there such a thing as template inheritance so any future changes from Infobox_Disease would propagate to the more specialized one? Xasodfuih (talk) 09:38, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Template:Infobox_Symptom looks like a better candidate since most headaches are not a primary condition. For instance thunderclap headache should have ICHD-2 4.6, ICD-10 G44.80. Also, it's not clear to me how to code the link to the IHS site since their URLs are rather complex, e.g. [12]. Some technical help would be appreciated. Xasodfuih (talk) 09:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Classification

Should we use the ICD 10 classification system as outlined here? http://216.25.100.131/ihscommon/guidelines/pdfs/ihc_II_main_no_print.pdf Toxic headache is not mentioned as an individual case but toxins are a known cause of headaches. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Changed the Headache article to more closely match the articles on Chest pain, Abdominal pain using the ICHD as an outline.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Chemical warfare FAR

User:Xasodfuih has nominated Chemical warfare for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

SeHCAT Scan

I have created a page on SeHCAT scan. Please review and guide. thanks. Najafhaider (talk) 13:30, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Drug-related articles generally a mess

Wikipedia's drug-related articles are generally a mess
Perhaps this is because current thinking about drugs is generally a mess
Perhaps there is no coherent objective way of thinking and writing on the subject
We have laws seemingly dedicated to the notion that drugs are evil, and the use of force (sometimes lethal) to suppress their production and supply
Somehow, at the same time, we have a vast legal drugs industry, forever chasing the holy grail of immortality
I offer the following as potentially useful definitions:

• Controlled drug: drug within the scope of laws which are named, effectively, as drug control laws, for example, in the United Kingdom, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the Drugs Act 2005
• Pharmaceutical drug: product of a body, pharmaceutical company or drug company, which is licensed to produce and supply controlled drugs as medicines
• Legal drug:
  • pharmaceutical drug, provided it is not held contrary to drug control laws; or
  • drug falling outside the scope of drug control laws and not otherwise illegal, for example, in the United Kingdom, alcohol or tobacco,
• Illegal drug:
  • drug held contrary to drug control laws; or
  • drug falling outside the scope of drug control laws and defined as illegal in some other way, for example, in the United Kingdom, alcohol sold to someone under the age of 18

Laurel Bush (talk) 16:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Please Give me an Opinion

Hi please check the following mind maps, i created them, and tell me if you think they are usefull and a good contribution to wikipedia medical project, the mind map about metabolic syndrome is derived from wikipedia article. here are the Mind Maps Maen. K. A. (talk) 16:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting creations. Find them a little busy though. They are a really compact way of presenting some of the information contained in text format on the pages already. They take some time to get the hang of. Not sure if they really add much to the text already there.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I really can't see mindmaps being useful. It is also very hard to correct any mistakes, given that they are presented as images. JFW | T@lk 00:30, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I concur with the prior comments. Perhaps most importantly, both comments reflect that these are intellectual dead-ends, because no one can edit them or put them to use; they are just images. Interesting, but not very useful. --Scray (talk) 02:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Sertoli-Leydig cell tumour

Are all the following diseases synonymous?: Sertoli-Leydig cell tumour, leydig cell tumor, and arrhenoblastoma? The prior two seem to be synonymous, but I was uncertain if arrhenoblastoma was something different? kilbad (talk) 22:18, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

MeSH recognizes separately Sertoli cell tumor and Leydig cell tumor, groups them together under Sertoli-Leydig cell tumour (which includes "mixed" tumors having both cell types), and notes re arrhenoblastoma A sex cord-gonadal stromal tumor consists of LEYDIG CELLS; SERTOLI CELLS; and FIBROBLASTS in varying proportions and degree of differentiation. Most such tumors produce ANDROGENS in the Leydig cells, formerly known as androblastoma or arrhenoblastoma. Androblastomas occur in the TESTIS or the OVARY causing precocious masculinization in the males, and defeminization, or virilization ( VIRILISM) in the females. In some cases, the Sertoli cells produce ESTROGENS. --Una Smith (talk) 23:42, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Skookum1 and doping articles

I've abandoned working on any doping related article while he is active on them. He is obviously a pro-doping (in particular pro-AAS) advocate with whom collaboration is impossible because he expects all articles to simply reflect his POV. Read the intro for Ergogenic use of anabolic steroids, which he "improved" or the recent move of Doping in sport. Xasodfuih (talk) 16:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

There was a very good documentary on this topic recently call Bigger stronger faster --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:58, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I think these articles are problem areas, because they do not represent the current understanding of the health effects of anabolic steroids. They are skewed toward a bodybuilding-magazine perspective and away from a medical one. Skookum1 (talk · contribs) feels very strongly about the topic; I have had difficult interactions with him in the past. If Xasodfuih is leaving, that's a problem, because s/he was active in improving these articles. Perhaps we should put together a task force of editors from the WikiProject or elsewhere to review these articles - they are high-profile and I'm becoming more and more deeply concerned about their content, particularly in light of this note. MastCell ^Talk 17:40, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Somewhat to my surprise, I actually don't have a problem with the switch from "doping" to "performance-enhancing drugs", though my fingers seem to want to insert a hyphen there. "Doping" doesn't strike me as a particularly encyclopaedic term. Basie (talk) 01:37, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I partially disagree. Searching for "doping sports" returns nearly 30,000 articles on google scholar; "performance enhancing drugs sports" almost the same number. Doping is the term used in almost all other language wikis except English now. Xasodfuih (talk) 08:07, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I do have a significant problem with the first paragraph of the Ergogenic use of anabolic steroids lead, which oozes POV, not to mention the lack of a clear discussion of detrimental effects. Basie (talk) 01:37, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

de:Hängetrauma

... just a short question of a German doctor, who asks kindly for an answer: Is there an English word for what we call "Hängetrauma" in German? I'm right now working at the article, I mentioned above - and I wonder if there is a precise translation. A "Hängetrauma" (in short) means, that signs of an "orthostatic" shock (I think You classify it as a kind of hypovolemic shock) appear, if patients (maybe caused by an accident) hang a long time in an upright position. Greetings from Bavaria Redlinux (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no English equivalent for this concept (nor is there one in Dutch, for that matter). --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for Your answer, but anyway, I don't understand "why?". There is for instance an important difference in treatment in order to prevent a sudden increase in blood-volume that may provoke a circulation-failure. Redlinux (talk) 23:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I suspect that this concept simply hasn't penetrated into the English-language literature. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 23:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

.... yes the article Suspension trauma describes a different concept. I think I will mention this in the German article. Redlinux (talk) 23:30, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Is it different from Orthostatic hypotension, which describes the same kind of thing but without specifying the cause? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I just skimmed de:Hängetrauma and I am wondering how is it a different concept from Suspension trauma? --Una Smith (talk) 05:32, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Ina, thanks for the hint - how do You classify an "orthostatic shock" - as "hypovolemic"? Maybe, my English is too poor →. Redlinux (talk) 13:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Suspension trauma and Orthostatic hypotension and Hypovolemia are very distinct, although all three conditions have some physiological processes in common. To a first approximation, de:Hängetrauma appears to correspond exactly to Suspension trauma. However, I do not know if de:Hängetrauma is a fair representation of the concept of Hängetrauma in the German language medical literature. If the question is about interwiki links, then de:Hängetrauma and Suspension trauma should be linked. If the question concerns is larger than that, then I do not know the answer. I hope this helps. --Una Smith (talk) 17:24, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

@ Una, thanks - well the article is not yet finished, - but I meant neither "orthostatic incompetence" nor "Orthostatic hypotension". Maybe its just a problem of translation. Redlinux (talk) 23:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC) ... now I found a description for "orthostatic shock" in the English literature in this context → page 2 - shoud I add it to Your article Shock (circulatory)? Redlinux (talk) 11:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, "orthostatic incompetence" may not belong in the lead of Suspension trauma. --Una Smith (talk) 18:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I think, it shouldn't - but I don't dare to make too many edits in the english wiki, cause I'm not a native speaker - if You are interested - we just diskuss my article here (no problem with google or other translators). Thanks for Your help Redlinux (talk) 21:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Would someone who actually know something about biology...

...be able to help out FoodPuma in his attempt to get OCD to FA? See this for more. Thanks, —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 03:18, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Why is someone that doesn't appear knowledgeable of the topic trying to that article to FA? Xasodfuih (talk) 18:29, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry. He's (FoodPuma) very knowledgeable. I'm not. :) —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 18:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Ventricular escape beat

Some students are carrying out a project with this article, and are asking if I would refrain from editing the article until tomorrow so they can show their work... See User talk:Stevenfruitsmaak#Ventricula escape beat and User talk:Jonram27. I've asked for more information, but since I don't want to start an edit war, I'd like some advice on this peculiar situation... --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:19, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

This seems like a great situation for them to use a sandbox or subpage, so that they can make their edits, let their teacher see them, and once approved consider replacing the article with the rewritten version. Has the sandbox option been suggested? I don't think it's reasonable for someone (or a group) to take ownership of an article, even with good intentions. --Scray (talk) 15:35, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I suggested it to them, hopefully they will accept. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks more like they have already done the work and want to keep it up, maybe point them at the article history and explain permalinks and diffs. Improving wikipedia as a school project is great but I assume the teacher will realise that other editors won't stop work, keeping it in an state with multiple fixes reverted to maintain their project version will cause problems. --Nate1481 15:43, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Dab links from templates

Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links/from templates has been refreshed, and here are some entries to fix that may be of interest to someone here. Disambiguating links is an easy and reasonably fun housekeeping job. --Una Smith (talk) 03:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Template:Epithelial neoplasms (76 inclusions) links to:
   • Ductal carcinoma
2. Template:Lymphoid malignancy (54 inclusions) links to:
   • CD3  Done Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:02, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
3. Template:Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period (48 inclusions) links to:
   • Birth trauma
4. Template:Humanmonoclonals (35 inclusions) links to:
   • Viral  Done Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:04, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
5. Template:Antibiotics and chemotherapeutics for dermatological use (32 inclusions) links to:
   • Antiviral  Done Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:06, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
6. Template:Dosage forms (27 inclusions) links to:
   • Oral  Done Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
   • Elixir  Not done I moved the disambiguation to a separate page. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
   • Transdermal
7. Template:Glycolysis enzymes (26 inclusions) links to:
   • Aldolase
8. Template:One carbon transferases (24 inclusions) links to:
   • Hydroxy  Done Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
9. Template:Foramina of skull (46 inclusions) links to:
   • Meatus
10. Template:Oncogenes (25 inclusions) links to:
    • Ras  Not done I couldn't find a problem here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:38, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
11. Template:Locomotion (25 inclusions) links to:
    • Gait  Done Una Smith (talk) 21:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Abbreviations and terms

Glossary of medical terms redirects to List of medical abbreviations (which also receives several redirects to items that have been split into other articles). Do we have a glossary of medical terms under some other name? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:06, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Template for medical scores or scales

Is there a navbox that could replace some or all of ASA_score#Other_health_scoring_systems? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

The Body Electric

This science popularization paperback, which is linked from the electrophysiology article, appears to be tethering on the verge of fringe science according to the enthusiastic review of some people very inclined to believe conspiracy theories anyway [13]. I've not read the book, so I don't know if it's worthy of a wiki article, but I doubt a link on electrophysiology is warranted. Does anyone know more about this book? Xasodfuih (talk) 12:01, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Surely the link has to be eliminated; and unless the author shows the book is notable with some refs the article should be eliminated. Too much fringe...--Garrondo (talk) 15:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I personally enjoy articles about books and movies. Gives me a bit of an idea about it and if I should read it. Sounds like fringe ideas though.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Frequency Specific Microcurrent

This article has two problems:

• It appears to be an ideosyncratic idea of a single or few physicians backed up by a heavy advertising campaign. It is does not appear in pubmed, nor is it mentioned in any electrotherapy or clinical electrophysiology books from reputable medical publishers.
• The wiki article cites two papers that don't appear to be about FSM. The notion itself is oxymoronic, makes little sense, and is vaguely presented.

Any ideas what should be done about it? Xasodfuih (talk) 15:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this is garbage. Quackwatch lists it as a questionable treatment. http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/treatmentindex.html

I guess the question is how much quackery does one discuss? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Nineteen individual case studies

I'd like to have several people please take a look at the proportion of examples to standard description in Brown-Sequard Syndrome. It contains nineteen separate case studies, most of which have one or two very long paragraphs dedicated to them. User_talk:A E Francis is very unhappy with my statement that it's an examplefarm. (About 90% of the article is examples.)

I don't think that I'm willing to deal with this editor today, and I'd be happy to have several other editors look at the article and give an opinion about whether an article that is 10% description and 90% sample case histories is the right balance.

Also, if there's a bored admin online, the page ought to be at Brown-Sequard syndrome, but it won't let me move it over the redirect. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:46, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Have moved the case studies to a separate page. They however are well referenced and well presented. With rare conditions such as this often all we have is case histories. Well they do not belong in the main article I still fell that they have a place on Wikipedia.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:31, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Really? I don't think case studies have any place on Wikipedia; are there other articles with case studies out there? Is this not a candidate to move to Wikiversity School of Medicine? or WikiBooks? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 19:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

P.S.: bored admin move completed.

The editor announced on my user talk page that he would cut them down, but the very short/single-sentence summaries that Garrondo suggests sound best to me. Wikiversity sounds like a good option: it is well-written stuff; it's just not encyclopedic.

I appreciate all the comments on the original talk page, which now needs to be merged with the old talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

One more thing: Axl correctly pointed out that examplefarms aren't MoS compliant, but it might be nice to have that explicitly addressed in either WP:MOSMED or WP:Encyclopedic style. (Update: I proposed an expansion at WT:Encyclopedic style.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:22, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, moving this to wikiversity or wikibooks does sound like a good idea. Some of the images should be recombined back into the main article though. Here is another that should probably be moved. Medical research related to low-carbohydrate diets --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:36, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

The syndrome is named after Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard. Shouldn't it be "Brown-Séquard syndrome" rather than "Brown-Sequard syndrome"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:01, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

It was at that name until it was moved by AEF (20:30, 11 December 2008). --Arcadian (talk) 08:33, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Agree --Scray (talk) 11:56, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I tried moving the page, but I don't have that privilege. Would an admin please oblige? [Looks at Steven and JFW.] Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

And the talk pages need merging while we (they) are at it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

 Done : which talk pages? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 19:27, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism

Pharyngitis has been getting vandalized a lot lately. I do not know if this is just an issue on medical pages but I have not seen many useful edits by anons. All the vandalism makes editing more difficult. And I presume this is one of the big reasons why wikidoc.org went off to make their own site.

In my opinion I think all medical pages should be protected such that only registered editors can make changes to them. I would add more reliability to the medical pages of Wikipedia. If you are not willing to take a few seconds to create a user name than it is unlikely that you will be willing to reference the point you are adding ( and you definitely will not be referencing to a good source with proper formatting ).--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:32, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, if a page is protected against anon IPs, then it's also protected against new registered accounts. Only accounts that have made more than 10 edits and are more than four days old are allowed to edit them.

I've seen some good work done by anons, and daily checks of changes to articles on my watchlist make it pretty easy to undo the vandalism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Trust me, pharyngitis is not the worst example... and anons can make very helpful edits. Your suggestion would need a project-wide consensus and policy change. Yes, vandalism is annoying, but also revertible -quickly too, if you use a few extra tools like Friendly and rollback. Flagged Revisions would be a way of improving the situation, imho -at the expense of immediate edit-ability. We protect pages were vandalism is at its worst, which for my personal standards means vandalism several times per day for extended periods and, most importantly, it is not reverted quickly. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 19:23, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Third opinion on paleolithic diet

I need another opinion on this FA that I'm considering nominating for FAR owing to bias and lack of stability. Since it has been promoted last year it has seen over 1,000 substantive edits, most of which were done by the same user that nominated it for FA. The result of these edits has be mostly a bias of the article towards an overly favorable POV by several means:

• citing obscure reviews in journals not indexed by JCR, e.g. World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics; in general the papers selected often come from thepaleodiet.com
• cherry-picking abstracts only for favorable facts, e.g. from PMID 17522610 only the positive findings are presented
• mentioning every disease ever associated with (modern) diet as to imply that paleo diet somehow would help [even though this is not explicitly stated], even those diseases that it would clearly not do so, e.g. osteoporosis.
• reference spamming the studies section: every little newsflash about a study and even a Ph.D. thesis resulting from it is given as a separate reference in addition to the study giving the impression that bigger of evidence actually exits, e.g. "The results of initial prospective medical studies on the Paleolithic diet have shown positive health outcomes."

Refs

(Also if you read the NHS article on the study, it's nowhere near that optimistic.)

Sure, I could go and fix the article, but that would take quite some work, and in the mean time I don't think that an article with these kinds of problems should be FA. Xasodfuih (talk) 19:47, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I will agree with Xaso. Medical correlation is confused with causation. The effectiveness is presented in a rosy light based on trial of maybe 50 people and a bunch of pigs. I would agree that it is not FA quality and needs its neutrality addressed.

Looking at the research base this doesn't seem like much more than a fad diet. And a fad diet as a FA without it being presented as such is a disservice to all who work hard to create FAs.

I am sure I have probably stepped on a few toes. Here are a few refs to back me up: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/05May/Pages/Cavemanfaddiet.aspx http://www.faddiet.com/cavemanfaddiet.html and if only I could read Swedish PMID 16044752

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:21, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I have nominated Paleolithic diet for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Erectile dysfunction#Zinc

I see a bunch of WP:SYNT here and statements not supported by the sources I can access; can't say anything of the many old books cited without page numbers. Xasodfuih (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Have found a reference that says a whole bunch of treatments are not effective. Replaced what was there with a better source. This is typical poor science. First you present info from rat liver cells, and in vitro fibroblasts. Follow this with everyone is doing it so it must work. Than throw in a few books from the 1970s.

We need to be vigilant and remove this sort of stuff from medical pages.

