Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 15

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 10←Archive 13Archive 14Archive 15Archive 16Archive 17→Archive 20

Merger proposal

See Talk:America’s_Healthy_Future_Act#Merger_proposal for anyone interested. The Squicks (talk) 05:56, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Scrupulosity

I'm traveling and can't stay on top of the IP editing occurring at Scrupulosity; would anyone else have time to watch it ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm watching it but would not mind another pair of eyes as well, as I'm a bit overloaded right now. Eubulides (talk) 16:45, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
It appears an editor in the same IP range has been going at the equivalent article on pl:, but rather more extensively. User:Filip em seems to be watching there. I've watchlisted here.LeadSongDog come howl 18:42, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Fighting over Guidelines at Wikiproject Economics

Sorry for crossposting here, but over at the talkpage of Wikiproject Economics we've been trying to hammer out a set of guidelines similar to what exists at WP:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles). There's been a lot of drama, with threats to go up to Arbcom (which is silly for a content dispute). Anyway, I wonder if anyone here knows how WP:MEDICINE managed to hammer out your (excellent) set of guidelines, as surely there was no lack of contention here. Can can you detail a little the process you followed? That may suggest a way forward for us. Thanks, LK (talk) 05:54, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

You might look at WP:POLICY, being sure to read the footnotes (where nearly all of the practical information has been hidden). The 'ideal' process outlined there was essentially my effort to write down what happened with WP:MEDMOS (before my time) and WP:MEDRS. You may find the draft at WP:Policy/Procedure somewhat more readable than the current version. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:22, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

An entry for Wikisurgery in Wikipedia

We have just obtained an entry for wikisurgery, the online surgical encyclopedia on Wikipedia (http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/WikiSurgery).

We already provide some information to Wikipedia eg via external links to the article on the subject of Scalpel. We have a huge resource of unique operative surgical scripts and online surgical skills training programs.

Is there anyone out there who can advise how we can best link this information to Wikipedia?

Michael Harpur Edwards 86.136.33.136 (talk) 15:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Interesting project and I believe similar ideas have been tried before, but often fail due to lack of popularity. I hope that isn't the case for you, but nonetheless it's a valid concern. I'm curious as to why you've felt it necessary to create a new Wiki for surgical matters, when plenty of surgical information already exists in some form or another here on Wikipedia. Could you not combine the information you have with the articles we already have? Wikipedia is vastly more popular and well-known to the public, and so your resources would probably go further here. I'm interested to hear your response. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  16:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
WikiSurgery is too close to a how-to manual for its contents to be present in Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
We debated this extensively a little while ago. It's a great use of a wiki, but not the kind of content that we could use on Wikipedia. JFW | T@lk 19:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Need someone who is fussy with citations to help on Rumination syndrome

Hello. Looking for some help on getting an article to FA. I need someone who is VERY fussy about citations being used correctly and who can point out what is correct citation and what is WP:SYN and WP:OR. Any help or peer reviewing would be especially helpful. Cheers, ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 15:18, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Eubulides (talk · contribs) can probably help you. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:16, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I already spoke with him. He agreed to do a review but said that he is busy in RL and that it may not be done for a while. Two sets of eyes always trumps one set IMO. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 17:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
"Correct" (according to some outside entity) isn't supposed to matter. "Internally consistent" is supposed to be all that matters. If every single citation uses the {{citation}} template, with the same parameters each time, then you shouldn't have any problems at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
But Floydian is asking about "correct" as opposed to Synthesis or Original Research... - Hordaland (talk) 20:24, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Correctomundo. I feel I've correctly and consistently applied citations. I was referring to finding out if my citations verify the information I am claiming on the article. Most of the citations are fully available online, and only two or three are hard copies that I have that only an abstract is available for online. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 12:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Medical Articles on Wikipedia

I was listening to case notes on BBC Radio 4 yesterday (you can listen online via the link), and the presenter (a GP) and Kevin Clauson from Nova Southeastern University were discussing how people get medical information on the internet. He had done some research, and focused specifically on wikipedia, as it is often the first place people go to to get information of this kind. He made the following points:

  • No or very few inaccuracies were noticed on the pages they looked at, but important information was missed out, notably side effects of medication.
  • The way some articles were written was seen as inaccesible to the average reader.

He felt that these two points may lead to either action being taken (such as buying 'drugs' over the internet), which may cause advese effects, or no action being taken when someone may actually have a problem. I of course understand that wikipedia is not a health advice site, but despite this intention, it will inevitably be used as one by many people, and I think this needs to be discussed and possibly adressed more. Jhbuk (talk) 17:36, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
My point was that I think we should, for example, make the medical disclaimer much more prominent on medical articles, or put in place other measures to further discourage people from using wikipedia as a health advisory site. I can't see how your message was relevant. Jhbuk (talk) 20:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I think it is pretty obvious that one should not believe everything they read. How this encyclopedia is created is well known. We all would agree I am sure that it is far from perfect. By the way most clinicians also do not tell patients the side effects of the drugs they prescribe. How many people tell patients with depression / suicidal ideations that 50% of them will get sexual dysfunction from SSRIs? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Jhbuk, even putting a note at the top of every page that says "Only a fool would trust an article that any kid in the world can vandalize" won't solve the problem. If the information sounds plausible, and sometimes even if it doesn't, there will be some fool that will believe it.
What you can do to help is to improve as many articles as possible. This increases the facts-to-errors ratio. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I am pleased that the accuracy was high, that's great! More accuracy and comprehensive coverage will happen with time...! I once tried to instigate having a disclaimer - but ran into serious opposition. If you take a look at the guideline Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles there are various good reasons to not include them - which would have to be addressed first. A main point oft repeated is that the medical disclaimer is included as part of the 'general disclaimer' at the bottom of each page. I am not sure that everyone that uses wikipedia is aware of the way it is created and even those that do haven't grasped the essential 'anyone can edit' and its implications! So the only solution I can suggest is better highlighting of the way wikipedia is editted and the general disclaimer itself. Dosages are left out and how-to type guides are avoided, what else can be done apart from improve the articles and apply the guidelines ( work in progress )? One possibility would be to include side effects in the Drug box updated by a bot from an official source...but that would be no small task? L∴V 23:37, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
It would also be no small infobox. A single drug can produce a dozen or more important side effects. Some side effects are only relevant in certain circumstances. It takes paragraphs, not a quick little list, to do that properly. (I also wonder: was this person looking in "disease" articles [treatment sections] for the side effects? Or in articles dedicated to the medications? Many of our non-stub medication articles do include side effects.)
Importantly, the drugs themselves are sold with the side effects attached to them, by law, in at least every developed country except Japan. Even if an editor hasn't gotten around to typing up the side effects, the person buying the medication will be given the list anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm not saying that the promotion of a disclaimer is necessarily the only way to solve this problem, but that I think a problem nevertheless exists. Apparently, according to the programme, around 3/4 of google medical searches turn to wikipedia
Regarding the points about there being side effect info, you'll hsve to listen yourselves, but Kevin Clauson said that "If it were an exam, wikipedia would have got about 40% [of the important information]."
There are various other points you have each brought up which I think would be best explained to you by listening to the programme (on the link, starting at about 13mins) Jhbuk (talk) 16:49, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
If the authors are assuming that every -- or even most -- Google searches are for people looking for self-care information, then they're clearly wrong. I use Google when writing articles, because its search engine is more flexible than Wikipedia's. A lot of people ask Mr Google about friends' and family members' illnesses, because they don't want to sound ignorant when they're talking to them. Students read articles related to school work. An enormous number of people read articles about celebrities' health issues. When Patrick Swayze died, we had an enormous uptick in readers interested in Pancreatic cancer -- but I sincerely doubt that the number of diagnoses went up at all. In fact, the history of Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages can tell you what medical conditions were in the news each month. These people want to know some general information about the condition, which is our purpose; they are not looking for medical advice.
Their notion that Wikipedia is the only source of information is also obviously false.
And ultimately the solution to the missing information is for you to add it. Wikipedia doesn't claim to be a finished product, but the only way to turn 40% into 41% is for editors like you to add the information that you want to see there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
The authors didn't say that most google searches are for people looking for health advice, just that 3/4 of searches which are about medical problems had wikipedia as the top result. They again didn't say that wikipedia is the only source of information, but that it is regarded as the most convenient and most used, and its problems should therefore be examined more closely. My point is not specifically about missing information, but about the general problem of people using wikipedia for medical advice, and I believe this needs to be emphasised more, as the programme (as well as other info I have seen) showed me that there is a significant problem. Jhbuk (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
I listened to the BBC programme. The relevant section is a three-minute spot in the middle. Clauson said that Google puts Wikipedia on the first page, not necessarily at the top of the page, three-quarters of the time. He looked at "drug information on Wikipedia". His specific assertion is that side effects are not differentiated according to frequency and severity; this would not surprise me. He guessed that this was due to the personal ignorance of the editor, which suggests that he hasn't grasped the essential difference between Truth™ and verifiability. (The editor isn't supposed to know; the reliable source is supposed to know.)
Clauson makes no claims that people actually use Wikipedia for personal medical advice. In short, I think it's fair to summarize his study as "Wikipedia is not finished" -- and thus we need to get to work, without worrying about hypothetical harms to readers based on foolish and unintended uses of encyclopedic information to the exclusion of all other sources of information.
His other claim (prior study) is that medicine-related articles aren't written at his preferred level of simplicity (which he doesn't name, but is probably the reading level you expect from the median 12 year old, since that's the generally recommended level for patient information leaflets). I'm not inclined to apologize for that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
OK, thank you for claifying - I listened to it 2 days ago but I wasn't making notes.
I think the fact that he made this review and warned people not to use wikipedia for health advice (and indeed the general ideas of the whole programme about internet medical advice), shows that many people do get this sort of information from the internet (I recall they estimated that around 80% of internet users have done so) and from wikipedia. The reason I made this new section was because with so many people inevitably using this site for that sort of purpose (most, of course, not taking the information at face value, unverified) then there will be some who get the wrong impression (in fact most likely to be those who can't understand the articles in the first place). Jhbuk (talk) 18:54, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Here's the published article on this:
Clauson KA, Polen HH, Kamel Boulos MN, Dzenowagis JH (2008). "Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug Iinformation in Wikipedia" (PDF). Ann Pharmacother. 42: 1814. doi:10.1345/aph.1L474. PMID 19017825. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysource= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
And here's a Reuters article:
Wikipedia often omits important drug information: study --Dyuku (talk) 20:26, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
In particular, the Reuters article says that "drug company representatives have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe." Dyuku (talk) 20:29, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Yes, Kevin Clauson published an article comparing Wikipedia's coverage of medications (unfavorably) to output from Medscape's online drug-information database. Read all about it. Presumably, he hit the same notes during the radio interview. Some people (me) objected that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a compilation of package inserts, so the comparison was faulty at baseline. After all, WP:MEDMOS specifically tells us to "avoid cloning drug formularies", which I think is excellent advice. For God's sake; one of the questions on which Wikipedia was graded was: "What is the dose of fosamprenavir in a treatment-naïve patient with severe hepatic impairment (Child-Pugh score between 10 and 12)?" General interest works like Wikipedia tend to withhold those sorts of technical details, while physician-oriented resources might provide them. Surely a more apt comparator for Wikipedia would have been, like, another encyclopedia?

Sure, the study was picked up by some major media outlets, with predictable headlines like "Wikipedia sucks at medical stuff" (ok, that's a paraphrase). But the devil is in the details. According to the Reuters article, Wikipedia fails to note that St. John's wort can interact with darunavir. Sounds a bit nitpicky, but then again, our article has noted since at least 2005 that St. John's wort interacts with protease inhibitors, of which darunavir is an example. Conclusions: 1) the media coverage is unfortunate bad publicity, but not particularly diligent, 2) the study results themselves seem a bit questionable to me - they dinged us for omitting information which we didn't actually omit, in one of the few cases I've bothered to double-check.

Maybe the best advice was given by two brilliant young researchers in PMID 19390105: Wikipedia should be read cautiously and amended enthusiastically. MastCell Talk 22:39, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

General Question - is there a guide on how to deal with adverse events for a drug

It looks like one of the major complaints of the study is that in general the wikipedia drug articles don't include enough information on the side effects of drugs. Does this WikiProject (or any other related Wikiproject) have any sort of guide for how to the side effects of a drug should generally be stated in a drug article? Should we? Remember (talk) 12:11, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

There's general guidance in WP:MEDMOS:

A long list of side effects is largely useless without some idea of which are common or serious. It can be illuminating to compare the drug with others in its class, or with older and newer drugs. 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.

Granted, that's a bit vague, so maybe it's worth trying to flesh out some more specific guidelines. MastCell Talk 18:37, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia should make an effort to follow the fine example of Medscape and WebMD, and include at least as much information on the negative drugs side effects as they do. After all, whether we like it or not, lots of people will consult Wikipedia about the drugs they were prescribed, and errors of omission in this area can certainly be dangerous. --Dyuku (talk) 00:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
We want to do better than those options: we want to provide informative context instead of a cut-and-paste copy of every suspected adverse effect ever reported. Most articles about medications link to a monograph and/or an official website in at least one place, so people can get a decontextualized and legally approved (for whichever country the editor was in: there are occasionally significant differences) list of adverse effects without much trouble.
Consequently, providing a laundry list of side effects isn't really all that helpful for the even slightly diligent "patient", but it can actually be harmful and misleading to both patients and the general reader by making all named side effects appear equally likely and equally important. Additionally, lists tend to grow inappropriately, typically through the addition of unverifiable personal experiences and through duplicating items (itching = pruritis; feeling tired = fatigue; upset stomach = nausea...), which has the effect of inappropriately overemphasizing an effect that might actually be quite rare. We don't always watch these articles well enough to catch these things.
It's much more useful to be able to describe an adverse effect: Is it temporary or permanent? Is it common or rare? Is it serious or mild? Are there other risk factors, such as kidney function or liver function? What's the most common issue? What's the most serious? What's the median patient's experience? Unfortunately, our sources don't always provide that information, especially for newer medications. Your physician isn't required to comply with WP:V and WP:OR, so s/he can say "Most of my patients have no trouble with this" or "it's not unusual for kids to vomit on this antibiotic" -- but we don't have that freedom, so we occasionally have to provide no information instead of potentially wrong information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:52, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
I think adding a link to the drug monograph to the wiki drug info box would be a good idea. All the side effect are on the monograph.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:53, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
That is getting nearer the mark - how about a side effect/adverse effects section with a link to the adverse effects in the external article, and include the link it in any existing 'side effects' sections of articles we have it covered. We could also link the title to a page with specifically states our coverage of side effects, i.e. may include notable or common effects - but not all ? L∴V 10:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I'd support that. That would get the information easily available to the reader, providing it is in the infobox and from a very good source (webMd etc), without turning wikipedia itself into a health website or cluttering up the page. The title link in the infobox may also further discourage people from using wikipedia as a health website (although I don't think it would not do a huge amount, as people probably wouldn't click it very often, but it would make the info mor available). I would personally be in favour of adding a prominent link in a seperate title at the bottom of each infobox to the general medical disclaimer, which I think would work better than this, as it would be more noticeable and more general. Jhbuk (talk) 11:21, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Which country's monograph are you planning to link? They're different, you know -- and not just in trivial ways. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
We already have something very similar for Daily Med -- see Template_talk:Drugbox/Archive_4#Revisit_of_this_issue. --Arcadian (talk) 23:05, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Thanks Arcadian - I suspected the issue had been looked at before, whatamidoing - would linking to both EU and US drug labelling be enough? I see that the labelling info can be tricky to navigate on following these links - would we actually be able to have a section that could link specifically to adverse effects ? L∴V 19:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Every medication should have a section on adverse effects and possibily on toxicity in overdose IMO aswell as a link to the monograph ( I think two should be enough ).Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:48, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

LV, It's not clear to me whether there's really a single pan-European label: EMEA doesn't exactly replace the national regulatory bodies. Certainly a couple of English-language labels would be reasonable choices. We might on occasion choose them for their diversity (e.g., if the US and EU agree, but Australia or Canada does something different, then we should maximize the spread.) The links can't go in the text/actual adverse events section: there aren't supposed to be any external links in the text of an article. Your choices are either the infobox or the external links section. (And the references section!)
Most of these are available as pdfs, which don't lend themselves to links that point the reader directly at a specific subsection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:16, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

In general listing side effects, in terms of being comprehensive, is not what we should be about (we go out of our way not to offer medical advice and the closer that we do, the greater the risk someone decides to treat it as such and file a law suit against someone - it wont get very far, but will ruin the relevant editors' month worrying over this and getting the mess sorted). Drugs are supposed to be prescribed having been discussed by the prescribing doctor, administration advice given by the dispensing pharmacist and supplied with patient information leaflet which give all the side effects any patient could ever want. Also if for no better reason that most side effects apply across a group and I do not wish to see lengthy discussion of say penicillin allergy listed at Phenoxymethylpenicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, flucloxacillin etc. I think whilst a link to the main group section on side effects (penicillin#side effects in this case) is fine, then individual drug articles should list just specific or interesting details only relevant to that one drug (eg if all but doxycycline tetracyclines bind to milk and thus are ineffective if taken with dairy products, or flucloxacillin rarely causing cholestatic jaundice unlike other commonly used penicillins). The {{Drugbox}} already provides links to EU's EMEA (pitty no open links to British National Formulary) and US's FDS or DailyMed sources (see Template:Drugbox/doc#Licensing_information), and for consistency these should be defined if easily located. If there are equivalent national databases of licensing details (Australian, NZ etc) then let me know and we can set up licence_AU & licence_NZ parameters to allow unobstrusive external links, but such indepth detail, IMHO, should not be duplicated here per WP:NOTTEXTBOOK. David Ruben Talk 01:01, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean something like this (Canada)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
So the problem is we want to write articles which can't be used for self medication, to do this we leave out such information - but a common complaint is that they aren't fully comprehensive! As Mastcell pointed out, maybe we need to make the guideline a bit more robust. I have another option to consider - it seems any linking to side effects for a particular drug goes against keeping such info out of articles, so how about not having links for each drugs effects. Instead have a 'adverse/side effects' section at end of drug box which is purely a link to a new article. This article could discuss side effects in general, the different labelling information across the world ( maybe external links toofficial bodies), why wikipedia doesn't include side effects in general ( interactions / patient history / ... ) , a carefullly worded part of when we do mention side effects in articles and a link to medical disclaimer maybe. I think that should cover us - 'yes side effects aren't covered - but this is why...' hopefully researchers shouldn't be able to miss it and we can help point out the limitations of articles to readers with the intention of using them for self-medication. L∴V 14:33, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
No, we want to include adverse effects information. In prose. In the middle of the regular article. Under the section title ==Adverse effects==. With proper context, giving WP:DUE weight to adverse effects, both in terms of the overall article content and also in relationship to each other. Without any disclaimers. What we don't want is this:

Headache Asthenia Cardiovascular Palpitation Vasodilation Dermatologic Sweating Rash Gastrointestinal Nausea Dry Mouth Constipation Diarrhea Decreased Appetite Flatulence Oropharynx Disorder Dyspepsia Musculoskeletal Myopathy Myalgia Myasthenia Nervous System Somnolence Dizziness Insomnia Tremor Nervousness Anxiety Paresthesia Libido Decreased Drugged Feeling Confusion Respiration Yawn Special Senses Blurred Vision Taste Perversion Urogenital System Ejaculatory Disturbance, Other Male Genital Disorders, Urinary Frequency Urination Disorder Female Genital Disorders.
Other side effects include: Body as a Whole: Infrequent: Allergic reaction, chills, face edema, malaise, neck pain; rare: Adrenergic syndrome, cellulitis, moniliasis, neck rigidity, pelvic pain, peritonitis, sepsis, ulcer. Cardiovascular System: Frequent: Hypertension, tachycardia; infrequent: Bradycardia, hematoma, hypotension, migraine, postural hypotension, syncope; rare: Angina pectoris, arrhythmia nodal, atrial fibrillation, bundle branch block, cerebral ischemia, cerebrovascular accident, congestive heart failure, heart block, low cardiac output, myocardial infarct, myocardial ischemia, pallor, phlebitis, pulmonary embolus, supraventricular extrasystoles, thrombophlebitis, thrombosis, varicose vein, vascular headache, ventricular extrasystoles. Digestive System: Infrequent: Bruxism, colitis, dysphagia, eructation, gastritis, gastroenteritis, gingivitis, glossitis, increased salivation, liver function tests abnormal, rectal hemorrhage, ulcerative stomatitis; rare: Aphthous stomatitis, bloody diarrhea, bulimia, cardiospasm, cholelithiasis, duodenitis, enteritis, esophagitis, fecal impactions, fecal incontinence, gum hemorrhage, hematemesis, hepatitis, ileitis, ileus, intestinal obstruction, jaundice, melena, mouth ulceration, peptic ulcer, salivary gland enlargement, sialadenitis, stomach ulcer, stomatitis, tongue discoloration, tongue edema, tooth caries. Endocrine System: Rare: Diabetes mellitus, goiter, hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism, thyroiditis. Hemic and Lymphatic Systems: Infrequent: Anemia, leukopenia, lymphadenopathy, purpura; rare: Abnormal erythrocytes, basophilia, bleeding time increased, eosinophilia, hypochromic anemia, iron deficiency anemia, leukocytosis, lymphedema, abnormal lymphocytes, lymphocytosis, microcytic anemia, monocytosis, normocytic anemia, thrombocythemia, thrombocytopenia. Metabolic and Nutritional: Frequent: Weight gain; infrequent: Edema, peripheral edema, SGOT increased, SGPT increased, thirst, weight loss; rare: Alkaline phosphatase increased, bilirubinemia, BUN increased, creatinine phosphokinase increased, dehydration, gamma globulins increased, gout, hypercalcemia, hypercholesteremia, hyperglycemia, hyperkalemia, hyperphosphatemia, hypocalcemia, hypoglycemia, hypokalemia, hyponatremia, ketosis, lactic dehydrogenase increased, non-protein nitrogen (NPN) increased. Musculoskeletal System: Frequent: Arthralgia; infrequent: Arthritis, arthrosis; rare: Bursitis, myositis, osteoporosis, generalized spasm, tenosynovitis, tetany. Nervous System: Frequent: Emotional lability, vertigo; infrequent: Abnormal thinking, alcohol abuse, ataxia, dystonia, dyskinesia, euphoria, hallucinations, hostility, hypertonia, hypesthesia, hypokinesia, incoordination, lack of emotion, libido increased, manic reaction, neurosis, paralysis, paranoid reaction; rare: Abnormal gait, akinesia, antisocial reaction, aphasia, choreoathetosis, circumoral paresthesias, convulsion, delirium, delusions, diplopia, drug dependence, dysarthria, extrapyramidal syndrome, fasciculations, grand mal convulsion, hyperalgesia, hysteria, manic-depressive reaction, meningitis, myelitis, neuralgia, neuropathy, nystagmus, peripheral neuritis, psychotic depression, psychosis, reflexes decreased, reflexes increased, stupor, torticollis, trismus, withdrawal syndrome. Respiratory System: Infrequent: Asthma, bronchitis, dyspnea, epistaxis, hyperventilation, pneumonia, respiratory flu; rare: Emphysema, hemoptysis, hiccups, lung fibrosis, pulmonary edema, sputum increased, stridor, voice alteration. Skin and Appendages: Frequent: Pruritus; infrequent: Acne, alopecia, contact dermatitis, dry skin, ecchymosis, eczema, herpes simplex, photosensitivity, urticaria; rare: Angioedema, erythema nodosum, erythema multiforme, exfoliative dermatitis, fungal dermatitis, furunculosis; herpes zoster, hirsutism, maculopapular rash, seborrhea, skin discoloration, skin hypertrophy, skin ulcer, sweating decreased, vesiculobullous rash. Special Senses: Frequent: Tinnitus; infrequent: Abnormality of accommodation, conjunctivitis, ear pain, eye pain, keratoconjunctivitis, mydriasis, otitis media; rare: Amblyopia, anisocoria, blepharitis, cataract, conjunctival edema, corneal ulcer, deafness, exophthalmos, eye hemorrhage, glaucoma, hyperacusis, night blindness, otitis externa, parosmia, photophobia, ptosis, retinal hemorrhage, taste loss, visual field defect. Urogenital System: Infrequent: Amenorrhea, breast pain, cystitis, dysuria, hematuria, menorrhagia, nocturia, polyuria, pyuria, urinary incontinence, urinary retention, urinary urgency, vaginitis; rare: Abortion, breast atrophy, breast enlargement, endometrial disorder, epididymitis, female lactation, fibrocystic breast, kidney calculus, kidney pain, leukorrhea, mastitis, metrorrhagia, nephritis, oliguria, salpingitis, urethritis, urinary casts, uterine spasm, urolith, vaginal hemorrhage, vaginal moniliasis

That's "the side effects" for a single, widely prescribed medication. This is not a good example of encyclopedic writing. This will not fit in an infobox. This should not be anywhere in the mainspace, not even in a subarticle, because we do not want to replicate the drug formulary lists, either in the article or in a subarticle. What we want is much closer to what our article currently says.
The researchers in question don't seem to believe that replicating this information is part of Wikipedia's mission. They merely believe that average (and below-average) readers might click on a Wikipedia link in search of this information, and then be so stupid that they would interpret the absence of information about adverse effects as a definitive statement that no adverse effects have ever been reported.
Perhaps they're right, but I have a higher opinion of our readers' intelligence than that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
'Tis a good example whatamidoing, and I am with you on all counts - just throwing in ideas. Maybe the problem lies in the disclaimer being a general coveral and researchers not reading MEDMOS wherein lies the guidelines for what we do cover. I've reformed my suggestion then: have adverse effects (and dosage?) sections in the drugbox which just link to a page as suggested before ( drop the disclaimer bit), AND the sections in the article ( I didn't really mean to drop them previous idea anyway). That would then explain the effects listed in articles and also cover articles where we have found no real need to list them, whilst hopefully giving a hint that there are medmos guidelines. ? L∴V 16:15, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Putting the above laundry list of side effects anywhere in the mainspace is WP:NOT okay. Wikipedia is not complete exposition of all possible details, not even in subarticles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
Ah - wrong end of the stick.. what I meant was a single, generic page, that ALL drug boxes point to. I was picturing something like this, but obviously better than that ! L∴V 19:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I personally don't think that a link to another disclaimer would be helpful, and I (separately) don't think you could get consensus for it because of WP:NDA's popularity.
It might be possible to add something similar to MEDMOS, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree with WhatamIdoing. Each article should have a section on adverse effects. These effects should have reliable sources, similar in format to the article "linezolid". "Laundry lists" such as those in the British National Formulary, exemplified by WhatamIdoing above, are not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Our existing guidelines (WP:MOSMED) are fine. I'm not unduly concerned by Clauson's comments. His article has flaws, as demonstrated by David Ruben. I regard the Wikipedia community of editors (and WikiProject Medicine editors in particular) as more authoritative than Clauson and Reuters. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I am content that the issue has been explored. Just the matter of the wording in MEDMOS may be left hanging. Whatamidoing, by 'adding something similar' I am assuming you mean adding more info to MEDMOS and not adding a link to it from drugbox? ( Although maybe we could add a link into the project banner ?) L∴V 09:42, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
If you think that editors (not readers) would benefit from a more complete explanation of our standards, then you might want to propose an expansion of WP:MEDMOS#Drugs, which is where MEDMOS addresses this issue. I am certain that a proposal that looks like a disclaimer won't be accepted, but advice to editors on how to write a better article has a reasonable chance. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I believe we should see if we can clarify it a little - will take to the MEDMOS talk now. L∴V 12:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

I am concluding that we do have a sufficient method of dealing with adverse effects, highlighting them or describing the fully is wrong, adding disclaimers is wrong, just the message is not getting through to researchers / readers completely. Maybe some clarification of the section in Medmos may be possible - but it essentially works... The only idea I have left unaddressed is including a link to medmos in the project banner placed on talk pages - it should increase the chances of it being read - and may as a side effect help new editors to medical articles.

I propose we add a link to it something like:

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine which has some guidelines for editing medicine related articles. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctors'

Fin. L∴V 12:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. How about something modeled after {{Blp}}?
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. Within common sense, it should follow the Project's Manual of Style and adhere to specific guidelines on referencing. Please visit the project page for details, or ask questions at the doctors' mess.
—Fvasconcellos (t·c) 13:22, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Filling template for references

I found another filling template. I remember reading a discussion about how the one from Diberri is non-functional-- though, I dunno if any replacement was been mentioned.
Any how, the one I found is here: http://toolserver.org/~holek/cite-gen/index.php.
To get the pubmed reference - you need to select (1) "Library of Congress" (2) paste in the PMID, and (3) click "Send".
Cheers! Nephron  T|C 03:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Excellent tool, just what I was looking for! Thanks. :)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Are Epidemiology terms in our scope?

I just tagged Vector (epidemiology) as a med-stub and with the project tag, which was reverted. In general should epidemiology terms be within this project's scope. I was also looking at Fomite (term) as well. I'm not planning on a tagging spree, just wanted to get some feedback on this. -Optigan13 (talk) 16:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

I've asked the editor why s/he removed the tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:40, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
It seems Wickey-nl (talk · contribs) was objecting not to the medical scope, but to the classification as a stub. I've left a note on their talk page about removing other projects' templates. P.S. the article needs verification of its only source, and also needs more sources, can anyone here help? --RexxS (talk) 15:32, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure what "verification of the source" means in this context. It's a standard textbook supporting a standard definition. The likelihood of it being wrong is very slim. Perhaps the editor who added that tag meant to say "It'd be nice if we had a page number"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm sure you're right, although the editor who added the {{verify source}} tag was Optigan13, who started this thread. Are you able to check that textbook and find a page number? Then we could improve the reference, remove the tag and reclassify as start-class. --RexxS (talk) 19:49, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
I changed the intro line using my epi dictionary, and asked for just the page number on the second book and to back up a similar description. I was looking for clarification on the whether the description was accurate based on that text, since wind and water as examples of vectors is incorrect. It's good to see this is an issue of assessment and not scope. In hindsight it was a start class article, but I have a tendency to assess quickly, and err on the low side. -Optigan13 (talk) 05:19, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Wickey-nl's first edit (on the English Wikipedia, at least) was just ten days ago. Presumably s/he didn't know what else to do.
Optigan, I think that wind and water are fairly often considered vectors by some people, although it's kind of sloppy. It would be interesting to see what the published definitions say. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:33, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Virus on MainPage

The virus article will appear on the main page tomorrow (5th). Pop it in your watchlist and help defend against vandalism and/or answer queries on the talk page. Colin°Talk 21:51, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Portacaval anastomosis

Please check two issues at Portacaval anastomosis: this edit introduced random words and should presumably be reverted; this edit claims the title is incorrectly spelled. Johnuniq (talk) 01:25, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted both. Neither spelling is actually wrong, but the prior spelling is (by far) more common. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:27, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Expanding AMWA stub, creating article for AMWA Journal

Hello all, I'm a new user and I'm interested in expanding the stub for the American Medical Writers Association article and also creating a new article for the AMWA Journal, the Association's official publication. I'm thinking this will take a couple of weeks to accomplish. I wanted to follow protocols here and put this idea out to the group before I make my changes. Feedback and advice are appreciated!