I guess what need to be done is that we need to address the non effectiveness / effectiveness of alternative treatments on many pages to advertising / poor science from filling the void.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:15, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually preventing aromatisation of T is bad thing, at least in mice. While the erectile function is not affected in aromatase knockout mice, almost all other sexual function are affected, and none can ejaculate; see PMID 14623532. So it was right to remove that section as WP:OR/WP:SYNT. Xasodfuih (talk) 22:41, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, while PMID 8613886 indeed shows that a zinc-deficient diet is bad for T level in rats, PMID 17882141 (my only contribution to the erectile disf. article) shows that in non-deficient humans zinc supplements do not alter testosterone levels or its metabolites. Xasodfuih (talk) 22:52, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes and this is an article about ED in people. If someone wants to write an article about ED in rats all the power to them.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I added back a sentence though. Amongst all those inconsequential references, there was an RCT on hemodialysis patients for whom zinc supplementation did improve the T level and sex life; in the wiki text you removed nothing was said about hemodialysis as being a cause for their zinc deficiency, of course. Xasodfuih (talk) 23:44, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

This is a primary research study of 10 people. Is it significant?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:22, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Both this study and the newer one (showing that zinc supplements don't improve T levels in non-deficient subjects) involve objective measurements of T level, so I doubt anyone is going to repeat these with a larger sample. Given that there's not much more research on this in humans, a sentence seems appropriate. There are more troublesome statements than this in that article, and without sources (see section right above the one where zinc is mentioned). Xasodfuih (talk) 11:25, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Presenting association studies

These studies have become a thorny issue in FAs; look for instance at (the talk pages of) paracetamol (assoc. with asthma) and schizophrenia (assoc. with marijuana use). Granted there is often a controversy in medical journals as well with these kinds of studies (letters to the editor are in no shortage). Can we hammer out some sort of guidelines for language to use in presenting these studies such that they cause less friction in the future? Xasodfuih (talk) 11:52, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Longevity

I am in dispute with another editor on the article longevity regarding the inclusion/exclusion of longevity myths. In particular the cultural bias and or relevance of this section to the article. The article is part of the WikiProject Medicine and therefore i thought it appropriate to raise the issue on this page. Apologies if this is inappropriate. Please see Talk:Longevity#Religion_2 Jooler (talk) 14:15, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I would delete the entire section as essentially unsourced original research. It's only sourced from a religious primary source, i.e. the Bible, the interpretation of which is usually controversial anyway. The section speculates about the age of Methuselah etc., with no references to back up that analysis, making it WP:OR. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:28, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Peter Breggin

This article is in a pretty sorry state due WP:BATTLEGROUND tactics employed by both fans and detractors. It could use more attention from editors interested in writing a readable article (as opposed to just trying to get the opposition banned on WP:ANI). I've done a little bit of editing on it, but I don't fancy the topic enough to do much more, like look for refs for the many, many unsourced statements, quite a few of which seem WP:SYNT to me. Xasodfuih (talk) 14:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Common condition

Many of the pages on the most common conditions provide very poor information. Have done some work on Common cold and Pharyngitis. But there are many more common conditions like Infectious diarrhea and others that also need work. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

pregnancy

what food could be taken at the time of pregnency?

if taken lots of sweets at 6-7 weeks of pregnency any harm to the baby?

                                                                      59.161.131.212 (talk) 05:29, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

We're not allowed to give specific medical advice on Wikipedia. However you may wish to read "Nutrition and pregnancy". Have a look at the references on that page. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:35, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Exercise prescription- merges?

Should I merge in Green prescription at least, and maybe even Exercise is Medicine ? they are the same/similar ideas in different countries. Sticky Parkin 12:47, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Fascianating

My wife has just received a letter from a consultant orthopaedic surgeon which ends with: "we plan to see [name] in May 2009 and if she is still having problems will consider an arthroscopic release of the abductor tendons and fascialata to see if this elevates [sic - ? means 'alleviates'] her pain". Could someone please provide an article or redirect on abductor tendon and point me to the explanation of what "release" means. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 13:19, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Surgical release means relieving any compression on the tendon. Abduction (kinesiology) is an anatomical term which means movement of a joint away from the midline. Not sure which tendon he is talking about. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 16:02, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

The fascia lata is part of the thigh, and thigh abduction is by the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus muscles. You've got some muscles with the word "abductor" in your hands and feet, and as such the term "abductor tendon" isn't very specific. Generally you'll find that tendons are named after their associated muscles, so maybe the thing to do would be to find out what muscle is having problems and go from there. Some good anatomy atlases (probably available at the library) are Netter's (pretty), Grant's (not as pretty, but supposedly more accurate), and Gray's (huge). I hope your wife is feeling better. Rex Manning (talk) 23:59, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Chronic cystic mastitis possible name change

At the momment, Fibrocystic breast disease, Fibrocystic breast changes and several other synonums all redirect to Chronic cystic mastitis. In my reading, I've only come across the term chronic cystic mastitis in ICD catalogues as an a.k.a. for fibrocystic disease. In any recent reputable pathology or cytopathology text I've read, its either referred to as fibrocystic disease or fibrocystic change . Therefore I'd like to propose the redirects for this article are rearranged so as to have the other a.k.a's redirecting to fibrocystic breast disease. Mattopaedia (talk) 06:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

After that it also needs a lot of work. Mattopaedia (talk) 06:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, be bold. ;-) Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:24, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

At the Chronic cystic mastitis talk page, Steven Fruitsmaak said:

• I suggest to move this to Fibrocystic breast changes because it is not a disease, and this seems to be the most appropriate term currently according to NEJM (PMID 16034013). If you agree, I could make the move. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 19:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

My response follows:

Thanks Steven, that's actually still somewhat of a contentious issue. According to Rosai and others, the condition fulfils the criteria to be called a disease (for example there is associated morbidity including pain & risk of malignant transformation), whereas other authors, like Rosen, contend the condition is too ubiquitous (much like prostatic hypertrophy) to be really considered a disease. If you feel strongly enough about calling it fibrocystic change, then I'm happy for you to do it that way. As far as I'm concerned, the jury's still out & I'm not particularly interested in arguing over it (I pick my battles carefully!) I just thought it was worth highlighting the fact that the nomenclature is not yet settled, and why.

Cheers, Mattopaedia (talk) 05:57, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Benzodiazepine

Under review for good article status. If anyone would like to review the article please do.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 11:16, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

For those who have not been there yet, it seems this will be re-visited later. --Scray (talk) 05:06, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

In the same vein, please keep an eye out for FANs and GANs

Unlike FARs which require big fanfare, first time nominations are not normally announced to Wikiprojects, and subpar or downright embarrassing articles slip through. The most common problem seems to be lack of adherence to WP:MEDRS. Xasodfuih (talk) 15:07, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Stub templates

What are the guidelines on use of stub templates? Is there a limit to how many a page can have? If so, which should be used? I ask after seeing Uncombable hair syndrome, in which there are three, and it seems like overkill to me. kilbad (talk) 19:17, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

There is no upper limit, but only the most specific template should be applied, and so if one stub is a subcategory of another stub type, the least specific one should be removed (see Uncombable hair syndrome history). --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:02, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Frequently viewed

Is there currently a way I can generate a "frequently viewed" list of pages for dermatology tagged articles, similar to what has been done at the mathematics project (see here and here). Thanks in advance. kilbad (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps ask CBM (talk · contribs) ? --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Water fluoridation nominated as a Featured Article

Water fluoridation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been nominated as a featured article. If you have the time and the inclination to review this sometimes-controversial topic, please weigh in at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Water fluoridation. Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Pharmacologic categorization

• I have created a new draft outlining the top 3-4 levels of pharmacologic categorization from discussions that have been ongoing. Find the draft at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pharmacology/Categorization#Draft_III, and please share your thoughts. kilbad (talk) 21:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

• I have posted a new draft and would appreciate some feedback if you are available. kilbad (talk) 22:07, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Viral reservoir

Viral reservoir redirects to natural reservoir, which is not how it's used in most contexts (HIV, for example). Does anyone have any good sources for writing at least a decent stub? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Can I plead ignorance (and laziness) to ask how "viral reservoir" is used in other contexts?--ZayZayEM (talk) 05:16, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

This article is helpful. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I took a stab at it and will continue to work on it but would welcome input. Could also discuss herpesviridae in neurons, etc. Big topic, worth high-quality coverage. Great suggestion. --Scray (talk) 00:21, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

After initially creating some new content for Viral reservoir as a separate page, I was looking for more info on the herpesviruses and realized that Virus latency covers the topic of reservoirs pretty well, without explicitly using that term (which is used heavily in the HIV literature). I folded the new content I'd created into Virus_latency#Ramifications and then redirected Viral reservoir there. Comments? --Scray (talk) 05:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Physician assistant

It's Physician assistant again. Two newbie accounts, no net changes, just endless edit warring. I assume that one of them is User:Nrse. I'm offwiki for a few hours and would be happy to have someone else follow up on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm on it. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 19:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I just looked at it again. Strangely, one account is repeatedly adding and then deleting the same couple of words -- more than a dozen times now. A hardcore vandal trying to get an account autoconfirmed, perhaps? That's the only rational reason I can come up with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe two people with the same username? Multiple personality disorder? Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:38, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Pineal gland

WikiProject Medicine, WikiProject Anatomy, and WikiProject Biology have all rated this article as Start-Class on the quality scale. I wonder if it might not have earned a higher rating now? - Hordaland (talk) 13:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I've upgraded it to a C-class article. It could use a few more references before becoming a B class. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 16:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Not unreasonable. - Hordaland (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Would you look at a thread for me

Would you look at a thread for me, someone expressing concern about some recent edits: User_talk:Kilbad#Nickcoop.2C_the_GP_from_New_Zealand_is_attacking_the_Mohs_surgery_article_again kilbad (talk) 16:53, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

I've issued a level one warning for unproductive removal of content. Let me/us know if he returns with the same antics. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 16:59, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Phagocyte peer review

Hi, has anybody got time to review this article? Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 20:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Osteitis fibrosa

Hey, wondering if anyone could direct me to some solid statistical data on Osteitis fibrosa cystica. I've combed all the abstracts and free articles that I could looking for statistics, especially rate of occurrance and gender/age distribution, but haven't found anything. =\ Anyone able to help?