Cirrus Editor (talk) 16:19, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like adding content is the best way to start. I have added the AMWA article to the list of those I watch, as I will with the Journal article. I would not worry too much about style guidelines at this early stage—they are not that complicated and can easily be implemented later. You can contact me here any time. Graham. Graham Colm Talk 16:34, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
I've suggested on your talk page that you can make a sub-page in your user space to work on the article and experiment without worrying about making mistakes. Either way, don't forget to cite your sources - there are plenty of editors here who are willing to help out if asked! --RexxS (talk) 16:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
Hello all, I've created a new page for AMWA on my own user space at User:Cirrus_Editor/American_Medical_Writers_Association. Please review and provide feedback if you'd like before I post it live. —Preceding undated comment added 21:43, 7 October 2009 (UTC). Cirrus Editor (talk) 22:54, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

A virtual greeting to anyone who will read the classification and create a good navbox with all the 20+ subtypes of human corneal dystrophies! --CopperKettle 07:47, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll have a go, brb Captain n00dle T/C 21:10, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Is this anywhere near? User:Captain-n00dle/Sandbox4. If you would like subtypes, could yiy find a list for me, I'm only an ickle medical student so don't know them ^_^ Captain n00dle T/C 21:19, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
Big thanks, Cap! The classification is in the "external links" at the bottom of the article. Best regards, --CopperKettle 05:04, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I do apologise for the slow reply copper, it is a very colloquial term meaning little (ickle phonetically sounds like little) hope that that made sense! and I have moved the template here: {{Human corneal dystrophy}}, I shall add it to all the articles soon and add categories, documentation and things. Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 22:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)


Right, I put the categories into the navbox. I think that it is right according to [1] but can I ask, are these three terms interchangeable:

Cheers! Captain n00dle T/C 00:02, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh also, Epithelial recurrent erosion dystrophy, Grayson-Wilbrandt corneal dystrophy, Central cloudy dystrophy of Francxois and Pre-Descemet corneal dystrophy are all red links, and I don't know if they should be blue but they were on the list :-) Captain n00dle T/C 00:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Redlinks are generally excluded from both navboxes and See also, so I would not add these. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I hid them in the template using Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 19:01, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Notability for chemicals?

Icodextrin is a stub for a peritoneal dialysis solution, or it's the molecule dissolved in the solution. I'm not sure what the notability factor is for pharmaceuticals. Any suggestions or comments? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 22:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

No idea, try asking at WP:PHARM? You may well have already done so, I just can't be bothered to check ;) Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  15:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, will do. I keep forgetting about those guys... WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 15:56, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Or just forget notability and improve the article ad lib. That's how Wikipedia became great. - Draeco (talk) 17:03, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
That's a much better idea. I wish I had thought of that. Could I then beg a favour - anyone willing to forward me some articles. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
[2] that may help, its where I turn to first for drug info, regards, Captain n00dle T/C 20:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Help Translating

Hello! Doesn anyone know enough about complement to translate the lables of this image on this page. Then I can get them sorted. Thanks! Captain n00dle T/C 11:25, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

"Kompleks konwertazy C5" is "C5 convertase".
"Woda lizozym antybiotyki" is (I suppose) "water lysozyme antibiotics", although this doesn't make sense. The label "ATP" is unhelpful, as is "aminokwasy" - "aminoacids".
"Lizowana blona" is the "cell membrane".
In my opinion, the picture would be better without the misleading labels on the pore created by the MAC. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:48, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
The figure shows what goes through a particular cell membrane channel. Those mysterious word triplets are 2 lists of 3 items, not 2 phrases: water / lysozyme / antibiotics go one way, and potassium / ATP / amino acids go the other. ATP in this context is adenosine triphosphate. --Una Smith (talk) 14:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
The lists indicate diffusion through the membrane attack complex. Those lists are (in my opinion) not helpful to the reader. Axl ¤ [Talk] 17:10, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks guys that's brilliant =D Captain n00dle T/C 18:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Addition

Could I add Limb salvage surgery to this? - BennyK95 - Talk 22:59, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

That is weird! It wont display it here. The thing at the bottom of the Hip replacement article is what I meant. - BennyK95 - Talk 23:03, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean Template:Operations and other procedures on the musculoskeletal system? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I believe that Limb salvage surgery falls under that catergory. Don't you? - BennyK95 - Talk 00:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Or perhaps it fits better under Template:Muscle/soft tissue procedures. What do you (and anyone else) think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:21, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm confused as to why amputation is listed as a soft tissue surgery. Surely since you're literally cutting back a whole structure (including the muscle and bone), it's a musculoskeletal surgery? Limb salvage surgery on the other hand could probably fit in either. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  07:35, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I think it fits best in both. Can we have a vote? - BennyK95 - Talk 23:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Soft redirect to:meta:Polls are evil
This page is a soft redirect.
Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  19:04, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
Uh..Okay I will add it to the infoboxes. If anyone objects please notify me on my Usertalk:BennyK95.- BennyK95 - Talk 23:05, October 9 2009 (UTC)

Citation bot altering citation style on medical articles

An issue which should have been easily resolved persists; for the history read from here down. Although three editors have now addressed this (Eubulides, ImperfectlyInformed, and me), the situation continues. Citation guidelines say not to alter citation style without consensus (WP:CITE#HOW), medical articles use the Diberri template filler style on authors, but one editor persists in running the bot on medical articles and filling in up to nine authors, which clutters the text, in spite of being asked to stop and in one case, reinstating the edits even after reverted once and without discussing the reinstatement on talk. This is surprising in light of the date delinking ArbCom. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:09, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Wholeheartedly agree, I've posted a comment on the second thread on the issue. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  15:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Yeah, that's got to be a bug. WP:MEDMOS#Citing medical sources clearly calls out the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals form of six authors plus et al. when there are more than six. Nothing wrong with adding them to the wikitext so the COiNS metadata is inclusive, but the template should only render it per MEDMOS. The template documentation says up to nine authors, but I seem to recall that there was a way to tell it to use fewer. Am I imagining things?LeadSongDog come howl 17:13, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

This is slightly off-topic, but I have a somewhat hazy impression that the latest update to the WP:FOOTNOTES software would allow us to easily move all of the full citations to the end, so that you could have just <ref name=Whatever /> in the text, and dump the long version with the template in the <references />. This might make everyday editing simpler (no lines of citation templates in your way). I believe that it also signals 'orphan' refs, which would help with maintenance.

Would this problem (the increased length of the scary template) be mitigated by re-formatting the articles to take advantage of this new system? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Possibly, but that citation style also has problems, because it requires two edits to add citations, and not all editors will understand or do that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that most editors will be able to sort it out -- we do a lot of "match whatever's already there" as it is, and this is just a new pattern -- but do you know whether it's possible to use both systems in the same article (without screwing things up for the reader)? If so, then standard article maintenance (e.g., moving the cite template for the person adding a source) should be sufficient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:03, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I really don't know; I've not yet seen the new system in action. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:15, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Multiple requests seem not to have been heeded (and bot paused to address issues) - (whilst this at Aspenia triggered myself to see what is occurring), the fact that the bot automatically works its way through articles means it will eventually hit all medical articles, means IMHO that pausing required - I've blocked bot for now. David Ruben Talk 00:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, the bot misbehaved by finding errors in the input metadata and fixing them, yet they got reverted for wikitext format reasons? This doesn't sound very sensible. manually corrected. What am I missing? LeadSongDog come howl 05:23, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Merging Petechia, Purpura, and Ecchymosis w/ Bruise (contusion)

Would it be appropriate for me to merge petechia, purpura, and ecchymosis as subcategories of contusions? [The National Library of Medicine - Medical Subject Headings] indicates that ecchymosis should be differentiated from contusion, as does some of the literature, but nowhere is the rationale behind this explained, and a large portion of the literature makes no differentiation. Based on the mechanisms, I don't see any difference personally. Any opinions? --Timemutt (talk) 05:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Contusions [C21.866.248] is listed in MESH as being under "Wounds and Injuries [C21.866]" and is from "Disorders of Environmental Origin" [C21]- i.e. it is always has a traumatic component (obvious can be worse if on warfarin or clotting disorder, but the individual bruise will have some form of physical minor/major event). Ecchymosis [C23.550.414.625] is only due to Hemorrhage [C23.550.414] which is a Pathologic Processes [C23.550], and so an internal body problem (small normal breaks in capillary walls not getting plugged by platelets if these are low, or disruption to blood vessel walls which presumeably is how non-blanching purpura appears in say menigococcal septicaemia. Whilst both are blood where it should not be, I think oversimplistic to merge as subcatagories of each over, although clearly large overlaps (perhaps both members of Extravasation - but note that term also applies to non-blood other liquids too). Similarly one might wonder about putting skin "cuts" under "trauma", but splits in the skin might occur in eczema without really outside physical injury of blunt or sharp (sticks, glass, knife or scalpel blade in surgery) trauma would cause.David Ruben Talk 07:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
A paragraph or two that explains the differences between these terms should probably be placed in every one of those articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

"Ganfyd" AfD

I have submitted "Ganfyd" to AfD. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:48, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Cool cap

Good morning. This morning I read an article in the news about Cool cap saving the life of a baby whose mother died during delivery. I googled it and found quite a few sources so I created an article. I'd like to include the Cool cap in the article about Cerebral_palsy under a section about prevention during delivery of infants, but I am not an expert by any means and do not feel I am capable of writing such a section in a medical article or know if it even belongs there. It could also possibly belong in Cerebral_hypoxia. I have no affiliation or WP:COI, just creating an article I felt had notability. Can I get an expert opinion and/or help? If you can, please also provide support on expanding the Cool cap article that I've marked as a stub.--TParis00ap (talk) 16:25, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

"Cool caps" were/are used by patients undergoing chemotherapy to prevent loss of hair. Basically, the vasoconstriction means that the drug only reaches the hair in minute quantities, preventing loss. This should be in the article, I will perhaps do some research, regards, Captain n00dle T/C 20:08, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
I just did a quick google search and I found this [3]. I'll start there about the chemotherapy and prevention of hair loss.--TParis00ap (talk) 02:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
I added the bit about chemotherapy, although I am sure it can be expanded. I also added a bit about side effects. I would really appreciate if an expert could quality check. I have no medical background, expertise, or interest. I can't understand half the stuff I wrote in the article. Thanks.--TParis00ap (talk) 20:20, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
The short chemotherapy section looks fine to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, it looks good, I will see if I can add anything as well :-) Captain n00dle T/C 10:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

etiology

I've encountered this word in a few articles and replaced it with "cause" or words to that effect in the hopes of de-jargonizing the article, on the principle that I'm a well-read and well-educated fellow and if I'd needed to look up the word, there must be many others who didn't understand it either. When I look around, though, I see the word "etiology" is used a lot in Wikipedia. Is there any reason I shouldn't be doing these replacements? Examples [4], [5] Gruntler (talk) 18:29, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

No. Its widespread use probably reflects the fact that those articles were edited by editors comfortable with that jargon, unaware that the word is not common. See also WP:MEDMOS. Colin°Talk 19:34, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Look out for "aetiology" too. Strictly speaking etiology is the study of causes, but it is most often used simply to mean "cause" or "causes". See, "particularly when MRSA is documented as the etiology" (PMID 19766886) for example; it just means "caused" as in "especially when caused by MRSA" (my translation). Graham Colm Talk 20:16, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Main page might need watching

Water fluoridation is currently on the Main Page. It's a controversial topic and if you could watch it for the usual sort of vandalism in the next 24 hours, it'd be appreciated. Eubulides (talk) 00:48, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Medical Hypotheses

Any input on the reliability of this journal would be welcomed on the reliable sources noticeboard, here [6]--Slp1 (talk) 02:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Is this navbox needed

Stale
 – anyone got any input? I may just be bold and add it to the relevant articles on the shoulder Captain n00dle T/C 20:02, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I thought that it would be a good idea to have a navbox for the shoulder joint, as, at the moment, there is a separate one for the bones, ligaments and muscles.

I think I have made a good attempt here: User:Captain-n00dle/Sandbox3 please feel free to comment with suggestions.

I don't know if it is even needed so if you feel it is/isn't then please do :-)

Captain n00dle T/C 21:08, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Image quality (?)

I've been uploading images to the Wikicommons. When adding 'em to Wikipedia, I've noticed that the image quality seems to be severely degraded -- something that has happened in the last week or two. Does anyone know whether this is temporary? Nephron  T|C 02:59, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly, it seems to be just on the English language version of WP; I concluded this after comparing images of a Mallory body and cirrhosis in the German and English version of WP. Nephron  T|C 03:07, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
I posted the question at the village pump - here. The issue is related to thumbnails. Dunno much more than that - yet. Nephron  T|C 22:56, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Five-year survival rate

Five-year survival rate is so far short of adequate, I hesitate to link to it from other articles. Does anyone here feel inspired to improve it? --Una Smith (talk) 18:58, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be merged with survival rate. There's not really anything magic about the 'five year' part. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:19, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps. Survival rate is overly narrow, though. It is an important topic also in ecology, and I was considering if that article should be split into Survival rate (ecology) and Survival rate (medicine), and Five-year survival rate merged into Survival rate (medicine). --Una Smith (talk) 14:39, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Picture

can

be used as the main image for this article and for the entire health and medicine categories and related articles ? (a template needs to be made for the latter) At present {{WPMED|class=C|importance=Top}} gives a template with File:Rod of Asclepius2.svg, but this latter image is more suitable for the antidote page)

81.241.110.18 (talk) 10:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

What is this image for? The only symbol I understand here is the red cross meaning "Medic" or "Hospital" but the other symbols I don't understand. Please define it in more detail what you want. Thanks - BennyK95 - Talk 18:02, October 12 2009 (UTC)
The other three symbols are used in 'non-Christian' countries to indicate the local equivalent of the Red "Cross". The Red Crescent is used primarily in Muslim countries; the Red Lion and Sun is specific to Iran; and the Red Crystal was, depending on your political view, was either introduced to prevent Israel's group from using a symbol that was Jewish (rather than obviously Christian or obviously Muslim), or to stop the "symbol creep" madness once and for all.
There are two problems: The first is the size. I've reduced the image to the default size range for the BannerMeta template, which has "small" and "large" parameters. What you see on the side is what you'd actually get. The Red Lion and Sun is nearly illegible even at the larger size.
The second problem is the identity. These symbols belong to a specific group. Medicine existed for millenia before the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, and it exists quite independent of those organizations today. It's not really appropriate for us to define medicine as "what one organization does," especially since that organization does a lot of things that have very little connection to medicine. For example, the Red Cross chapter nearest me is typically in the news for renting hotel rooms for people whose homes have burned down -- a valuable service, to be sure, but not what you'd call "medicine". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
And the third problem is that the red cross is a protected symbol. See the bottom of File:Flag of the Red Cross.svg. Colin°Talk 22:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Have a look at

Could someone have a look at both Organic pre- and postpartum psychoses and Postpartum psychosis, both of which seem to have received attention from a brand-new editor? It seems like the kind of thing that Wikipedia ought to have an article about, and I'd kind of like to know whether it's duplicating an existing article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:51, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Is a lab finding a medical condition?