Thanks, Strombollii (talk) 05:12, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Fibroadenoma

Ive made some major changes to the article. Here's the diff. Can some please do a quality assessment on it? It's no longer start-class and I've removed the stub tags. Mattopaedia (talk) 08:36, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Reassessment  Done. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:57, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Menopause

This is an important article in need of help. There's a ton of information here, with some POV issues, and perimenopause should be split off into a separate article (right now Perimenopause is simply a redirect to Menopause). An infobox would be nice too. I don't have time to tackle this myself but I hope some of you do! twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 21:36, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Differentiation antigen

Antigens, differentiation redirects to Cellular differentiation which does not have the word antigen in the article. I came across the problem when trying to fix EpCAM. If anyone can define a differentiation antigen we can try to fix the problems. Mccready (talk) 02:20, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

This link provides good info. MESH is a good source of info on terms, and often leads to reliable sources. HTH. --Scray (talk) 03:07, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I still found I had to search around quite a bit. No time at the moment but may come back to it.Mccready (talk) 09:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Mohs surgery

Could use a helping hand over at Mohs surgery, an editor is removing large chunks of texts claiming that there's no evidence, despite sources being used (which he's just removing). He claims this is because the article isn't neutral, and because Wikipedia needs to provide good medical advice on the expense and effectiveness of Mohs surgery, which we know isn't quite true. If someone could step in and help, that'd be great. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 09:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, and I've thrown my hat in. One of the editors keeps removing cited content without consensus. I'm no expert in these things, but wasn't 3RR violated by one of the editors on that page? --Scray (talk) 12:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

That article has been stuffed with POV in the past, so only a good thing it is receiving some attention. JFW | T@lk 13:57, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

• With respect to receiving attention, I have started a discussion regarding guidelines concerning articles about medical procedures. Perhaps you all could give me your thoughts? See Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-related_articles)#Guidelines_for_articles_relating_to_medical_procedures. Thanks. kilbad (talk) 16:08, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if I broke the 3RR rules or not. But it gets frustrating to see potentially misleading and harmful informations presented concerning the treatment of facial basal cell carcinoma. Nickcoop continues to edit and misedits Mohs surgery and article on basal cell cancer. Even when guidelines from the american cancer society is quoted in the past, he simply said that it is propaganda and commercialism. The ACC simply stated that margin controlled pathology processing (which Mohs is one of the method) must be used when small surgical margins are cut, and conventional guideline for surgical excision is not followed. As a general dermatologist who is not dependent on mohs surgery to generate my income, I am much less concerned about commercialism and propaganda issue of mohs surgery. I find that his edits are strongly pushing her own personal opinions (not wanting to discuss about the weakness of breadloafing pathology processing) - and blaming the Mohs surgery for his own ignorance. I find it difficult to want to contribute to wikipedia when it is hard to control vandals and people who are out to push their own personal agenda. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Northerncedar (talk • contribs) 19:42, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Osteochondritis dissecans

Is a FAC. Graham Colm ^Talk 00:27, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Congrats.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 13:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Should this be listed in the FAC list on the Wikiproject page? Or is there a bot that does this? Food_Puma 23:05, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Done, no bot, just me :-) Sorry I forgot to do this. Graham Colm ^Talk 23:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate commercial content

This user keeps adding http://www.cpschallenge.com/supportingresearch.shtml to a number of different pages. He has been warned. Will warn him again. He has not added any useful content.

http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Special:Contributions/Chapintb

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:27, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You also had a problem with internet chat boards in the external links, which are prohibited both by WP:ELNO #10 and by WP:MEDMOS. Wikipedia is NOT a web directory or patient support center. I've removed them, but editors should kill these kinds of links whenever they see them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:44, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Are we a "peer" review journal?

I find the current medical content of wikipedia hilarious. I mean, there are unreferenced, unreliable, and simply false information on many articles. Then, if you add a reliable, up to date contribution - it quickly gets deleted for lack of reference. Until you repost it with a reference. At the same time, if you went through and deleted all which are not referenced, 95% of the content of wiki medicine is deleted. Just simply look at the article on "veterinarian", almost 95% of it is unreferenced - but probably good information. I believe that you need to give some contributor a little laxity on editing and contributing without rapid deletion. Otherwise it would discourage many specialists from wanting to contribute. If you want more contributors - perhaps gives some folks a little laxity - before you go happily deleting for "lack of reference". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.14.219.108 (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

References are exceedingly important. If what you are adding is true than finding someone to back up your opinion should be easy to find. Unfortunately alot on here is from a previous time when refs were not required.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:18, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

With all due respect, do you honestly believe this encyclopaedia would be better off with additions without references? If so, I'll just go ahead and add "Meningitis kills everyone" to Meningitis, because that's essentially what you'd be asking us to allow. Every statement needs a reliably-sourced reference, anything that isn't added in this was can either be tagged with a 'citation needed' tag (if its likely a reference exists) or it can be reverted. That's that, IMHO. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 23:51, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, seeing as you are referring to basal cell carcinoma and Mohs surgery, I feel I should point out that your additions to those articles are contrary to what the sources provided have been saying, and that is another reason why your additions have been removed. Until you find sources to contradict what the current additions say, you are not permitted to remove chunks of text or add additions. My apologies, I mistook you for Nickcoop. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 23:55, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

It is annoying and discouraging to be reverted, and in any case the preferred first response to questionable content is not to delete it but to add a {{fact}} tag. To the OP: you can revert the revert and ask the other editor to use fact tags instead. --Una Smith (talk) 00:14, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Anyone may remove any unsourced content without recourse per WP:PROVEIT. Sometimes it is dickish to do so. There are varying degrees of appreciation to unsourced content, some don't mind it, some hate it. If it really bothers any editor, it's up to them to find as many up to date, reliable sources to source the information. And wikipedia gets better. Sometimes it sucks, but 'tis part and parcel. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 01:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, anyone can remove any unsourced content. Anyone can remove any content, for that matter. Sourced or not, unless it is garbage the content usually ends up staying in. To the OP: you'll have more standing if you edit while logged in, and if you ask for help here you are likely to get it. --Una Smith (talk) 02:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Bioidentical hormone replacement therapy

BHRT recently underwent a substantial revision. There's a lot of syntheses, coatracking and odd formatting issues. I'm going through the page, and to date have removed a substantial amount of text. I'd welcome a review. Here is the last version before I started removing text. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:50, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Paleolithic diet

User:Jmh649 has nominated Paleolithic diet for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Dabomb87 (talk) 22:43, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Have made substantial changes to add balance. But there is no research base to support this fad diet. All there is are three studies. One of 24 pigs. A non controlled trial of 6 to 14 humans, hard to tell by it design. An another of 29 diabetics.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:25, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

POV Check on Early intervention in psychosis

Someone with more time on their hands may want to review this (relatively new) article claiming a "new paradigm for psychiatry[citation needed]" and that it "has developed rapidly as an established clinical model". Xasodfuih (talk) 17:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I have placed a response on the talk page of the article. Happy to discuss further these statements.Earlypsychosis (talk) 11:45, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I would value help on how to to add this quote to the article This is now probably one of the hottest areas of research currently ongoing in psychotic disorders. [14] any takers? Earlypsychosis (talk) 08:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

This is not index by pubmed, doesn't look like it is peer reviewed, and therefore may not be the best source to use.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Need to find out how to access information on trends in publications. ie how many articles were published and cited on early psychosis since 1999, how many articles on early psychosis are rated as having high impact. Earlypsychosis (talk) 06:48, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

When human and vet medicine intersect

I want to add some dermatology info regarding the disease Junctional epidermolysis bullosa as it pertains to humans. Should I add it to that article or create another one as it relates to humans, followed then by the creation of a disambiguation page? Thanks in advance for your advice. kilbad (talk) 20:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

We do both, depending on the situation. What do you think is the best choice in this case? I'd suggest leaving a message on the article's talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:31, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I left a message on the talk page. Personally, I do not have a preference either way except to say that the latter (new article with disambig page) would be easier for me (though I am not suggesting that would necessarily be the best way to do it; hence why I posted the question here). kilbad (talk) 20:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

To me, the best option seems to just copy it into the existing article, and you have to separate main headers: "in humans" and "in horses". --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:16, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Black pepper

This article is undergoing a FAR. The biomedical info in that article is quite spotty; I made a suggestion on a recent review to use. Without hijacking the article into a medical one, perhaps someone from here feels like helping. I'm having my plate full with other stuff at the moment. Xasodfuih (talk) 03:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Fluoroquinolone toxicity

See also: Wikipedia_talk:PHARM#Fluoroquinolone_toxicity

This article is not only terribly WP:NPOV, but is also spread deeply into all quinolone articles on this wiki. Just pick from Special:WhatLinksHere/Fluoroquinolone toxicity. If anyone has time, please review some of those other articles and clean them up, while we are trying to deal with the main NPOV article.