Is pancytopenia a proper medical condition or simply a test result? Would you call lab findings "medical signs" (i.e., things you observed through your microscope, which could be "signs" just as much as things observed through your contact lenses)?

What about anemia? Is it possible for anemia to be both a medical condition and a test result? Or are only specific kinds of anemia properly 'diseases'?

Eventually I'll want some proper reliable sources, but for right now, I'm hoping to get some informal responses to give me an idea of the normal use of these terms. (The ultimate goal is to either find or create the article that should be linked in these situations.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

You want my informal response? In my opinion, pancytopenia is a medical condition. The lab runs tests on the full blood count (or CBC in the USA) to give values for haemoglobin, white cell count and platelet count. This generates a list of numbers (with their accompanying reference ranges). The clinician reads the numbers and makes the diagnosis: pancytopenia, in the clinical context. In many cases, laboratories will flag unusual results for review by senior staff (e.g. a haematologist) prior to authorisation for the clinician. Often, a haematologist will be asked to review such results and examine the blood film; thus the haematologist might make the diagnosis of pancytopenia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:47, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

The naked eye

Ran across the article Naked eye. Lots of interesting stuff, none of it cited. It's in Categories: Observational astronomy | Vision

I don't know which Project should work on this one, but it needs help and some Project ought to adopt it. I've tagged it for {copyedit} and {citations}. - Hordaland (talk) 14:10, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Does not really look like medicine.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:42, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I know. It involves several disciplines & falls through the cracks. - Hordaland (talk) 16:17, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I would alert another wikiproject such as WP:ASTRONOMY, this sounds like it falls within their scope. Or maybe just notify the ophthalmology task force within this project. Tyrol5 [Talk] 21:51, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I just notified the ophthalmology task force. You can notify the astronomy project if you wish. Tyrol5 [Talk] 22:06, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking for more help creating missing topics in dermatology

The dermatologic-related content on Wikipedia continues to improve; however, we still need help to complete the Bolognia Push 2009! This is an effort to make sure that every topic found within this unabridged dermatology text is also found on Wikipeda. Please see the above link for more information, and, if you are interested in helping, e-mail me for the login information.

There are still hundreds of disease stubs and redirects to be made. We need your help! ---kilbad (talk) 22:11, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

This article has changed

Limb salvage has changed a lot since I made it. I read the what qualifes as a B-class article and I think this is article is now a B-class.

  • There is little or no grammatical errors
  • There are lot's of images
  • The information is not original research.
  • It has many references

What does everyone else think? - BennyK95 - Talk 22:28, October 13 2009 (UTC)

Assessment requests are usually listed at WP:MEDA.
There are two sections (History and Preparation) without any references at all. Consequently, I'd normally call that C-class. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:00, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
I've tried to copyedit the article, adding fresh wikilinks and removing overlinking as best I could. While I was doing it, I found that we don't seem to have an article on Surgical reconstruction and that Disarticulation redirects to a very inappropriate place (in my humble opinion). I'm no medic, so creating those is a daunting task for me - is there anyone here who could knock up at least a couple of stubs or appropriate redirects to cover these gaps? --RexxS (talk) 03:38, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Should call have an entry for declaration of death?

To my knowledge this is an unofficial but common expression. My knowledge is nowhere near enough to decide whether it should be mentioned in the disambiguation page, and to write a description. What're the opinions of you smarter folk? --Kizor 19:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

If it is unofficial, I would not include it in an encyclopedia, which is what wikipedia is. Tyrol5 [Talk] 20:19, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Here's something I recently learned. Since 1919, after my country gained independence, the elected Parliament has chosen a Prime Minister and the Prime Minister has then nominated the Cabinet. Until the constitutional revision of 2000 codified this, there wasn't a word of the practice in law. It was unofficial. Surely what people do counts alongside what's in the books. --Kizor 22:43, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
It's something for the equivalent page on Wiktionary. JFW | T@lk 21:27, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Either's good. --Kizor 22:43, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Medicine

There is a request to move the article Medicine to Medicine (craft); see Talk:Medicine#Move. --Una Smith (talk) 00:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Water fluoridation‎

Water fluoridation could do with some more eyes and possibly semi-protection. For example, twice today an IP has added some Nazi-mind-control conspiracy theory stuff. Colin°Talk 15:41, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I've just reverted an IP's re-addition of the same stuff using http://presselibreinternationale.com as a source. It doesn't seem to me to meet even WP:RS, let alone the standard we want for featured medical articles. I'll keep an eye on the article for the next few hours anyway. --RexxS (talk) 16:22, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Geocities

Just a heads-up to interested editors that Geocities is dying in less than ten days. In theory, none of the 23,600 links to this website will be in medicine-related articles... but if you run across them, please check them for updates. Some links to geocities pages apparently have information about their new URLs right now; others are just going to die. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Merge of Pharyngeal pouch and Zenker's diverticulum

Perhaps someone with experience of editing medical articles could help by addressing the comments I have left at Talk:Zenker's diverticulum. JonH (talk) 20:34, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Sjögren's syndrome

Should Wikipedia include the full list of questions at Sjögren's syndrome#Classification_Criteria? It seems unencyclopedic to me... but they do seem to be the real questions, with a proper source... Anyone care to share an opinion? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:46, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Ugly. WP:NOT indiscriminate information. I'm a huge inclusionist, but I don't think they belong here. - Draeco (talk) 07:57, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

EHR/EMR

There's a long-standing discussion about whether Electronic medical record and Electronic health record should be different articles. At the moment, there's little if anything in EMR that's not in EHR, so I just redirected EMR to EHR. Does anyone have any cogent arguments as to why they should be kept separate? As a healthcare IT worker, I have to say I don't see any reason to do so. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:29, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Good call, merge em. Commented on EMR talk page. - Draeco (talk) 23:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Oops, got the name of the EHR article wrong above. Fixed now. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 23:38, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Syphilis

Does anyone have access to PMID 10742922 (Current Problems in Pediatrics, 2000)? There's a question about whether it says that Avicenna used mercury specifically to treat syphilis, or in some other context (e.g., some other pox). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

The Canon of Medicine, a prominent medieval textbook written by Avicenna, encouraged the use of mercury for the treatment of chronic skin disorders, including typhus, leprosy, and syphilis. PMID 10742922 --Vishnu2011 (talk) 23:10, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! There's no agreement that syphilis actually existed in the "Old World" at that time, but all we care about here is what the named source says, so this is very helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Interesting to know, glad I could be of help --Vishnu2011 (talk) 02:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect page move, admin needed

Obsessive–compulsive spectrum was just incorrectly moved to Obsessive-compulsive spectrum (per WP:ENDASH); is an admin able to clean that up? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm no admin but I cleaned it up anyway. Eubulides (talk) 21:23, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Can I just ask, why is an em dash needed for this page? Thanks in advance, regards Captain n00dle T/C 10:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
It's an en dash. From WP:ENDASH: En dashes (–) have three distinct roles ... To substitute for and in compound expressions where the relationship involves independent elements and When naming an article, a hyphen is not used as a substitute for an en dash that properly belongs in the title. I think that Obsessive–compulsive spectrum is therefore the correct page title; the alternative (with a hyphen) is a useful redirect because of searches using a hyphen. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 12:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Help please

Could someone look at Perineal tear classification for accuracy, etc. and tag it for this project or merge or something else if it's hoax? -- Banjeboi 00:23, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

thank you Draeco for taking a look! -- Banjeboi 01:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Offering access to histology images (public domain)

I have equipment and access to government histology and pathology slides, and can provide public domain images of most tissues and many common pathologies at large size and good resolution on request.

I would be delighted to provide as many images as possible to this and other interested projects, but I don't have the time to check individual talk pages across many projects. If you'd like microscopic images of tissues, please send an email to histology.request@gmail.com with the request in the subject line (ex: "artery wall" or "tuberculosis granuloma"). Happy regards, Glacialfury (talk) 15:00, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

We keep at list at Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of medical subjects. They're not all histology/pathology requests, but it should be pretty easy to guess which ones are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Hematology/oncology task force

The creation of this task force has been discussed for a few months on the task force discussion page. I'm not sure who can create task forces, but I think that it is about time to create this task force, as it covers a very large area of medicine. On the discussion, the general consensus is to go ahead and create the task force. Tyrol5 [Talk] 17:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

You can do this yourself, if you want. The procedure is at WP:MEDTF#Task_force_creation_guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:51, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
I think this is a task best performed by an experienced administrator, as some of the tasks require an administrator. I'm not an admin. Tyrol5 [Talk] 18:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
To my knowledge you don't need to be an administrator for anything other than editing the protected templates, which can be done easily when placing a request on the talk page. I'll do it for you if you don't feel confident enough to do so as I created the neurology task force. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  18:18, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I just created the page, but many tasks still remain. Help would be appreciated. Tyrol5 [Talk] 18:49, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Aethlon Hemopurifier

See Talk:2009_flu_pandemic#Hemopurifier_press_release for discussion of a problem with a press release being used as a source in the 2009 flu pandemic article. Perhaps somebody in this project could write an article about affinity plasmapheresis? Tim Vickers (talk) 18:08, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Need a better weedwhacker

I'm very familiar with the manufacturing side of plasmapheresis, but pretty limited when it comes to clinical uses. There's a huge list of indications that are growing on that article and some preliminary poking around shows a lot of them use the technique very rarely. If someone with a little more practical knowledge could cut that list down to something sensible (i.e. examples rather than a quasi-comprehensive list) it'd be great. SDY (talk) 01:48, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Self promotion

This page looks like a self promoted how to guide Rice Diet. This page is without refs Hypokinetic diseases wonder if both should be deleted? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:17, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey James, I just searched for a random sentence off the page (in quotes in google) to see if it was a copyright infringement, it seems to be a replica of this page so I had to request it for speedy deletion anyway. Thanks! Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 10:16, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
I have also just left the user a couple of messages on his talk page too: User talk:Ricedietprogram Captain n00dle T/C 10:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

DYK feedback needed

Template talk:Did you know#Articles created.2Fexpanded on October 21; Did you know

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

In 1968 this may have been acceptable. JFW | T@lk 13:07, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Heh. Reminds me of an episode of Quantum Leap. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
And yes, ethanol was once considered a (somewhat) effective tocolytic (and still is by some people); for recent reviews that still mention its use, see PMID 12825006 and PMID 10546776. PMID 12763121 may have some cool historical information. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:21, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Anatomy/redirect question

Shouldn't volar plate redirect to Palmar ligaments of metacarpophalangeal articulations? Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:22, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Personally, no idea. But there deffinately needs to be better disambiguation, see these:
Its now too late for me in my timezone to do it, but may I suggest using a {{Distinguish}} template on those pages. Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 00:18, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, probably a good idea. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Redirect Discussion

Your (or any) input would be valued on a discussion regarding using a template for redirect pages to/from eponymous terms, since there are a lot of these in medicine. Thanks in advance, Regards Captain n00dle T/C 00:29, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Hem/onc task force

I created the page for the task force, however, none of the other tasks have been completed. Would someone interested in this topic "adopt" this task force? I simply don't have time to be running around doing all of these things, as it is quite time consuming. The list of tasks to be completed can be found here. Tyrol5 [Talk] 18:07, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

In general, if something isn't important enough for you to drop everything and do immediately, then it's probably not important enough for other editors to drop everything and do immediately either. WP:There is no deadline: if people want this task force to exist, then they'll deal with the setup tasks when doing so would actually provide some practical value to the participants.
I think we can finish this discussion at the task force's own page. Perhaps you would respond to my request there about identifying which tasks have been done. For example, you could name things that you have already done, so that no one will waste time planning to duplicate your work. Perhaps other editors will do the same. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Telemedicine and telehealth

These articles are in poor shape. There are no series templates (headers or footers) tying the topic together, and no categories where I can find them. Some of the articles included in this set require general maintenance. I'm interested in this topic, so I would like to help out, but before I do anything I would like to hear some feedback on the direction this project wants to go with it. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 23:47, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm in support of any motivated editor improving it and/or creating good templates. Personally, I don't know or care much about it. Boldly take the lead if you do. What other direction need there be? Cheers mate - Draeco (talk) 04:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
The list at WP:MEDMOS#Medical_specialties might be at least marginally helpful in determining what to include. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:06, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! Viriditas (talk) 07:47, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Wiki journal watch

Anyone has access to this: PMID 19843833 ? Have requested reprint from author. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 13:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Am I wrong by saying that it hasn't been published yet? The publish date on it is November (data uploaded in october though). Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 00:07, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Not sure about the dates, but I have access, and in article it states it was published online 20th October. What do you need to know? --Vishnu2011 (talk) 23:19, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Someone to insert new diagram

Common adverse effects of tobacco smoking.[1]
  1. ^ Figure 8-6, page 288, chapter 8 in: Mitchell, Richard Sheppard; Kumar, Vinay; Abbas, Abul K.; Fausto, Nelson. Robbins Basic Pathology. Philadelphia: Saunders. ISBN 1-4160-2973-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) 8th edition.