--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

User:Mr Bungle likes to work on toxicity articles; he's low key but produces good results. Xasodfuih (talk) 23:52, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

It's hard for (elsewhere) employed volunteers to keep up with some dedicate guy that churns a 100Kb article in a week. Just factually checking all that takes a while, let alone looking for subtle bias and relevant but uncited sources... Xasodfuih (talk) 23:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree the article is garbage. It is discussing adverse events due to fluoroquinolones rather than true toxicity. The references are misleading. Will try to do some work. Needs lots of work.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:17, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

First of all lets start by using reviews and excellent secondary sources. Reworded the intro with reference to Goldfrank's Toxicology.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:02, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Hyper IgD syndrome

Is there a Hyper IgD syndrome article already present, but by a different name? I do not want to create redundancy if already present. kilbad (talk) 00:01, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Got it: Hyperimmunoglobulinemia D with recurrent fever kilbad (talk) 00:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Clarification between Marshall syndrome and PFAPA syndrome

Looking at the article Periodic fever syndrome, it seems to state that "Periodic fever, aphthous stomatitis, pharyngitis and adenitis" syndrome may also be called PFAPA syndrome OR Marshall syndrome. Are these two syndromes the same, and, if so, should the articles be merged? Thanks in advance! kilbad (talk) 00:39, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but that merger is not the answer. "Marshall" is not mentioned on the PFAPA syndrome page. In addition, it's pretty clear from the Marshall syndrome page and OMIM that the association of this eponym with PFAPA is weak. Perhaps the Periodic fever syndrome page should be edited to remove reference to the Marshall syndrome (and Marshall-Smith). --Scray (talk) 00:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I am not pushing a merger, but just wanted to bring these articles up for discussion because they are somewhat confusing in light of the Periodic fever syndrome content. Whatever the community wants to do with them is fine with me. kilbad (talk) 03:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry if my tone was off - I thought the inconsistency was a great pickup on your part. My inclination is to be bold and edit that page. I'm going to do so, point here, and see what happens. --Scray (talk) 03:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikidocs

Looks like someone has duplicated all the medical content of Wikipedia at http://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Main_Page I guess the greatest compliment is imitation. To bad they didn't decide to join us here. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:59, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The board is rather cardiologist-heavy. I fear it will go the way of many other wiki-based medical projects. It would indeed be so much more helpful if all those brains joined us here. JFW | T@lk 20:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I have posted a note on some of there pages in the hope to bring them over. Maybe more invites would be helpful. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Note this disclaimer: "Some of the initial content on this page may be incorporated in part from copyleft sources in the public domain including wikis such as Wikipedia and AskDrWiki." They haven't read Wikipedia:Copyrights, and they don't understand the difference between GFDL and public domain. --Arcadian (talk) 23:10, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Did you disabuse them, Arcadian? Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:42, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I do not understand the copyright thing either. Is what they are doing above the board? Or does it infringe on wiki copyright? I was a little put off when I say so other guy claiming he was the editor and chief, with others listed by name as contributors on the obesity page. When I looked over it it was just an old copy of what we have here. Same images and everything.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:25, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

As an aside, I would argue that we are "The World's Largest & Most Viewed Medical Textbook" -- Samir 21:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

"The content of this page is taken from the FDA package insert for this drug and should not be edited." - Quoted from the bottom of their aritcle on Zenadrid. Rather ironic that a wiki-themed page is exhorting it's readers/editors to leave the material be and not edit it, eh? Food_Puma 04:36, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I noticed a good deal of what I've written (here on Wikipedia) is there-- even with my username attached. Wikidoc uses the GFDL -- like Wikipedia. Thus, you can not only encourage the guys there to come contribute here... but also (AFAIK -- IANAL) borrow their material/writing and incorporate into Wikipedia (if it is up to our quality... and there are not weird things like FoodPuma mentioned).

I have the impression the guys at Wikidoc are in it to enhance their resume and use it to list their collections of credentials-- so, it might be tough convincing 'em.

I'm here 'cause I want my stuff to be read (and I get a kick out of writing good articles that end-up as No.1 on Google searches, i.e. are read -- e.g. Polysaccharide encapsulated bacteria (#1 on Google search), Roux-en-Y anastomosis (#1 on Google search), Malone antegrade continence enema (#1 on Google search) or editing an article to make it a top search result e.g. Abdominoperineal resection (#1 on Google search). :-) Nephron  T|C 00:22, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Medical procedures

• I am looking for feedback from the community regarding what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate content for articles about medical procedures. If avaliable, would you contribute your opinions at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-related_articles)#Guidelines_for_articles_relating_to_medical_procedures. Thanks! kilbad (talk) 15:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• I have added some questions to the above link to get a some discussion going. Thanks again everyone for your input. kilbad (talk) 00:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

• I start a new discussion in which I am looking to find out what peoples' definition of "medical procedure" is; therefore, if you have any thoughts, please share them. kilbad (talk) 00:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• I have posted (1) some definitions of "medical procedure" and (2) two new questions for discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-related_articles)#Guidelines_for_articles_relating_to_medical_procedures. Thanks again for your feedback. kilbad (talk) 15:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Schizoaffective disorder

That article could use some attention. Some IP editors are having a food fight over what's essentially an article with no inline citations. Xasodfuih (talk) 07:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Following the suggestion, I spent a fair bit of effort cleaning up the page and citing the ICD, only to have it reverted by User:76.169.29.127. The user also removed fact requests. I've left a note on this user's talkpage asking them to explain on the topic talkpage. It's been edited a few times since. It's a lot of work to recreate the edits since I did a cleanup. I won't start that until it's clear the time wont be wasted. Does anyone know of a way to combine good edits and delete the bad ones in a single operation? Doubtful I know but .... Is there an admin on this page who could keep an eye on it and block if necessary? Kevin McCready (talk) 10:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Go in history to your "last good" version, click edit and save it. I see a couple of semi-useful minor edits after yours, mostly adding {fact} tags, but given that the entire article lacks inline citations those are of little value. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:32, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually it looks like you had changed only the lede. Correct? If so, just edit "your" version, copy the lede (to clipboard), then edit the current version and paste your lede over the current one. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:39, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks X. Willdo. Kevin McCready (talk) 07:21, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Auditory integration training

• Auditory integration training (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Could someone have a glance? AIT is an altmed therapy for various learning-related difficulties. Dispute going on with practitioner who wants to disallow medical sources and terminology because of practitioners' ideological position that AIT is non-medical. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 13:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

More than enough users have told that guy that his changes/views are wrong. It's more likely that admin intervention is needed rather than even more discussion in which he just dismisses what he doesn't like to hear. Xasodfuih (talk) 08:41, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Endocrine-related skin conditions

I wanted to know if the community would review a recent CFD I posted at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_February_21#Category:Endocrine-related_diseases_and_the_skin. I am looking to get more opinions. kilbad (talk) 04:39, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• And of equal importance, please share your thoughts about the related Category:Nutritional skin diseases. Both of these discussions raise issues with implications for the larger Category:Diseases and disorders structure. Cgingold (talk) 09:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

template question

Are there any disease outbreak infobox templates, such as one that could go in 2009 Gujarat Hepatitis outbreak? Spencer^T♦C 19:15, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Some other flu articles use the {{H5N1}} template but that is fixed (ie without alterable parameters). Question is what might be useful as a generalised template vs just a specific per-pandemic article map/picture of the affected areas (as most such articles current seem to have) ? If wish to flesh out a template, goto WP:IB/Proposed#Subpaged proposals. David Ruben ^Talk 20:21, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

PMID 17891121

Resolved

 – thanks to James. Xasodfuih (talk) 07:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Is anyone having access to this willing to send the pdf to me? It's a relatively new NPG journal in dentistry. WP:DENTISTRY consists of a single editor these days who is not willing to extend this courtesy to me. Thanks, Xasodfuih (talk) 00:30, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

You may wish to try WP:WRE, who are willing to try this sort of thing. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 10:03, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Have a copy, will do just need an email.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:06, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Category:Fad diet

This category has been recently deleted after a short discussion discussion that concluded "this category is not NPOV". The discussion did not seem to include any science/medical editors. The Since Fad diet clearly states that these diets are often unscientific, and the ArbCom has ruled that Category:Pseudoscience is okay, I wonder if a deletion review is appropriate. I think it's possible to populate this category from reliable sources. For instance the American Dietetic Association has a list of fad diets here. I would like to get a feeling of the consensus here before taking this to the larger community. Xasodfuih (talk) 08:38, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Definitely agree with Xaso. We need to return this category. There are lots of fad diets and we need to identify them as such. Have brought it to the attention of User_talk:Good_Olfactory#Category_.22Fad_diet.22_deleted --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:46, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, it looks like that discussion won't be reopened. Xasodfuih (talk) 01:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Consequently, I have opened a discussion at deletion review. Xasodfuih (talk) 09:11, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Antidepressant addiction, antidepressant-junkies

I am concerned that obviously members of the drug-recovery industry and pharm-skeptics are inserting long collections of case reports into e.g. the TCA article and other antidepressant articles, emphasizing the danger of addiction. The depressive patients of such medication, now turned into "anti-depressant-addicts" and stigmatized as such, named together with methadone patients and alcoholics, may as well hang themselves. I think this goes too far. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 16:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The depressive patients might be better advised to use a more effective anti-depressant, even if it is illegal
Laurel Bush (talk) 17:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

@Laurel Bush No, thats the wrong movie. The anti-depressants work just fine, but continuously the naturopathic community and the drug-recovery industry and the legalize-pot movement and the Foot-reflex people and the Bachblueten and Aroma-therapy people and the behavioral-therapy people and the linguistic programming people and the Hare-Krishnas and the Narconon and scientology and the forbidders and preventers and watch-men and 12-steppers and civil lawyers are polluting all medical articles with "addiction,addiction" alarms and essentially spam for their patent medicine. I mind that anti-depressants are stigmatized as "habit-forming" and their patients are stigmatized as "addicts". 70.137.151.133 (talk) 17:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

These are emotionally charged issues and will take a lot of energy to address.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems wikipedians would rather have millions of clinically derpressed people suffer than see drug companies receive any money. Fortunately, doctors know better and thus anti-depressants are very commonly prescribed. When it comes to medical advice, consult a doctor, not wikipedia.

Signed for161.150.2.55

Yes at this point I would strongly agree. Unfortunately medically related articles seem to attract more than there fair share of poor information. The common person does not care about plants named in Latin, or bacteria, but they do care about diseases and unfortunately there is currently a lot of non neutral POV.

This is a serious issue. Editors who write well referenced material are hard to come by. And there is oh so much that needs work and so little time.  :-) --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I seem to remember that "case reports" from the "letters to the editor" are not appropriate references, per WP:MEDMOS. I seem to remember that case reports generally are not suitable material to base statements on them. Even if they are well referenced. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 18:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Which pages exactly are you referring to? I can take a look.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:45, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at tricyclic antidepressants. This started as "generally all antidepressants have some dependence potential", and proceeds along a line which imo confuses a discontinuation symptom with dependence and habit-forming properties. I have edited this section myself also. In the result it is now full of obscure cases. Without doubt tricyclic antidepressants are regarded non-abusable. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 23:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

In tendency, the above mentioned concerns are to be found in practically all antidepressant articles: POV, tagged as controversial, case reports, anecdotal evidence, news reports etc. etc., giving the impression of an "anti-pharm" movement at work. In part this may also be the result of US liability laws and resulting legal action and public coverage. (Victim hopelessly addicted to Paxil gets 1Mio, etc. This stuff made me do it, claims the axe-murderer etc.) 70.137.151.133 (talk) 00:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow!
What an explosion of contributions!
Seems to me that if it works it works, and we are very likely to become dependent on anything that actually works
And worries about "addiction" would be largely groundless were it not for hype which has resulted in addiction fears being backed up by some pretty crude and irrational drug control laws
While we have the laws as they are then prescribed anti-depressants are bound to get caught up in the same sort of hype
Laurel Bush (talk) 15:46, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

@Laurel Bush It is not even a problem with the law there. These antidepressants are recognized by doctors and by the government to be "non-abusable". Nevertheless, the drug-recovery industry and the teetotalers etc etc and the controllettis and the forbidders and the strong-christians and the liability lawyers are lurking around, trying to create a hype, by collecting 5 cases of abuse in the past 30 years and pumping that up to an elephant size addiction potential. And this is a problem, as it scares patients away from treatment, and drives them toward the numerous quack-medicine patent methods and Narconon and spiritual crap etc etc, and besides stigmatizes them as addicts with that kind of desinformation. And I thought this could be discussed here, as the related WP articles are now 50% such hype, Paxil-addict driven to suicide etc, and someone has to stop this fringe crap! 70.137.151.133 (talk) 16:53, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

What evidence is available that a particular drug is abusable? In terms of Evidence-based medicine, is there Level 1 evidence, Level 2 evidence, etc.? Is it just a government determination, without regard to the science? My understanding is that abuse determinations are made on the basis of relatively weak evidence.

For example, the UK is having a big debate over the category for ecstacy. According to the New Scientist, the scientific panels said that it was not particularly dangerous (more people die from peanut anaphylaxis), but the legislature wants to put it in a category with much more dangerous drugs. Nbauman (talk) 17:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I would appreciate if the discussion about drug laws and illegal drugs is being kept separate from the discussion about antidepressants, which are recognized as non-abusable. It is not tenable in such a discussion if whenever the word "abuse" comes up, a dozen people jump on it with "cannabis too" and "ecstacy too". Thats not the discussion here. I mind if fringe groups are carrying such discussion into anti-depressant articles. That is the point. The other stuff belongs into a discussion/article about sense and nonsense of drug laws, and is not applicable here. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 17:31, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Who recognizes antidepressants as "non-abusable," and what is the evidence that they are non-abusable?

For example, Purdue, the manufacturer of Oxycontin, claimed that it was non-abusable, but there are many published claims of abuse. Nbauman (talk) 18:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Antidepressants are recognized as non-abusable by the government. Evidence: Non-scheduled, only a handful of abuse cases in 40 years. Oxycontine: Bollocks, Oxycontin was scheduled II from the beginning by the government.

Everything is abusable, even chocolate and wikipedia. For patients with clinical depression, the two main options are psychotherapy and medication. For those who prefer medication, SSRIs and SNRIs are much less "abusable" then older medications. This is one reason why they are so popular. I would not trust drug companies, but I do trust the thousands of doctors who treat patients with these medications. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.150.2.55 (talk) 19:07, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Psychotherapy is not indicated for clinical depression, I think. SSRIs and SNRIs are as abusable as the older medication, namely non-abusable. Only the older medication had more side effects. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 20:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

sigh. ok, we'll take a look. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:43, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course SSRI and SNRI are abusable, the point is that if a suicidal person were to abuse them, it is not as dangerous as the older meds. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.150.2.55 (talk) 21:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

@161.150.2.55 Where did you get the wisdom that SSRI and SNRI are "of course abusable"? They are not... 70.137.151.133 (talk) 21:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I think 161.150.2.55 is saying that SNRI and SSRI have less potential for abuse than Benzo's, etc.

Signed for 67.133.55.18

67.133.55.18: After you have vandalized antidepressant articles, changing citations to their opposite meaning, please stay out of serious discussion. And benzos have nothing to do with older antidepressants. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 02:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Same for 161.150.2.55 70.137.151.133 (talk) 02:15, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

This isn't a chat forum. There are lots of places out on the web where you all can assert your opinions for as long as you want. I request that you not do that here.

WPMED accepts normal standards for scientific evidence (one that does not recognize either chocolate or Wikipedia as drugs of abuse, BTW). If you want to claim that a given drug or class of drugs is, or isn't, a potential drug of abuse, then please present some high-quality secondary sources by widely recognized experts, such as recent psychiatry textbooks or major review articles on the subject. Note that PMID is a WP:Magic word, so simply providing the PMID number, like this: PMID 16683856 is an easy way to name your sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:18, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the PMID 16683856 ref , I added that to the article. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 03:31, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. I wrote

Take a look at tricyclic antidepressants. This started as "generally all antidepressants have some dependence potential", and proceeds along a line which imo confuses a discontinuation symptom with dependence and habit-forming properties. I have edited this section myself also. In the result it is now full of obscure cases. Without doubt tricyclic antidepressants are regarded non-abusable.

And then the pot-legalizers, ecstacy, oxycontin and chocolate philosophers came waltzing in and disrupted the thread, turning it into a drug-chatroom.

I wanted some medical professional to take a look at the bogus that has developed around antidepressant abuse in the articles of practically all antidepressants. (driven by the pot-legalizer, ecstacy, oxycontin and chocolate feeble minded editors)

Please take a look at the top of the thread. Thats what I wanted.

70.137.151.133 (talk) 13:06, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Regarding message on my talk page anon 70.137. While you are resolving your dispute with Sceptical Chemist with regard to the abuse case reports, I have moved it down to the bottom of the page, due to it being very rare. It has little notibility so it can go to the bottom of the page like where trivia type sections and other non-notible sections go. I don't care one way or the other if it gets deleted so I am not picking sides. I am not very interested in antidepressants anyway and don't want to get too involved. I do think that there should be a short description of discontinuation/withdrawal and mention of gradual reduction minimising such symptoms but it doesn't need to go into great detail. Those are my thoughts but am too busy on quinolone articles at the moment.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

If antidepressants are non abusable because they are not "scheduled" by governments, then I guess the same is true of alcohol and tobacco
Does scheduling" make abusable something which otherwise would not be?
Laurel Bush (talk) 13:01, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

This argument doesn't apply. Alcohol and tobacco are not prescribed drugs, so they cannot be "scheduled". IMHO selling tobacco should be illegal, but that's another kettle of fish, too. --Scray (talk) 13:49, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

My point is that decisions about whether and how to "schedule" (prohibit except under licence) are not dicisions of medical science, and can be seen as irrational from a scientific perspective, as, for example, in Drug classification: making a hash of it?
Any reference, as has been made above, classing abusability with "scheduling", is not rational science
Also, because their practice is contrained by irrational law, it is not clear to me that it is possible for medical professionals to practice scientifically
Laurel Bush (talk) 16:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

This comment is not specifically about the one above it:

It sounds to me like several editors don't have a clear understanding of the difference between dependence, addiction, and discontinuation syndromes. For example, people with Diabetes mellitus type 1 are dependent on insulin, but they are not addicted to it. Getting a headache if you don't drink coffee one morning is a discontinuation syndrome, not proof of an addiction to caffeine. I think that all the editors involved in this discussion might benefit from reading widely on the broad concepts and definitions before misunderstandings cause any more problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

It is obviously impossible to ask here for help by a doctor in proper wording of the antidepressant article, according to scientific consensus. Immediately the conversation is hijacked and diverted into a conversation about drug policies and legalization and sense and nonsense of the drug laws and alcohol and nicotine etc. etc. Good bye, edit your articles alone. This is too much. 70.137.146.36 (talk) 03:43, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you're unhappy, but I request that you consider these facts: We're all volunteers. Very few of us are physicians. Participation in WikiProject Medicine is open to any person that is interested in writing medicine-related articles on Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I have left a response at User talk:70.137.151.133 were I indicate that the correct terminology is "discontinuation syndrome". I am not sure what more you are hoping for? I am unsure what page in specific the issue is on. By the way I hate case reports and think they should be banned as a source. I will propose such over at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles)--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:58, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Case reports are primary sources, and are extremely susceptible to abuse under WP:SYNTH, which is the policy that effectively bans their use. WP:PSTS talks about use of primary sources, but it's in a bit of flux right now. SDY (talk) 05:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Admin help? Problems with standard dash versus em dash