Upon request, I've made a diagram over common adverse effects of tobacco smoking, preferably to be placed in Tobacco smoking#Health for a quick overview. However, from another discussion, which may be somewhere in the archives now, I was recommended to ask another user to insert images, to avoid any suspicion of self-promotion. If still necessary, would anyone here want to be that another user and insert the image? Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:25, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm amazed that anyone would object to you placing these images, as it seems they clearly add value to the encyclopedia. I've added the image to Tobacco smoking#Health without any reservation. It improves the article and that's good enough for me. Good luck to you in your "project" - I'd be happy to help in any way I can. --RexxS (talk) 01:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! I'm actually a bit skeptical myself toward that indirect insertion suggestion, because I think it has been working very well so far with just inserting diagrams where it is apparently needed. In the few cases it hasn't been useful or otherwise inappropriate, then it has simply been removed afterward (and taught me a lesson). So, if there is no direct objection now, I'm thinking of continuing the usual way. Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I really don't think these images are appropriate for WP. This is an encyclopedia for the world, and the proliferation of images of one person's face, placed by that person, seems inappropriate. It has the appearance of narcissism, and the recognizability of the face distracts from the content. Far better if it were a cartoon. I realize that no one has provided alternative images, which is why I have not raised this issue spontaneously. This is not to say I'll block this effort because I think we need such diagrams, but I won't endorse it for the reasons above, and if someone starts replacing these images with anonymous ones of at least the same quality, I'd strongly endorse that. For now, I agree that a second party should be engaged to insert each one, due to the obvious conflict of interest. -- Scray (talk) 13:36, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I can now see what the objection might be, but I have no sympathy with it. I didn't recognise the face, and I doubt the rest of the world would either. Because of our desire for free licensing (which is commendable), Wikipedia is generally image-poor and I would be looking for ways to encourage the addition of more useful images – even at the expense of an appearance of "narcissism"! --RexxS (talk) 14:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it should be necessary to have a certification from a psychologist that I'm not a narcissist, so I accept letting others do the insertions in a controlled manner, if there are some who prefer having it that way. I would also accept replacement of them with any future superior image if it would better serve their purpose, and probably also adding that superior image instead to articles that currently lack such a diagrams. Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I do think the creation of these illustrative images is a laudable effort, which is why I think it's so unfortunate that it is tainted by the obvious (to me) conflict of interest. I urge you to consider replacing your face in those images. I don't suggest this is easy, I just think it's important. -- Scray (talk) 19:19, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I think this "conflict of interest" objection is a little silly. Wikipedia needs free images. I applaud Mikael for his commitment to the project. Why on earth should the face be replaced? Replaced with whose, mine? I perceive no narcissism; just a useful illustration that saves paragraphs of dull text. I have objected in the past to the use of versions this image, but only wrt to the accuracy of the annotations. We need more self-created free pictures. Just my two pennies worth. Graham, Graham Colm Talk 19:53, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to commend Mikael efforts. Copyright is complicated and there is significant liability from using another persons image. It has been suggested that only the person in a picture should upload said image. It is also suggested that if it this is not the case that one need written consent from a person to use their image and that they should have appropriate legal counsels and a full psychological assessment before they make this decision. So Mikael thank you for sticking you neck out and putting in this effort.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:27, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I say bravo also. One day when Wikipedia has tons of good images and idle editors looking to improve things, maybe we can change the face. But for now, carry on. - Draeco (talk) 21:38, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I am surprised by the clarity of the face (photographic?) as compared to the cartoon style of the organs. It is a little distracting from the actual point of the picture. The picture would be better with a cartoon (or even blank) face. However Mikael's picture is better than any other currently available picture. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:54, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
Yes, the svg is made up of embedded medium-resolution bit-mapped images along with vectors, resulting in the file size of 1.2 MB. Of course, when the wikimedia software delivers the image, it supplies a scaled png which is only 33 kB at current thumbnail size. The organ images are transparent which gives them a kind of cartoon effect. You could modify any or all of these elements, but I doubt the effort would be worth any perceived advantage. --RexxS (talk) 14:45, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I've been skeptical of the value of these images, and have removed them from some articles. I too was a bit discomfited by Mikael's face (although I'm sure no vanity is intended), but the main thrust of my objections is that:

  • The images make no distinction between common and rare symptoms and signs
  • The terms are not clickable and thereby lack a crucial piece of functionality for the reader (who must then either go to the text and find the term or alternatively type it into the search box manually)
  • There is no straightforward way for other editors to make modifications to an image once it has been generated

I'm open to arguments, but despite Mikael's efforts I'm not sure how useful these images actually are on Wikipedia. JFW | T@lk 20:48, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

The images seem to use bold face for common features, and book face for rare ones. We could make them both multilingual and clickable if they provided numbers instead of words (and we put the key in the caption). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
The images are quite easy to edit with Inkscape. I've uploaded a numbered version to Commons to see what it looks like (File:Adverse effects of tobacco smoking-numbered.svg). --RexxS (talk) 22:26, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
Good idea with the numbered version! Also, I appreciate every appreciation for the project. Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:17, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

DIBERRI'S TOOL IS WORKING AGAIN!!!

What else can be said...? --Garrondo (talk) 07:39, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Praise the LORD! JFW | T@lk 19:43, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Yay! WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Huzzah! No more going back to check on {{cite pmid}}! - 2/0 (cont.) 23:33, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
What is Diberi's tool?- BennyK95 - Talk 23:50, October 14 2009 (UTC)
Diberri's tool - it autofills citations based on PMID or similar identifier. - 2/0 (cont.) 01:23, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Wonderful!!! Is there a version that fills the Citation template yet?PB666 yap 21:24, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Fänåmenalt!! :D Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:11, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Request for category on medical emergencies

There is already a category on medical emergencies, but more of the entries in it seem to be about specific examples of medical emergencies. Since some of the entries in the list could require ambulance attention, would it be advisable to add examples of tests taken on patients being treated in such circumstances, such as as blood pressure assessments?ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:25, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure test or procedures would belong. Maybe under there own created category.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:00, 21 October 2009 (UTC)
Do you really think that readers would go to "Medical emergencies" to find Blood pressure#Measurement? I don't. I think they'd look in Category:Medical tests. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree with WhatamIdoing. I don't think it would be useful to add tests into that category and would lead to confusion. --Vishnu2011 (talk) 03:25, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
Does Category:Emergency medicine not suffice? --Una Smith (talk) 03:11, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
On further reflection, I am not sure we understand ACEOREVIVED'd question. Is the question: should the articles in Category:Medical emergencies have more detail concerning diagnosis? In general, yes. Most medical articles would benefit from more detailed sections concerning diagnosis. --Una Smith (talk) 03:48, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. I had not been aware that there was a category entitled "Emergency Medicine" as well as one on "Medical Emergencies" - I think the type of things I had in mind could go there, although maybe these articles could have clearer indications of the existence of each other. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:26, 28 October 2009 (UTC) I would also recommend that the category "Emergency medicine" has more detail on tests. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 00:28, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I suspect what is wanted is like this: Acute cyanosis is a redirect to Cyanosis, and the redirect is in Category:Medical emergencies. --Una Smith (talk) 00:47, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

New categories

Has anyone followed the categorization being performed by this user: [7]? I just wanted to know if there had been some consensus developed on the categories he or she is creating? Also, has anyone invited them to participate in WP:MED? ---kilbad (talk) 02:10, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I just had to remove some of them. I have no idea what an EB disorder is, but it should be defined and cited, if it's going to be added to articles on which I have never encountered this terminology, with 15 years of research. Perhaps it's an ICD thing and I'm showing my US bias, but if *I* don't know what the cat is, and I've researched TS for 15 years, how do others? And I don't want TS and tics added to cats that may not be supported by MEDRS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:33, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Emotional and behavioral disorders. It's a common term in American special education; I don't know if it has any currency outside of it. Within education, it's essentially a catchall for non-intellectual and non-physical problems that impair academic achievement (that is, you exclude mental retardation, dyslexia, Deafness, and so forth, and the kids left over are sent to the "ED" class instead of to the "LD" class). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, WhatAmI; so how does the category name get fixed to make this clear, and by what process do we request sources before articles are added to the cat? I'm vague on how categories are used wrt sourcing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
The cat should be renamed (to be accessible to readers) and described at the top of the cat page (to be useful to editors). AFAIK, we don't have general sourcing requirements for cats, which are navigation instead of content. I usually expect keywords in the cat's name to be present in the article. That is, you don't slap Category:Dyslexia on an article if the word "dyslexia" doesn't already appear somewhere in the article, even if you've got a great story about how this Brodmann area is probably related.
ISBN 9781593852252 or similar might be useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I suppose sourcing becomes necessary only when there's a dispute about adding a cat to an article, then? I don't know how to rename the cat, so I hope someone will deal with this; I left a note on the cat talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:31, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I've put a {{db-c2}} speedy-rename on the category, asking for a rename to Category:Emotional and behavioral disorders in childhood and adolescence. I'm still not sure if it's a valid category, as EBD is rather deprecated in special education here in the UK. --RexxS (talk) 23:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Addendum: I'm told that {{cfr-speedy}} is the correct procedure for renaming a category! Hopefully, that will do the trick. --RexxS (talk) 00:16, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
The process completed this morning. Not the fastest way to sort out a problem, but at least we know how to go about renaming a category now. --RexxS (talk) 15:32, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

pubmed2wiki citation utility

I'm developing a java utility that converts XML citation download from pubmed eutils API into wiki hits, see my "scriptTest" talk page for details and I made a post on the "tool" page too. Any thoughts or interest? Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 10:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Infant respiratory distress syndrome

Infant respiratory distress syndrome combines several separate conditions, pulmonary hypoplasia, pulmonary hypertension, and poor surfactant. Would someone care to clarify this? Pulmonary hypoplasia is a DYK nom. --Una Smith (talk) 14:37, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Poliomyelitis requested move

Could you please see this move and the background given here. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  17:37, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Breath-Holding Spells article missing Anoxic-Epileptic Seizures (AES)

Recently my 10 month old son started having seizures after breath-holding sessions. He has a history of seizures, and fortunately he had a prescription for valium to stop prolonged seizures. One seizure after breath holding lasted over 3 minutes, and has since had two additional, similar seizures both lasting over 1 minute.

The seizures are dramatic and differ from breath holding convultions we have seen in the past. They are characterized by jaw clenching, convolutions in the abdomen and limbs, rigidness in the neck, and a disrupted breathing pattern. After the event he is limp, lethargic and disoriented for about 1 hour, after which he fully recovers and is energetic.

Although rare, breath holding spells can occasionally trigger epileptic seizures (http://adc.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/90/12/1283). The web, as a whole, does not mention this rare condition while discussing breath holding in infants, and many websites insist that breath holding is always harmless (http://www.drgreene.com/21_557.html). Other websites mention seizures broadly, but do not go into detail.(http://www.webmd.com/parenting/tc/breath-holding-spells-topic-overview)

By not mentioning AES, Wikipedia is encouraging this misinformation. AES can be dangerous if the seizure is prolonged. Some of these seizures have been recorded to last as long as 40 minutes. The lack of any mention of AES may also lead readers to postpone appropriate diagnosis. Furthermore many healthcare professionals themselves are not aware of AES. Having this information better known will provide awareness.

Even if it is found that my son is not having epileptic seizures (i.e. iron deficiency), I find that it is inexcusable and frustrating that so many websites discuss breath holding but not AES, or mention seizures only briefly. I would encourage Wikipedia to include some information on this rare event. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Twinkle turnip (talk • contribs) 16:45, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a health advisory service. This relates to the discussion earlier about medical articles in general (Medical articles on Wikipedia). I understand your point about this, but information should only be added if it will improve the encyclopedia, not to give advice. I am not saying this is not worthy of a mention, but that it must be well documented and must improve the encyclopedia. This is more a point about people wrongly using wikipedia for medical advice, which I agree appears to be a problem. See:WP:MEDICAL.Jhbuk (talk) 17:13, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I do realize that wikipedia is not medical advise, and I did not mean to imply that wikipedia should provide it. However, information provided to Wikipedia users should be complete, and incomplete information is just as much a danger as incorrect information, regardless of how Wikipedia users are "supposed" to use it - this is the point I was trying to make. Simply including information about AES would not constitute medical advise, however, by not including AES Wikipedia is providing inaccurate information.
AES is documented and referenced by several studies, including the one I had mentioned. AES is typically referred to as a condition rather than a theory. By not mentioning something about this condition Wikipedia is promoting the myth that "real" seizures simply do not occur during breath holding sessions. This false implication does affect the quality of the encyclopedia. Twinkle turnip (talk) 18:25, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Twinkle, if you've got two or three high-quality reliable sources about this subject, then you can write the article yourself. Wikipedia is "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit".
WP:Your first article has some suggestions for getting started. If you want, you can click here to start a new article specifically about AES, or you can find a closely related article (look here for one list) and add a section to that existing article about AES. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I agree with WhatamIdoing. My point is that I have no objection to verifiable information being there, providing it is encyclopedic and not simply there to offer health advice, as that is not what wikipedia is about. Jhbuk (talk) 20:52, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
I suppose I could, yes. I thought that for some reason medical was different. Looking back, I realize this was kind of an odd thing for me to think. I do have several verifiable sources, so it would be a matter of reading them within this scope (and not as a worried parent) and writing a quality article, which I prob will if there isn't a more qualified person out there who is interested. And no, don't worry about "medical advise" I know where that line is drawn. Twinkle turnip (talk) 21:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Also - is there any way to have an article reviewed/proofed by someone who is more knowledgeable? I have no problem writing up an article, but I'd also hate to have any misinterpretations floating about until someone spots it. Twinkle turnip (talk) 21:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Sure - write your article at User:Twinkle turnip/AES - click the link to create the page and start writing. That's your space and nobody will interfere while you work out what you want to say and how you want lay it all out. When you want feedback, just post here again, asking for somebody to look over it. It will have its own talk page for discussions. When it's ready, it can be moved into mainspace with whatever title as may be agreed. P.S. - don't forget to cite your sources! --RexxS (talk) 22:06, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Anything I write will be cited properly. I've been known to add foot notes to forum chatter. What's the point of doing the work if you cannot back it up? Twinkle turnip (talk) 02:31, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Reassessment request for Proton therapy

While I am not sure it will rate a B yet, it seems to me that it is beyond Start class. It would also, of course, be great to bring more eyes and words to the article. Anyone with time and interest willing to give it a read/assessment?- Sinneed 21:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I've done a quick assessment against B-criteria. Not too far away from B-class, easily C-class - reassessed accordingly. --RexxS (talk) 22:29, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much. :) - Sinneed 22:31, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Poll: Photograph or drawing?

There have been several requests of having a drawing as an alternative to the photograph to make body diagrams. I thought it was a step backward in the development, but nevertheless I scrolled through drawings, engravings, frescos, mosaics, photographs, pottery and prints in Wikimedia Commons, and found this new guy to be the most suitable for the job. It's the man from the Pioneer plaque, adapted to fit the organs currently in the gallery.

Photograph
Drawing (the new guy)

I think both the photograph and drawing can be available for anyone who wants to derive an image. Preference may vary with what kind of condition it is to be depicted. Yet, I'd still like to know what the general opinion is here; which of these would generally be more preferable for making additional images? Mikael Häggström (talk) 05:22, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm gonna jump on the silhouette bandwagon. SDY (talk) 00:08, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Photograph - Feel it looks better than the drawing, though I'm not fussed if the latter is chosen.
  • Photograph The drawing looks less professional and more or less dumb. The actual sketch of the person distracts me from the actual point of the image, as it covers up most of the organs. I would have to go with the photograph.
Silhouette It looks quite nice and professional, perhaps better than the photo. Additionally, it is gender neutral, so there is no controversy. There are no distractions such as in the photo or the sketch, getting the image's point across more clearly. Tyrol5 [Talk] 00:43, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I like this. Graham Colm Talk 20:00, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Silhouette also per the below comments: however, maybe add some sort of lines or basic forms to identify where the eyes/median of the face are? Strombollii (talk) 22:53, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
It would be easy to add a few extra lines, but I was thinking that we would want to add eyes, ears, nose, or mouth only when those organs were relevant to the article it was used in - in the same way that the internal organs are superimposed where needed? --RexxS (talk) 23:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Sounds perfect Strombollii (talk) 00:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Silhouette No distractions. Almost gender neutral. Additionally, this approach lends itself to full-length bodies if required and clearly male and female diagrams where appropriate. The photo can't do that and certainly can't do it for female images without making medical articles NSFW. Colin°Talk 21:27, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Silhouette definitely. Clear & not distracting, as both the photo and especially the drawing are. - Hordaland (talk) 21:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Silhouette, preferably with basic facial lines also. - Draeco (talk) 23:16, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Silhoutte, looks perfect. Gets the details across cleanly and without any controversy. --Vishnu2011 (talk) 00:06, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Silhouette, given relative gender- and race-neutrality, flexibility, less distracting, any needed detail can be added. Cheers to Mikael for generating the energy around this, including the template for this improvement. -- Scray (talk) 01:32, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Photograph - It is by far the most aesthetically pleasing and is inline with the sort of thing that you would actually see in a biology/anatomy encyclopedia. If they all convey equal infomation why not use the image that looks best. Full length and female versions are already availiable to be used when appropriate the reason to use a male as the generic image is simply that males do not have breasts gender neutrality should not be an issue and I doubt any complaits have been made about it.