Today I was adding a category to Cronkhite-Canada syndrome and noted several copies of the article and redirects, several with differences in the type of dash used between the two words (ie. standard dash, – , versus the longer em dash, — ). If you search the word "Cronkhite" and look at the dropdown suggestions you will see what I mean. Anyway, I tried to unify all the redirects but was having problems with the dashes. Could someone take a look at this for me? kilbad (talk) 18:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Although I cannot make the changes myself, I added {{db-histmerge}} on Cronkhite-Canada syndrome. An admin periodically goes through the CSDs and will reverse the cut and paste between Cronkhite–Canada disease and Cronkhite-Canada syndrome. The article was also briefly cut and pasted to Cronkhite–Canada syndrome, but I do not think this needs to be history merged. What is the ideal article location? Cronkhite-Canada syndrome (en) or Cronkhite–Canada syndrome (em)? If it's the en version, then you can just change the redirect on the em to the en, and everything should be good. If it's the em version, then once the history merge is completed, you can probably use {{db-move|Cronkhite-Canada syndrome}} (en) on Cronkhite–Canada syndrome (em) to move the article over a redirect. In the future, you can avoid this by never cutting and pasting articles. --Scott Alter 20:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I have been using en dashes when an article title requires them; therefore, unless there is a guideline against doing so, I would favor an article title of Cronkhite-Canada syndrome (en), but do not have a strong preference either way. I just happen to come across this during some minor editing. kilbad (talk) 20:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The correct answer is a plain old hyphen, which is not technically the same as either an en-dash or an em-dash. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok... now, after reading En-dash#Common_dashes, I know more about dashes than I ever wanted to. kilbad (talk) 21:04, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

So after looking at that article, just replace the word "en" with "hyphen" in my response above. I think all the articles mentioned above have either a hyphen or an em dash in the title. And I agree that hyphens are probably most appropriate. I really dislike non-keyboard characters in article titles. --Scott Alter 21:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

L.D. Britt

Hello fellow physicians, I am currently attempting to write a featured article on Dr. L.D. Britt of the Eastern Virginia Medical School. I have started an article, which does not appear to meet your standards. I would appreciate any assistance that you can give me. It would be very helpful, in particular, to look at one of your featured articles on a surgeon, if you have any. I would also like the assistance of any one else who has helped in writing such articles. Thank you very much. Frank A W (talk) 22:17, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I've replied on the article's talk page (content) and the new editor's talk page (two WikiProjects that seem likely to be more helpful). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

RFC notification

Not that I'm expecting a big stampede of support or anything, but there's an RFC going on here that may be of interest. The issue is whether the article on abortion should describe or show what is aborted.Ferrylodge (talk) 22:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Admin help

I think I will be needing some admin help over at Adverse effects of fluoroquinolones / Fluoroquinolone toxicity. This article is in horibble shape. It breaks nearly every wiki rule including OR and WEIGHT. I am working hard to clean it up so that it reflects current medicine rather than a bunch of fear mongering supported by case studies. This user

User:JamesLocksonis trying to keep it the way it is and reverted all the good faith edits without justification that I made. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, I did not want to interfere, but James apparently made many drastic edits removing many sources, and relevant information from the page. Right now, this is getting into a huge debate between two sides, one saying that quinolones are completely safe, and another emphasizing the serious adverse reactions. Before James started editing it, we were already having a lot of debate over this article. Having personally seen what these drugs can permanently do to someone, I obviously have a different point of view. Quinolones are obviously useful for serious infections, but there are also serious adverse reactions implicated, which is one reason why the FDA has ordered black box warnings on them, and also why the drug companies were forced to include "Irreversible Peripheral Neuropathy" in their package inserts. Of course, these reactions are uncommon, but patients and doctors need to be aware of them.

I believe that if someone makes a statement, and they have a reliable source to justify it, that statement has some credibility. Someone else shouldn't delete it because they disagree completely with it.

JamesLockson (talk) 10:45, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

First of all we need to reference this to reviews and good secondary sources NOT case studies. I have seen people die from complications of fluoriquinolones and I have seen cases of tendinopathy. So not claiming they are safe. Lockson did you even look at the edits you removed?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The more I work on this the more I think it would be best to delete it ALL and start over. It is one case study after the next. Words like common are supported by a study of one human and maybe a cat or two. I am not joking. The main editor must collect case studies of every bad outcome that has every occurred with a fluoriquinalone.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:54, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

People moving page, having two articles going and now we have swung from a journalistic biased hit piece to clinical trial data saying only 4 people per 100,000 experience severe CNS adverse effects! Maybe for tendonitis but CNS adverse effects I cannot believe. I have decided that I can no longer support either side in this conflict and no one seems to be taking the middle ground here so I am going to move on to other things. The article is too stressful.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Reminds me of the Committee on safety of Medicines UK stating only 0.6 - 0.9% of people experience withdrawal syndrome from paroxetine and this old expert analysis of the peer reviewed data by the Committee on Safety of Medicines (UK), "The number dependent on the benzodiazepines in the UK from 1960 to 1977 has been estimated to be 28 persons."--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 13:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Here is what David sent me by email "Please refrain from such edits at this time. There is a serious and continuing argument regarding the direction the article should take. James believes it is far too bias and has been editing the article extensively to reflect his views. Failing to heed the fact that the bias has now shifted 180 as a result. The other editors are trying to reach a compromise. If you were to start hacking away at this mess the dispute will only escalate further and seriously hurt any chance of a resolution.

I would compare the current situation to trying to write an article about the holocaust. James, though not denying the holocaust took place, is of the opinion that it really wasn't that bad and Hitler is to be protrayed as being rather benign, and in fact had a number of redeeming qaulities. James is championing the main stream medical view concerning the fluoroquinolones.

Those of us who have had our lives utterly destroyed by these drugs and have been crippled for life who are working on this article, he considers to be holocaust victims, hence we are far too bias to be contributing anything, and whatever we do contribute he claims to be propaganda and unsupported (Since it displays Hitler and the holocaust in a very bad light)and promptly edits to reflect his own bias. Here in lies the current problem with this article.

So please give us some time to work this out rationally without starting an editing war. I understand your concerns and a lot of us editors share them. But starting a war with Steve will not resolve them any faster. It will more than likely piss off an administrator who will delete the whole article.

You do as you see fit, but I thought I should at least give you the courtesy of a heads up that you are walking into a mine field here blindfolded.

But keep in mind it took me over two years just to get to the point where the article is actually being written. Poorly, but at least being written. So I quess I am asking you not to blow this chance for us to be heard. david fuller" --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, so we've reached "Reductio ad Hitlerum". Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:10, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

You beat me to that remark. Xasodfuih (talk) 08:36, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Okay. I have completely rewritten Adverse effects of fluoroquinolones this is a co tract of Fluoroquinolone toxicity. Wondering how we should go about getting rid of one of them?--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

(Disclaimer: on I fairly superficial reading) the problem appears twofold:

• your article is lacking some info that's certainly not coming from fringe groups, e.g. the Fluoroquinolone_toxicity#Associated fatalities info is from the FDA. Another example is the severity of PNS effects from PMID 11793615 (a review of case reportes); the FDA info you give only covers the frequency of such effects, but says nothing of their severity.
• the other article is worthy of a "science review" tag because it relies on primary sources too much. It also uses statical tricks, e.g. from PMID 11793615 it claims that there are "numerous reports" when the frequency is what matters here (the FDA says rarely). But it's not reasonable to outright delete it at this stage because some all-policies-I-can-think-of-conforming info would be lost.

The main NPOV issues seems to be how the frequency and (i?)reversibility of side effects are presented. Here the two articles outright contradict each other. More merging needs to happen at this point. And no, I'm not volunteering, I've got plenty other stuff to do at this point in time. Xasodfuih (talk) 09:16, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Was not able to find the FDA site. There page link to a questionable source. I need to FDA and then once we have context would add it back in.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Let me know what FDA references you are missing and I will either find the correct links or scan and post the original docs on my server. Can't figure out what you are referring to here as the article has undergone so many revisions and reverts all is lost.

No we have not reached Reductio ad Hitlerum. The point I was attempting to make was one of denial is all. Bad example used, readily admit that. There are those who have no idea of the potential damage this class may induce. They are bias due to their lack of such knowledge and tend to dismiss any such claims out of hand as being false and the work of extremist. There are those who are fully aware of this damage having lived it. They are bias due to their personal experiences. One cannot dismiss the views of the other as to having no validity and then start deleting things willy nilly. Nobody is right when everybody is wrong. This is all that I was attempting to state. Don't start hacking away at an article relying upon either your ignorance or past experiences as justification for doing so. Give the disputing parties a chance to work out their differences first.Davidtfull (talk) 07:26, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (CIDP)

I have been followed by three Veterans Administration Hospitals (San Juan, PR; Miami, FL; and Tampa, FL) for the condition known as CIDP. Eventhough my treatment has been on since 1994, I found some treatments in Wiki that I had not heard of before.

The entire treatment article is copied here:

"First line treatment for CIDP includes corticosteroids such as prednisone, plasmapheresis (plasma exchange) and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) which may be prescribed alone or in combination with an immunosuppressant drug.

"IVIG and plasmapheresis have proven benefit in randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. Despite less definitive published evidence of efficacy, corticosteroids are considered standard therapies because of their long history of use and cost effectiveness.

"Immunosuppressive drugs are often of the cytotoxic (chemotherapy) class, including Rituximab (Rituxan) which targets B Cells, and cyclophosphamide, a drug which reduces the function of the immune system. Ciclosporin has also been used in CIDP but with less frequency as it is a newer approach.[4] Ciclosporin is thought to bind to immunocompetent lymphocytes, especially T-lymphocytes.

"Non-cytotoxic immunosuppressive treatments usually include Imuran and Cellcept.

"Anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG), an immunosuppressive agent that selectively destroys T lymphocytes is being studied for use in CIDP. Anti-thymocyte globulin is the gamma globulin fraction of antiserum from animals that have been immunized against human thymocytes. It is a polyclonal antibody. Although chemotherapeutic and immunosuppressive agents have shown to be effective in treating CIDP significant evidence is lacking, mostly due to the heterogeneous nature of the disease in the patient population in addition to the lack of controlled trials.

"Physiotherapy may improve muscle strength, function and mobility, and minimize the shrinkage of muscles and tendons and distortions of the joints."

Due to some necrosis in my body, corticosteroids have not been used in my treatment, however I did recieve several IVIg therapies. I heard one of my doctors in PR say that CIDP was somewhat a chronic Guillan Barré and I am somewhat cognizant of GB because it was one of my early "possible" diagnosis.

All this is to ask two questions: are the treatments mentioned in the article the correct ones? Should I show this article to my doctor?

Thanks,

'suffrin' Rican —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.73.207.194 (talk) 15:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

This review article is helpful. The treatments described in Wikipedia's article are correct. Showing the article to your doctor (a neurologist?) is unlikely to be helpful. Your doctor should know more about the practical management of CIDP than what is contained in Wikipedia's article. Your doctor will not rely on Wikipedia as his source of medical knowledge. CIDP does indeed resemble a chronic form of Guillain-Barré syndrome, but the treatments are subtly different. Your doctor has tailored your treatment to your specific circumstances. I recommend that you contact your doctor to discuss your treatment and clarify any confusion. Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:20, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

ADHD medications

ADHD medications has been sent for deletion via WP:PROD 76.66.193.90 (talk) 09:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Anthropocentrism at Fetus, embryo and similar articles?

There's a discussion at WT:BIOLOGY on whether it's appropriate or not for articles like fetus, prenatal development or embryo to be exclusively about human aspects and to just give a hat-tip to the general articles that presumably nobody reads or writes given how bad they look. I'm posting this notice here because WP:BIOLOGY has less than a handful of active editors; please join the discussion there. Xasodfuih (talk) 10:35, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I do so agree that you've put your finger on a problem wrt a wide range of articles! In many of them it's impossible to tell whether a given paragraph is about humans, all mammals or also "others". (That's why Sleep (non-human) was written.) - Hordaland (talk) 12:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

FQ articles

I would like to bring peoples attention to a content fork Adverse effects of fluoroquinolones I created to bring attention to the FQ issue. The is in discussion on the talk page of Fluoroquinolone toxicity were some wish to merge these two articles. The co tract was created for two reasons. First Adverse effects of fluoroquinolones is the term used by the medical community to discuss ADR well Fluoroquinolone toxicity is a term used by a small community attempting to demonize there use. Second no editing of the article was being allowed to occur will all edit being reverted by JamesLockson This is a emotionally charged issue for many of these editors as they discribe having experienced these adverse effects themselves and this being the only issue they edit on. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

BHRT, redux

Could I please have some input at bioidentical hormone replacement therapy? Comparing this version and this version, I believe the latter is far too full of coatrack (you could also call it summary-style issues, too much explanation of peripheral topics that already have their own main articles), syntheses and original research issues. I have no problem with many of the sourced additions that have references discussing BHRT specifically (this set of edits is me re-integrating them), but have had to now twice remove a variety of references that don't but are used as if they did. Two newer editors disagree. Outside opinions are welcome. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 02:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:57, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

Do you think that setting up an article alert system like this would help this wikiproject as well? Xasodfuih (talk) 08:12, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Since that discussion is a bit harder to follow, you might want to glance at WP:AAlerts instead. Check out WP:AAlerts#Samples for an example of such a report.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks very useful! --WS (talk) 00:07, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I have subscribed this project to Wikipedia:Article alerts. This will create (and maintain) a sub-page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Article alerts. Regards —G716 <^T·_C> 03:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Watchlisted. Xasodfuih (talk) 07:43, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

A quick reminder, this is bot updated, so you need to show bot edits.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I just wanted to subscribe. Thank you, Xasodfuih, for doing this. Perfect development. NCurse _work 15:58, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The real credits should go to User:G716 for subscribing this WikiProject, and to User:Headbomb for advertising the alert system. Xasodfuih (talk) 17:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not alone in this. I came up with the original idea and coordinate the advertising efforts. But B. Wolterding is doing all the coding for the bot that makes it possible. I'm giving him a lot of trouble since I keep coming up with feature requests:P. Legoktm also deserves credit here, since he operates the bot.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 18:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Dermatology icon on Template:WPMED

Does the dermatology taskforce have to have that ugly growth next to our name? Can't we have something cooler for our icon... maybe a little psoriatic plaque, or a wheal, and maybe or nothing at all...? kilbad (talk) 03:05, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

All of the task forces now have their own icons, which can be seen at {{WPMED}}. It can be whatever you want. The only requirements are that the image is free to use and looks good very small (30px wide). All images were picked from the Commons. The problem with most derm images is that the pathology is difficult to see at small sizes due to the lack of contrast between the lesion and the skin. Take a look in Commons:Category:Skin or Commons:Category:Dermatology for images to choose from, or you can always upload your own. --Scott Alter 05:03, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

How about a heliotrope? ;-) Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:08, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Cardiology task force

Cardiology task force is looking for editors to help build and maintain comprehensive, informative, balanced articles related to Cardiology on Wikipedia. Start by adding your name to the list of participants at Cardiology task force Participants. ECG Unit (Welcome!)

-- ~~~~

T.F.AlHammouri (talk) 22:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Water fluoridation featured-article restart

The Featured Article nomination of Water fluoridation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) has been restarted. Previous comments have been archived, so we now have a fresh start. Further comments are welcome on the nomination page. Eubulides (talk) 06:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

RFC

Could I draw everyone's attention to an RFC on Talk:Medicine#Legal controls. JFW | T@lk 11:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Time for a FAC

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Meningitis - comments invited. JFW | T@lk 13:01, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Great job! I will weigh in tomorrow. NCurse _work 18:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Medpedia.com

My dermatologist colleague is trying to get me involved in medpedia. I read their FAQ contrasting medpedia with wikipedia (see [15]), and wanted to know what the rest of you thought of it? kilbad (talk) 02:03, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed my long-pending application to sign up and find out what they are about just been activated. Basically it seeks only those with a PhD or lectureship to be editors, other doctors (or those with expertise) can only suggest changes - ie have addressed need for expertise and attribution (must register under real name). They have tweaked the mediawiki software, so for example page creation has a tool box to enter standardised section headers for disease or drug articles.

However major issues to be sorted out, and they perhaps should have used more of what wikipedia has done and this project (ie instructions miss out large swayths on using the wiki markup - all there for just a copying over some help pages) and issues we have addressed at WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS might have been sensible to include. Also not made any mention on templates etc, as a starter see my initial comments at http://wiki.medpedia.com/Help_talk:How_to_edit

I know they are trying to get technophobic non-wiki savvy doctors to participate, but the degree of established conventions is too unspecified currently David Ruben ^Talk 02:18, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe I misconstrue your second sentence (I infer from it that medical doctors cannot edit that site), but my reading of their guidance suggests that medical doctors can edit medpedia; the info on this says "Physicians and researchers with Ph.D.s" can be editors. Their wording is somewhat confusing, but other pages aren't so ambiguous. --Scray (talk) 02:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No that was my original undertsanding, but on re-reading I agree wording confusing and perhaps indeed any confirmed doctor can edit ? David Ruben ^Talk 22:29, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

One reason I like Wikipedia is no one is required to provide a CV or even claim to hold an advanced degree. KWIM? --Una Smith (talk) 02:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

This is very much like www.wikidoc.org It is basically a copy and paste from wikipedia. However you do not have the ability to link to virtually anything. Here we write for the general public. If you are writing for professionally you will be competing against www.uptodate.com and I do not think anyone will even come close to matching them.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:34, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Or Epocrates, eMedicine etc. Truth is there's loads of professional sites out there, with very little differing between them. Wikipedia is different. —Cyclonenim (talk · contribs · email) 10:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

What I've looked at is very disappointing (I know it is just launched). Our Epilepsy article may shame my inactivity but it's a whole lot better than the patronising guff on on their article. The article has so many dreadful mistakes and the prose stinks. Looks like any old "Ima Nutjob MD" can sign up, and they don't allow non-expert copyeditors (which any decent publisher would employ). Trying to write lay and expert versions sounds like a very bad idea. The lay readers will probably prefer Wikipedia, medical charities or government sites and the experts readers should trust professional publications (I hope!). First rule of writing is to determine your audience. Colin°^Talk 23:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

The most important rule in my book, but alas, often the hardest to adhere to. Graham Colm ^Talk 00:05, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

medpedia vs citizendium

I don't understand why people would want to join medpedia when they could join citizendium and get the same thing. Can anyone explain what the differences between the two are? Is it more like knoll? 75.85.7.156 (talk) 02:35, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Copying content

How should we deal with their content? I think that for some of our stub articles, we can take a big leap forward by copying their content; after all, it's GFDL. Take at look at what I did in just a few minutes with Pleurisy. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 22:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

How much of it is referenced properly though? I am all for taking whatever they have that is good. Much of it is just copy and pasted from wiki. Anyway we can determine what they have that is new? www.wikidoc.org is under the same copyright.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Not all content is GFDL. What they adapt from wiki is, but what they produce themselves is marked "Content on this page is the sole copyright of the author."--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:11, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

See Attribution (copyright), it applies to GFDL. Colin°^Talk 23:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)