203.167.243.98 (talk) 03:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

  • Silhouette - I think the background is less distracting, making the information easier to read. This would be better for pathological, physiological and basic anatomical diagrams. Although the photo would still be useful for some things, such as surface anatomy. So don't discard the photo, just limit its use to the situation that require it. Mattopaedia Have a yarn 03:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
  • Silhouette. The outline of the drawing is too thick and distracts from the organs. Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Cheers for everyone who has taken time to participate in this poll. Besides, I really hope this can be a start for more participants to make diagrams for Wikipedia. With the vector template, it's really not a difficult thing to do. Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Name of project

With the silhouette chosen instead of the drawing, we still need a name for the project. With the drawing, I had actually planned to name it the male ghost diagrams. Now, perhaps simply the silhouette diagrams is enough. Perhaps it's no big deal, but still, are there any other suggestions? Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:01, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

I imagine you're looking for a more identifying name, but what about plain ol' Anatomic Diagrams? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 16:37, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed I'd prefer a rather distinguishing name. Perhaps anatomical silhouette diagrams. Or, as a last resort, we could give the silhouette some silly name, and attribute the derivatives by that name as well... Mikael Häggström (talk) 08:44, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
And actually, with the ol removed, plain anatomical diagrams would also do good. Mikael Häggström (talk) 09:13, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
Or perhaps: the male shadow diagrams. Mikael Häggström (talk) 09:22, 1 November 2009 (UTC)


This one is called "BlankMap-Africa", and it serves a similar purpose, no? How about "BlankAnatomic-Human", "BlankSilhouette-Human", "AnatomicSilhouette-Human" or something like that. I do think the word Human should be included. - Hordaland (talk) 14:36, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Perhaps male or female implies human as well, or man/woman, to distinguish from other species. I suggest: the man shadow diagrams. Blank may be used for describing the silhouette itself, but won't fit that well with all the derivatives that will be made from it. Mikael Häggström (talk) 15:34, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Measurements

I'm trying to establish the normal range of serum calcium levels in humans, and came across the number, 8.5 to 10.2 mg/dL from Medline. Would that be megagrams/deciliter or milligrams/deciliter? Sorry if this is a bit frivolous, I just want to be sure to get things straight.Strombollii (talk) 16:23, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Definitely milligrams, as indicated by the lowercase m in mg. Additionally, you cannot fit a metric ton (a megagram) of calcium into a deciliter (which is about the size of a woman's finger). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
For some reason, I was thinking a megagram was a smaller unit: not the quickest day for me, by far. But thank you. Strombollii (talk) 17:32, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
You must have had micrograms (µg or mcg or ug) on the mind. And you're welcome: I'm happy to answer questions that require no real work on my part. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Hmm, in the UK we use mmol/l (millimoles per litre). The reference range for corrected calcium is 2.1–2.6 mmol/l. Axl ¤ [Talk] 12:38, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Should I include both in the article?Strombollii (talk) 15:03, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that µg (or mcg) and mg are the common units for articles, but could be wrong. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  17:38, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Strombollii, which article is it? "Osteitis fibrosa cystica"? Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
But of course, Axl: I still haven't tried FA again =] Strombollii (talk) 20:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
I don't think that reference ranges need to be included in that article. However if you think that the article is better with them, please add mmol/l. Thanks. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:03, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
Hmm. In Brazil, serum and ionized calcium are also reported in mg/dL (reference range 8–10 mg/dL for total serum calcium). Perhaps it's a cultural difference, like the choice of unit for blood glucose measurements. I'd include both, with one in parentheses depending on the variety of English used in the article. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 11:52, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
It seems that, generally, mass concentration (g/dL or g/L) is the most common measurement unit in the United States, while molar concentration (mol/L) is used in most of the rest of the world. I added a table showing both to Calcium_in_biology#Effects. Mikael Häggström (talk) 17:03, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

user "Testosterone vs diabetes"

Testosterone vs diabetes (talk · contribs), sometimes as IP, is adding references that don't follow WP:MEDRS in Diabetes mellitus and some other articles, like insulin, insulin resistance. I won't follow his edits anymore, so if anyone cares do it yourself--Nutriveg (talk) 20:44, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

This is a new editor with considerable expertise in the topic area (postdoc) but limited understanding of the Wikipedia way of doing things combined with a lot of enthusiasm for one specific form of treatment. After quite a bit of initial friction, he has been discussing things cooperatively at Talk:diabetes mellitus, and there seems to be hope that the problems will die down. Looie496 (talk) 21:18, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
Expertise possibly, but really quite obsessively dedicated to promoting his own theories! JFW | T@lk 22:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
It looks like a 'personal experience' case.
Thankfully, another editor has taken the situation in hand and is explaining certain principles to him. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
In fact it's about his father experience, a diabetic that used to take Metformin and switched to testosterone.--Nutriveg (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion regarding Biceps

Could I have some input on this discussion please: Talk:Biceps#Replace page with Redirect to Biceps brachii muscle. In short it just proposes to have the page Biceps redirect to Biceps brachii muscle instead of being a disambiguation page. Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 00:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Confusing

Should Deep fascia of forearm and Deep fascia of the forearm redirect to Brachial fascia or Antebrachial fascia, I'm confused. Thanks in advance, Captain n00dle T/C 01:27, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

It should redirect to Antebrachial fascia, as implied by antebrachial (of or relating to the forearm). Fvasconcellos (t·c) 10:34, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
So "the deep fascia of the arm" is different to "the deep fascia of the forearm"? Thanks! Captain n00dle T/C 20:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, as far as the Terminologia Anatomica sees it anyway :) Seriously, here's a brief paragraph in Grant's Dissector if you're interested in reading more (you can probably find information in your anatomy textbooks, but a link is always convenient.) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Thank you very much for that, I may update the articles to disambiguate the two if I get the chance, I do have access to a few textbooks but thank you for the link ^_^ Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 22:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Zimmerman-Laband syndrome

What dash should be used for the above article? If it needs to be changes, please also adjust it within the list of cutaneous conditions. Thanks again for the help! ---kilbad (talk) 15:44, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

In my humble opinion, it should be an en-dash ("–" "–"), with a redirect using a hyphen to assist searchers. I'd wait for confirmation before making any changes, though. --RexxS (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Correct. Rule of thumb: if the syndrome is named after two or more people instead of a single person whose surname is compound, it should be an en dash. I've moved the article and amended the list accordingly. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
By the way, there are two Ns in "Zimmermann" (after Karl Wilhelm Zimmermann). Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Suicide

An editor keeps adding watch tower (Jehovah witness) source to the suicide article and insisting that it is a reliable source for a medical/psychiatry article. Anyone in the mood for adding the article to their watch list? It would be much appreciated as I am really tired of wikipedia drama (which I have a sixth sense for detecting).--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:53, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

On my watchlist now. --RexxS (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Coronary artery dissection

I have created an article on my userspace here: User:Jhbuk/Coronary artery dissection. I have made the basic structure of the article, and I think I have put in the most important information, but can someone else read through it before it is moved into the main article space.Jhbuk (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Decided to be bold and make a few changes. Feel free to revert if you don't agree, but please let me know either way :) Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  17:12, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Please move to mainspace. This (start class) article is certainly ready for it. Als, being in mainspace encourages others to contribute to it — the whole point of a wiki. Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:40, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I have done; I just wanted someone else to check it over in case there was a problem with it and it might be deleted. Jhbuk (talk) 20:12, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I think it is really just one specific type of Coronary artery aneurysm, and as such should be merged (there is no distinct Coronary artery dissection ICD10 code). I've put up a merge proposal. David Ruben Talk 08:59, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Help please

I'm dealing with an editor who is, shall we say passionate looking to insert numerous statements about the likelihood of male same-sex couplings spreading diseases. They insist "Same-sex relationships have a higher probability of spreading diseases among men than opposite-sex relationships". They are also arguing that men who have sex with men are more promiscuous and more likely to spread disease. I have a few friends who are sexologists, who I won't quote, but they recognize these rather familiar ideas as rather agenda driven and without merit. Anyone have any good leads as to actual research disproving these claims or, I guess proving them definitely in some context? I'm growing rather tired of discussing anal sex and disease. -- Banjeboi 01:40, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Is this person providing refs, or are these entirely unsourced assertions? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:04, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
With respect to HIV there is evidence that the type of sex has a significant effect on ones risk of acquiring the disease. See [8] So yes per act most heterosexual encounters have less theoretical risk. The risk is also greater if you are a female rather than male in a heterosexual encounter were one of the people is HIV positive.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:11, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
The studies about HIV and type of sex act are biased toward HIV subtype B, the subtype prevalent in the US among homosexual men and users of dirty needles. Worldwide, however, subtype B is a small minority. Worldwide, the most prevalent subtype is subtype C, which is associated with heterosexual transmission. The epidemiology suggests that subtype B (and certain other minority subtypes) needs "help" to move to a new host and generally is unable to move via "normal" vaginal intercourse. Studies about HIV subtype B transmission and type of sex act likely do not apply to subtype C and should not be generalized to all HIV. --Una Smith (talk) 15:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Certainly anal sex is an efficient transmitter of certain microbes, but a "homosexual encounter" could be low-risk oral sex, and a "heterosexual encounter" could be high-risk anal sex. The gender of the participants is not actually the most relevant detail. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

It may not be politically correct and homophobic groups may have an agenda in pushing or highlighting this information but the reality is that homosexuality does appear to have a higher rate of health problems. There is evidence according to this review article to show or suggest that gay people may "have higher rates of depression, suicide attempts, alcoholism, and certain cancers, sexual transmitted and cardiovascular disease." So do we water down or even censor this information out of the encyclopedia because some people don't like it? I think that however controversial or unpopular that we must stick to what facts are available.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:05, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Although it may be fine to include observations such as "a higher rate of condition X was observed among group Y", we must be careful not to create causative links. For example is it true that "homosexuality does appear to have a higher rate of health problems" or is the correct phrase "a higher rate of health problems is observed among homosexuals"? This is not semantics, and the review you quote mentions the importance of distinguishing sexual behavior from sexual identity. An extreme example would be here in the UK where it is observed that the children of lower-income families have statistically lower academic achievement: it would be very unwise to draw the inference that being poor makes a person less intelligent. --RexxS (talk) 13:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes you are correct RexxS; your suggested phrasing is more accurate and should be used and kept to what references say. :).--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:20, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
It does not matter what the conclusion is just that it is WP:V and WP:NPOV I remember reading about the increasing rates of anal sex among young people as an effort to avoid pregnancy. But obviously the main risk of this encounter is for the female. One does not need to talk about gender orientation all you need to do is discuss how receptive anal sex > receptive vaginal sex > incertive > oral sex wrt risk of HIV subtype B. Do to the pathophysiology I would expect it to be similar to other HIV subtypes. But of course there are other practices in African culture that can increase a women s risk.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:37, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

List of medical specialties

I've noticed many articles include a list of medical specialties...would it be beneficial to centralize this as a list article? I'm happy to do it, but I'm asking first because I have little experience with lists, and my few previous efforts have been mediocre. - Draeco (talk)

Some of that already exists at Specialty (medicine)#Medical_specialties. I'm not sure how your proposal differs from this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
I agree. It sounds like what you are trying to do has already been done in the article listed above. However, please feel free to improve that article. For instance, it appears that not all of the subspecialties are listed the same way (some with bullets and some without). Tyrol5 [Talk] 23:51, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Pharmanoia

I had meant to polish this turd a bit more before posting it, but a couple people have already commented so I might as well put it up for comment.

Pharmanoia - the irrational belief that pharmacutical compainies are worse for your health than the diseases their drugs treat. It's a user essay in one of my sub-pages, but it has been suggested it could be turned into a mainspace page. I'm agnostic. Any input or edits are welcome. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 15:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Would need some references.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Sweet. I'd prefer to see this as an actual essay or de facto guideline—we could certainly use one, common sense often seems to fail Wikipedians—but as Doc James says, if you can hammer this into an article it could go to mainspace. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:58, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I almost certainly won't be able to do so on my own before Secular Present Giving Day at the earliest. I welcome anyone's input if they want to improve it - since this was inspired by comments from WP:MED members, it's more the project's baby than mine. I'll work at it when I can but in the mean time feel free to work away at it. If it moves from essay to guideline then I'll be quite pleased. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 17:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
It's not a guideline: it provides no advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I am uneasy about tying this essay to wiki project medicine. I get the sense from the tone of the article that this essay/possible guideline is a fall out from the well known battle fields surrounding alternative healthcare and aids denialism etc. Is the battle field expanding to wiki med and if yes is this wise? Is it not more wise to just edit in relevant content to existing articles on these subjects or existing guidelines? The essay is basically that alternative healthcare for the most part has no evidence base, is pseudoscience and defenders tend to be anti-mainstream medicine and promote irrational and distorted views of mainstream medicine, true. I think that it is safe to say that we all here know that there is no evidence for homeopathy and the evidence is mostly dubious for a wide range (majority) of other alternative healthcare treatments, so basically,,, I am not sure what the point is or the benefits, purpose or objectives of the essay or possible guideline are? But I can see some risks.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:30, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I doubt it will ever become a guideline due to a lack of good quality reliable sources for the term pharmanoia. As an official guideline it would also be prone to major drama, original research and POV pushing from alternative defenders versus scientists if it were ever made into a guideline, it is that type of possible guideline, that is if it gets past WP:N,WP:CON and WP:V and avoids deletion. Sorry just being realistic (I think), or maybe I am just too pesimistic. Feel free to correct me if I am totally misinterpreting the situation or feel that I am wrong in my perceptions.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:48, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
I concur with LGs assessment, I think that it would become just another Thought terminating cliche, aiding and abetting genetic fallacy with appeal to motive. WP:MEDRS and WP:NPOV should be able to solve most problems without resorting to such. Unomi (talk) 00:13, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Hmm... We might be able to get a real article out of it. I've found three plausible sources.[9][10][11] Anyone have any suggestions for synonyms? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't know if pharmanoia could be a mainspace article (Cohen's original article is actually quite brief), I intended it originally as a casual and satirical reference essay for editors who claim that peer-reviewed sources can't be trusted because they are in teh pockets of the evel companys. It's something I've run into in a couple fringe articles - colloid silver, ionized water, colon cleansing. I wouldn't necessarily reference it for something like acupuncture or herbal medicine where there is a potential for useful treatments. But for clear quackery - colon cleansing, colloid silver, vitamin C for cancer, "detoxification", Kevin Trudeau - where promoters push the idea that effective cures are held back because of greedy companies. Whether it can be a mainspace article, or a user essay, or both I'm personally uncertain on. WP:MED participants would both be useful, knowledgeable contributing editors and probably likely to link to it and find it useful. Always helpful for an essay like this would be an "other side" section that highlights the real problems between researchers, drug companies, patients and the public - and that would be fairly easy to source and expand. I don't think this would every really reach the level of a policy, or even a guideline. But it might be useful. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 02:28, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
It would be better in my opinion renaming it to quackery then as it is aimed at certain quack treatments and give more examples of clearly quack treatments as well as have a subsection on pharmanoia. Lots of good references for quackery. COI issues with drug company research are a real problem in academia, which is why all or most medical journals ask now for a COI statement. Sure the vast majority of medications on the market the benefits outweigh the risks and alternative health practitioners can do harm by advising patients against their use but there are well known incidents where drug companies have harmed society, eg viox or thalidomide, sometimes knowingly. Although this is entirely different to quacks and charlatans defending their position that there is a conspiracy to hide the cancer saving vitamin C and the wide range of health "benefits" offered by colon cleansing by claiming that literature finding no evidence is a conspiracy by drug companies to "hide the truth".--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
That's actually a very good idea; pharmanoia specifically could easily be a part of the claim-reality sections. As I've been expanding, it's been drifting further and further away from pharmanoia and more and more towards the point you just made... WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 12:48, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, yes article seems to be improving as it is getting tweaked. Some more thoughts, I am only realising now that the article is devided into essay and article (per comments on article talk page). The article about pharm phobia might be fine actually for a main page article (or a similarly focused article), medication phobia and extreme distrust of medications are an issue in society and also some ridiculous things are promoted by alternative health people so might be worth getting an article if good refs can be found. I have a family member who is phobic of just about everything to do with medicine and know someone who believes the government created the HIV virus to get rid of blacks (even though I pointed out the technology to create virus's didn't exist when HIV emerged) so these beliefs do exist in society.
I guess my concern was the essay which was perhaps being a borderline attack piece linked officially to this project may do more harm than good, also what happens if creationism, religious beliefs get added in not necessarily by yourself but by another editor, it is like pitting this project against large segments of society as well as wikipedians; infact a large minority of doctors have a belief in God and creationism so there may even be off putting to some valuable contributers to the project. If it was named quackery though it would by default be more aimed at addressing ridiculous health claims. Maybe I am exagerating the risks, I tend to predict the worst for some reason although sometimes I am proved right. I think that there needs to be care with tone, less polarised or politicised, sensible and rational balance, WP:NPOV not you are either with science or against science or you are with pharmaceutical companies or you are with the HIV denialists if you utter any criticism of them type of tone (ok I am exagerated a bit to make a point :-)). The essay does have potential I think now. Anyway that is all of my thoughts I think so no more long posts from me. :)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that pharmanoia is more conspiracy theory than quackery. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Yea but one needs to define the conspiracy theory or actually chose which conspiracy theories (there are likely many different ones) to cover and more difficult still, find reliable sources for the conspiracy theories. I tried to find sources for pharmanoia but did not find any good quality ones but ended up writing about phobia of pharmaceuticals and then decided to move it to its own article, medication phobia.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:59, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
And it is not as if the pharmaceutical industry has been consistently known for looking out for humanities best interests. Vioxx or hormone replacement therapy anyone. Many books have been published including Marcia Angell The Truth About the Drug Companies. And if one compares how many treatments are currently being developed for baldness and how may for malaria / tuberculosis. Also the industry has been known to hire former cheerleader as drug reps. No free lunch has been created for a reason.
Like anything in medicine the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceuticals they produce are not a black and white issue. Some are good some are bad most are grey and many do need a good does of skepticism.
A comment was made about peer reviewed publications. But we still have concerns about medical ghost writing and the issue of companies not publishing results they do not like as with SSRIs and the well known review that found many unpublished studies that when combined with the published one found no clinically significant benefit for SSRI in mild, moderate, or severe depression.[1] [12] I have not yet found a drug rep who has heard of this study :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:02, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
Yea agree with what you have written, except I think there was benefit found for extreme depressive states with SSRIs in this meta-analysis,[13] which reached statistical signicance but it was not enough for definitive conclusions as it could be attributed to decreaed placebo responding (would need to read paper again though). An article pitting pharmaceutical companies with all the controversy surrounding them against what is regarded as quackery is not a good idea. Better have it science versus quackery or common sense versus quackery if anything is written up IMO; with limited or perhaps even no mention of drug companies.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
The article by Kirsch et al. was criticised for various reasons - see the 44 comments on the article. Criticism includes choice of threshold of clinical significance in change in depression scores,[14] complicated issues with stats, and downplaying the trend in their data that showed an increasing difference between treatment and placebo as severity of depression increases, which is hard to explain as a placebo effect. Also, Kirsch favours hypnosis instead of antidepressants so has his own therapy to promote. Fences&Windows 01:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Ah, I did not know there were question marks over the methodology, shall be interesting to see what the next meta-analysis says.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:28, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

WLU proposed creating WP:QUACKERY if essay develops into a guideline, which is a better idea (perhaps it could supplement WP:FRINGE). I don't edit alternative or related articles so I don't know what is needed and not needed there.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:07, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Agree it is only one study. Uptodate says "Publication bias should be considered in evaluating the literature regarding antidepressant trials. A 2008 meta-analysis of second generation antidepressants found that 69 perent of the 203 trials meeting inclusion criteria were supported by pharmaceutical companies, 9 percent by governmental or independent sponsors, and the funding source was not identifiable for 22 percent [31]. In a study comparing published antidepressant drug trials with drug trials registered with the FDA, 94 percent of published trials reported positive results, compared with 51 percent of trials tracked by the FDA [32]. Thus, as with other drugs, published trials of antidepressants are likely to show a greater effect size than may be actually present.?" [15] There are a number of indications that the literature wrt depression has to be taken with a grain of salt. The above of course supports the notion that pharmaceutical funding effects the outcomes of results. Evidence that support of hypnosis effects results? [16] I guess this is part of the reason why medicine is an art as well as a science. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

New (to me) toy

I've been having a bit of fun with NHS Evidence, another proof that at least some of our British editors' taxes are being put to excellent use. If you type in something that interests you, the search will produce various documents, including some "structured abstracts" that are really excellent summaries of meta-analyses and reviews. It might be a good source for figuring out the overall scientific consensus, and a bit of help in finding and understanding some good papers.

Also, it's fun. I suggest typing your favorite oddball treatment/AltMed/controversy into the search box, and seeing what comes up. It doesn't seem to have much depth on some subjects (WLU will be disappointed in their coverage of bioidentical hormones), but some of the searches look quite useful. For example, I'm convinced that someone could spend a week with this source, which lists the prevalence for literally hundreds of rare diseases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:57, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I've just tried "ketogenic diet" and was disappointed. Yes it finds the rather old Cochrane review from 2003 but it doesn't find the larger meta analysis from 2006 or the randomised controlled trial from 2008. The NICE and SIGN guidelines come on the second page after a bunch of BNF pharmaceutical supplies. Also many of the links on the first page are broken (such as the links to PubMed). Colin°Talk 08:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I like DARE for this sort of information. It's an excellent resource few people know about (structured abstracts can indeed be incredibly useful), even though it doesn't look as snazzy as NHS Evidence :) I've often wondered why MEDRS makes no mention of DARE—oddly enough, I've never proposed adding it either. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 10:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I had a look at the orpha.net list of 1827 rare disease prevalence and wondered how many WP covers - see User:Davidruben/OrphaNet. A lot of terms are clearly covered under a rephrasing, eg the 5th entry of "Squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck" is clearly the article Squamous cell carcinoma. Anyway, I extracted out the list and placed in my userspace, but please note I suspect the compilation of the full list with the prevalence data would need us to obtain permission to formally use, so for now I've only listed just the names of the conditions. David Ruben Talk 04:46, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
To copy it would presumably require permission, but I don't think we want to do that. We don't usually need permission to say something like:

==Epidemiology==
The prevalence of cutaneous lupus erythematosus is estimated at approximately 50 cases per 100,000 people.<ref>Orphanet's paper</ref>

This normal WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT kind of use was all that I had in mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Medicine, and medicine

Optigan13 has recently been adding WPMED banners to several articles that were featured as WP:DYK on Portal:Medicine years ago. This is part of a plan that has expanded the {{WPMED}} banner to incorporate that information and thus make {{MedportalDYK}} obsolete.

Some of these articles are no longer considered to be within the scope of WPMED itself: typically, they're VetMed, or human anatomy. We don't really want to tag these articles as being WPMED's territory, but the articles are connected to Portal:Medicine/Did you know.

One possible solution is expanding Portal:Medicine to be a multi-project page. Doing this would involve suggesting that the semi-active projects that don't have their own portals (WP:VETMED and WP:ANATOMY) feel free to help out with and to promote Portal:Medicine, and that they update their project banners to handle the |dyk= parameter (which would point towards Portal:Medicine). They tag the articles, and their own tag incorporates the DYK portal link, instead of relying on us.

If we decide not to expand the portal to cover these not-exactly-human-medicine subjects, then we could "de-deprecate" {{MedportalDYK}} for use on these few now-out-of-scope items. (Or perhaps there's some third option that someone will think of.)

What's your opinion? Should Portal:Medicine be about human medicine only, or expanded? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be interesting to expand the portal - a lot of surgical techniques and pharmaceuticals originate from studies in these other areas and there are a number of parallels, it would have to be arranged carefully though. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 20:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
We're in a position to take out WPMED banners on articles that fall outside the scope we use. That in itself seems sensible. Since there is bound to be some overlap between WPMED, WPVETMED and WPANATOMY, I'd encourage the other projects to make use of the Portal. Perhaps someone could offer to help them modify their banner templates to incorporate the |dyk= parameter if needed? Obviously we don't want to be otherwise interfering in other editors' projects --RexxS (talk) 22:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

New footnotes formatting system

Has anyone tried out the new WP:FOOTNOTES option? I just used it to clean up a mess at Injury epidemiology (which article still Needs Your Help). It works like this:

  • Name all of your refs: <ref name=Blah>
  • Find {{Reflist}} and add the magic parameter: {{Reflist |refs= }}
  • Make a single, complete list of all of the refs and paste it between the |refs= and the }} in your Reflist template.
  • In the text of the article, use only <ref name=Blah /> (just like every ref was the second time you were using it).

The major advantage is the simplicity for everyday editing: Within the text of the article, a typical ref like "<ref name=Danaei>{{cite journal |author= Danaei G, Vander Hoorn S, Lopez AD, Murray CJ, Ezzati M |title= Causes of cancer in the world: comparative risk assessment of nine behavioural and environmental risk factors |journal=Lancet |volume=366 |issue=9499 |pages=1784–93 |year=2005 |pmid=16298215 |doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(05)67725-2}}</ref>" is reduced to just "<ref name=Danaei />", which is more legible and more editor friendly. The full ref/citation template is moved to the ref section itself.

It is possible to use this system in combination with the usual long-string-of-cryptic-junk in the middle of the text; it is not an either/or proposition. Also, if a ref in the {{Reflist}} doesn't get cited in the text, then it will produce an error message. (I don't know if anyone has seen such an error yet; I haven't.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I was initially opposed to this (attached to the "usual way", I guess) but I actually think it's quite useful now. Ketogenic diet uses this system, and I liked working with it; as you mention, it (1) makes it much easier to edit references and (2) makes the text less cluttered. I'm considering implementing it in a few of my "pet" articles (no WP:OWN here, folks :) but am unsure as to others' views on it. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:46, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
By the way, you should ask Delldot (talk · contribs) to have a look at Injury epidemiology. She's our resident trauma buff, should be right up her alley ;) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 20:47, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, I've been pestering developers for a way of getting refs out of the main text for ages now. UC_Bill proposed a good system that even allowed you to choose the order of the references, but this one is almost as nice and cleaner to implement, so I was pleased when it was introduced. I converted Bühlmann decompression algorithm to the new system if anyone wants to see an example of how it looks. A couple of hints may be useful:
  • It doesn't matter what order the cites are within the {{reflist}}, the page displayed is the same, so you can collect refs by author or date if you want, for the convenience of later editors.
  • I found a nice feature when converting an existing article. Enable the refTools gadget in preferences (if you haven't already). When editing, position your cursor in front of the first full reference (<ref name="blah"> ... </ref>) in the text, and tell it to insert a named reference. It will pick that named ref to add (<ref name="blah" />). Then you only have to copy and paste that full ref out of the text into the {{reflist}}. Rinse and repeat.
Hey Presto! No typing required to move all of the refs out of main text! --RexxS (talk) 21:29, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for your review of the article, Medicinal mushrooms

The Medicine group reviewed the page of a medicinal mushroom, (Agaricus blazei). However, you guys have still not reviewed the medicinal mushroom page. It would be great if that could be done! Thanks for the consideration. Jatlas (talk) 22:54, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I haven't given it a proper review but I read over it and added citation needed tags. It was an enjoyable read and learnt some things that I did not previously know. I vaguely recall someone posting here about this article 6 months or so ago. My only "problem" then was NPOV, I think that it has improved much since then but my impressions are there are some areas where more work could be done. It reads a bit too much like to say if one takes these mushrooms they will experience these health benefits. Is it possible to find more refs outside of laboratory studies and more in real time to put things in context? For example garlic has antibacterial effects but because of its low potency one wouldn't depend on it to save their life from septicemia, an extreme example but trying to make a point. Overall I think that it is a well structured article, with nice illustrations and comprehensive, so congratulations on your work to the article. With a little bit of work it could reach good article status. I don't understand enough about the subject matter to do an indepth review and make indepth suggestions.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:32, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Organization of articles pertaining to both a virus and a disease

Have started a discussion pertaining to the organization of articles to address a conflict between WP:VIRUS and WP:MED. Please see Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-related_articles)#Organization_of_articles_pertaining_to_both_a_virus_and_a_disease Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:41, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Chronic fatigue syndrome

I suspect this article is somewhat of a battleground because of the subject matter, but getting the article correctly sourced might address some of the problems. Because of a post to Talk:Autism, I peeked in there and found an overreliance on primary sources, WP:RECENTISM and wide use of weasel words. See Talk:Chronic fatigue syndrome#Incorrect use of sources in this article.2C XMRV retrovirus: my first opportunity to use our new {{MEDRS}} template after I was reverted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

And now, IPs are removing my tags. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:37, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
Primary sources tag reinstated by the IP. On a related matter, Category:GA-Class medicine articles has grown considerably since I've been busy at FAC. I used to check them all. I suggest we need to review all of them for overreliance on primary sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:57, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment at Talk:Chronic fatigue syndrome#Request for Comment: should XMRV be mentioned in this article.3F. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:34, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Recent changes in PubMed interface

Please see Tim Vickers updates to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches. Thanks, Tim, Colin and Eubulides !! PS: are any changes needed at WP:MEDRS? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Von Hippel – Lindau disease or Von Hippel–Lindau disease

Should there be spaces between the dash? ---kilbad (talk) 01:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

There does not seem to be in other places of the web.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
No. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Yes, according to MOS:ENDASH: "Spacing: All disjunctive en dashes are unspaced, except when there is a space within either one or both of the items (the New York – Sydney flight; the New Zealand – South Africa grand final; June 3, 1888 – August 18, 1940, but June–August 1940)". Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about such a fine grammatical point, especially if it is commonly unspaced in sources. --RexxS (talk) 02:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I moved this, clearly not thinking it would be controversial. Feel free to have an admin remove it, I wasn't aware of the line RexxS has pointed out. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  20:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

pandemics and seasonal flu

There's been a concern raised on 2009 flu pandemic as to whether seasonal flu outbreaks are pandemics or not. If someone knowledgeable in the subject could lend some input, it would be much appreciated. --Cybercobra (talk) 10:29, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Formal "epidemic" and "pandemic" definitions are thresholds. Some years, seasonal flu does exceed these thresholds; when that happens it is formally designated an epidemic or pandemic. See for example this CDC graphic showing that in the US the 2007-08 seasonal flu was an epidemic. --Una Smith (talk) 21:05, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Is LLLT the same as Light therapy?

Low level laser therapy has a prominent banner at the top saying that it is "Not to be confused with Light therapy". But when we go to the Light therapy article, it does precisely that, i.e. include lasers as part of Light therapy. So which view is correct then? It's a bit embarrassing when two related Wikipedia articles say the opposite things. --Dyuku (talk) 17:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Light therapy is a very large area, and includes light from any type of source (e.g., sunlight or lasers). LLLT is a small subtype of light therapy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:04, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Then I suppose LLLT page should be modified. --Dyuku (talk) 19:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Is this any better? --RexxS (talk) 21:36, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, RexxS, this will work fine. --Dyuku (talk) 02:16, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Use of Combat Medics

I am working on a research piece for college of our choice and had an idea for former combat medics. With all of their training, especially in the tactical enviroment, isn't there a process to inteegrate them better into the EMS services? Personally I was recruited by a S.W.A.T. team and realized that this would be a good avenue for a civilian career. The downside is that we are only given a certificate of an EMT-B which excludes them from such work until they go to college. I do have an argument piece advocating the advanced training of medics and would like to present this.Texdoc41 (talk) 03:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, so your "argument piece" is not useful here.
I see that you've found the WT:EMS task force; perhaps someone there will be interested in your research. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Discovery and development of HIV pharmaceuticals

Now, these articles do look very good, but

....have each individually created...

...anyone else a little creeped out by that? No talk page development, no edit summaries, no varied article editing - just their article and to wikilink it to other secondary articles. I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, cause this is generally good stuff, but it is most likely one person. JoeSmack Talk 16:29, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a group of students from the University of Iceland, nothing sinister :) They've done this before last year (my guess is it's part of the curriculum), and produced some very good articles. See their recent request for assessment at WP:PHARM. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Goodie! Sounds like a cool professor to me. Here's the archive link for anyone interested: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Pharmacology/Archive_2#University_project.3F. Thanks for letting me know Fvas. JoeSmack Talk 17:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

WPMED template

I don't know how WikiProject templates work. Would it make sense to work a link to WP:MEDRS into {{WPMED}}? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Personally I think it's a shame there isn't a way (with my knowledge) to show WP:MEDRS in all edit headers pertaining to medical articles, but I don't think it's feasible. I'd support it being included on a talk page banner, but I don't know where it'd best fit. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  20:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm no expert on the intricacies of templates, but {{WPMED}} depends on {{WPBannerMeta}} so it could use NOTE_7 to make extra optional information available. On the other hand, the MAIN_TEXT could be simply altered to include a sentence linking to WP:MEDRS. I've made a demo at Template:WPMED/sandbox, feel free to amend it.
I think I should caution that other WikiProjects, which have articles shared with us, may not necessarily agree to us unilaterally placing a restriction on how sources may be used (however desirable that may be). You may wish to reflect on that before implementing changes to the {{WPMED}} banner. --RexxS (talk) 21:19, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I added a few words to hopefully overcome that issue you just raised. Perhaps not, though. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  00:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

If you're adding WP:MEDRS, why not WP:MEDMOS although that is generally less useful for comflicts over topics. David Ruben Talk 01:27, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I've changed the sandbox to: Guidance on the style of the article is at Manual of Style (medicine-related articles) and on sources at Reliable sources (medicine-related articles) - as one way of not seeming to insist on our standards if other wikiprojects are involved.
If that's not strong enough, how about expanding Cyclonenim's text to read: This article should conform to the requirements of Manual of Style (medicine-related articles) and Reliable sources (medicine-related articles) unless the primary topic is that covered by another WikiProject.? --RexxS (talk) 03:31, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
RexxS's current version should be sufficient. Any article that this project covers, no matter what importance, should be written such that it can progress to FA status. For any article to reach FA, it must follow the manual of style and have reliable sources - these are the basis on which WPMED assesses its articles. If the MOS and RS for medicine-related articles is more strict than other guidelines, then our assessment of the article might be different than a project without its own (or with lesser) guidelines. If anything, I would like to see the verbiage decreased. Maybe something like: This page is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine. It should conform to the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and contain Reliable sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at the doctors' mess. --Scott Alter 05:32, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Another possibility is to conditionally show these links if the page is an article. I don't think it is appropriate to have this extra sentence on non-articles (templates, categories, files, etc). --Scott Alter 05:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
I like the 'conditional display' idea.
A less "prescriptive" sentence might be preferable. Perhaps something like This page is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that it follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and use high-quality medical sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:00, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

This is a very very good idea; I remember when I was a newcomer, years ago getting in unnecessary debates with regular editors over refs as I did not know about MEDRS. It should cut down on a lot of unnecessary talk page drama with newcomers as well as help improve editing standards on wikipedia. My only concern is that a large amount of articles are stub articles or start class, which have few secondary sources available and/or limited editorial enthusiasm. But then again I think the wording of MEDRS is flexible enough for such scenarios/articles, eg if a secondary source is unavailable then a primary source trumps no source/original research?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:11, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I am not in favor of prescriptive "guidelines". --Una Smith (talk) 02:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Quite right too! All of our guidelines (and policies - except WP:5P) are descriptive, not prescriptive, in that they document practices on wikipedia and the consensus that exists for them. Their real use (as Literaturegeek points out) is to inform editors that other editors have reached a consensus about a particular way of doing things. I think it would be valuable to have a reminder about what is documented at WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS on the talk page of every article where they are relevant. --RexxS (talk) 02:30, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
While I agree with your statement to a first approximation, there are a few bits of policy that are prescriptive, such as WP:COPYVIO and WP:Libel (which ultimately must conform with the Wikimedia Foundation's policy, irrespective of the community's opinion). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:37, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
That's why they're called "policies", not "guidelines". Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:47, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Hehe, I seem to have stirred up something here.
@WhatamIdoing: "Respect copyright" is part of the third pillar, so it is prescriptive as I already mentioned. WP:Libel is an interesting policy, but is clearly descriptive, not prescriptive. "It is the responsibility of all contributors to ensure that material posted on Wikipedia is not defamatory" - if this were prescriptive, I'd be obliged to removed any defamatory statement I saw, which is obviously an unenforceable prescription. What it actually does is document the fact that any editor may remove libellous material, not place an obligation on them to do so.
@Axl: Actually, the only difference between Wikipedia polices and guidelines is the degree to which we may expect exceptions. WP:PG contrasts them in this way: "Guidelines are considered more advisory than policies" and "Where a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, the policy normally takes precedence". Otherwise they are treated the same, and since both represent consensus, neither is optional unless WP:IAR applies. --RexxS (talk) 00:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
RexxS, I respectfully disagree. We seem to have different opinions regarding the meaning of the word "advisory". Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I wouldn't read too much into the phrasing of WP:POLICY at the moment. There's been a major dispute there (of the kind in which someone says "There's too much about sanctions here" and then proceeds to increase the number of sentences about sanctions) for the last few weeks, and much of the wording is approximate at best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:52, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I certainly won't fall out with you over a difference of opinion :). As a veteran of countless arguments at the Date-linking Arbitration over whether editors should be free to ignore guidelines as they choose, I just prefer to emphasise that the consensus behind the policies and guidelines is what counts. Although those documents are indeed giving us advice, ignoring that is very likely to be detrimental to the encyclopedia. --RexxS (talk) 20:09, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Okay. Best wishes. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:17, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Expert needed at Medical uses of silver

When the article Medical uses of silver (formerly "Colloidal silver") was discussed at the ANI and the fringe theories noticeboard recently, I decided that I might take a closer look at it to see whether it would be possible to identify the core of the controversy and to fix it. Despite some difficulties (I had to file my first request for checkuser), I think I was largely successful. In any case, I don't think that there is much more I could contribute to the article. The most reputable sources are all articles in medical journals to which I don't have access. To improve the article further, we would need someone who does have access to them. So, if anyone is interested: --> Medical uses of silver<--. Zara1709 (talk) 00:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I left the article after it became the site of seriously abusive agenda-driven editing. Since then it appears to have been protected several times due to edit-warring. I had contributed many of the reliable sources to the article when it was titled colloidal silver, and I have pretty complete access to medical journals. I will go back and look again, but I need a break from the madness. Anyone else? MastCell Talk 01:13, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately I am currently busy doing something else, but I think I can do a few more edits tomorrow. I think we've got the "agenda-driven" editors under control, so far. The worst of them is banned now, anyway. Zara1709 (talk) 19:05, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Lynch/HNPCC

There is interest in restructuring the Lynch Syndrome and HNPCC pages, but contributors are a bit muddled about how it might be restructured in a way that was scientifically accurate and helpful to patients. I would encourage participation in the move request talk page [[17]]. After a bit more input we'll restructure the pages, and rewrite the content to be of higher quality. Contributions welcome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.54.41.133 (talk) 05:12, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Request for peer review of SENSOR-Pesticides article

I've listed the SENSOR-Pesticides article for peer review under the "natural sciences." I welcome the comments and suggestions of all most Wikipedians, but I'd really like a few comments from people that have a better understanding of medical surveillance (or just medicine in general). If you have a minute, please look over the article and offer your comments/suggestions/edits. It's not a long article, so it shouldn't take long! Thanks. Mmagdalene722 (talk) 19:33, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

It appears Colin (talk · contribs) is willing to have a look at this? Maybe some other folks could help out as well. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 16:59, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
Got some great comments from several reviewers, so I closed the PR. Thanks to all who helped! MMagdalene722talk to me 13:22, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Incidence (epidemiology) needs cites, rewrite

Incidence (epidemiology) has (almost) no cites and is written in a colloquial style which could use some polishing. I'm unqualified to do anything with this myself. -- Writtenonsand (talk) 16:40, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Use google books. Find a text book. Use deberri and the ISBN to generate the ref. Add the page number you find the info on to the ref. This text may work [18] Hope this helps and let me know if you have any problems. This should make you qualified :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:54, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Rules of surgery

Rules of surgery appears to be an unsourced oral tradition. Does anyone think that there something more to be done with this, or is it a {{subst:prod}} candidate? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


It looks to me that it would be better added onto some other piece about medical / surgical training than as a standalone article. Perhaps the 'popular culture' section of Internship (medicine)? Egmason (talk) 02:43, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Please help improve the Psychopathy article

I recently engaged in a major overhaul of Psychopathy: see before, after. (The reason the "before" goes so far back is that I introduced my initial edits after another editor [Editor 2] introduced a lot of material in a different section, with which others disagreed. Editor 3 reverted all of Editor 2's edits, and reinstated mainly what I had done; Editor 2 seems to have disappeared since then. The result of Editor 3's revert-and-reinstatement was that the article was as it was before Editor 2's undesired additions, plus my additions. Therefore, "before" is best represented as the version just before Editor 2 arrived.)

The majority of the overhaul consisted of reorganizing existing material according to the layout guidelines in WP:MEDMOS. I then worked on improving the references and discarding duplicates and poor sources. I also rewrote the lede. At this point, I am seeking input at Psychopathy; the article is at least well-organized and can now be improved. There is some additional material at Talk:Psychopathy#Talk:Psychopathy#Major revision per MEDMOS, under "Unused material" available to be added if it is appropriate and can be sourced (I didn't include it either because it was poorly sourced, seemed inaccurate/POV, or went on too long on one topic (the PCL-R, for example).

Three areas for improvement include:

  • Information about the neurobiological roots of psychopathy
  • Statistics on behavior of psychopaths, criminal population and otherwise
  • Current research and discoveries

Thank you for your input. Alamanth (talk) 15:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Good luck there. A review of the article stats for Psychopathy may be instructive. I won't be able to engage there, due to previous conflicts, but encourage others to help out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:07, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks; I didn't know that resource existed. I pinged the editors who have commented at Talk recently. Alamanth (talk) 16:37, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
I think SandyGeorgia will be shocked to discover that User:Alamanth is none other than our old friend User:Zeraeph - see http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Zeraeph --Penbat (talk) 18:49, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't know why you think it would shock me, but thanks for the info. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:25, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Prevalence of disease in specific ethnic groups

Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Illness among Jews. Newman Luke (talk) 09:26, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The problem with that article is the use of an unreliable source as a starting point. Comments are indeed invited. JFW | T@lk 21:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Case (medicine): Do we want?

Incidence (epidemiology) says: "Incidence is ... sometimes loosely expressed simply as the number of new cases during some time period, it is better expressed as a proportion or a rate with a denominator. Incidence proportion (also known as cumulative incidence) is the number of new cases within a specified time period divided by the size of the population initially at risk."
The disamb page Case doesn't seem to show any articles on "case" in the medical sense (other than Case study, which is about general research methodologies).
Do we want an article on "case" in the medical sense (Case (medicine)) ? Do we want to link to something in some existing article? -- Writtenonsand (talk) 17:06, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/case has a law case and a medical case so why not IMHO. Its a commonly used term (& different to a case study) so could probably use an article. Perhaps you could use that definition as a base Captain n00dle T/C 17:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
Or, link the word "case" to wiktionary. --Una Smith (talk) 17:41, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure that there's really that much to be said about "cases". It probably wouldn't differ too much from the contents of Patient. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Icd9 v codes detail

Aren't these codes found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, rather than in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems? Why should there be a note that the codes are in the public domain? The introduction to this list leaves a lot to be desired. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 18:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Note is due to copyright. The ICD 10 was created to deal with some of the draw back of the ICD 9 codes. The ICD codes cover all of health care well the DSM is just psychiatry.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:53, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Combining neuropathy articles

I've suggested a major rearrangement of the neuropathy articles at Talk:Peripheral_neuropathy. Please let me know your views. Neurotip (talk) 17:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

I would encourage members of this project and appreciate it if wiki med members read the shortish talk page discussion regarding merging half a dozen or more articles into the peripheral neuropathy article. Need some medical people to form a consensus either for or against.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 02:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)


I'm happy with the direction this is taking, but I'm a bit of a merge-ist by nature, so this note is "fair warning" to splitters: if you think that we need a dozen disconnected stubs instead of two or three good articles, now's your chance to object.  ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
In partial pre-emption of splitter objections, I should mention that I'd be very happy for Peripheral neuropathy to have plenty of 'See main article' links (as already planned for 'Polyneuropathy'), even if the articles in question are currently small. Neurotip (talk) 20:54, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Hypertrichosis

I am part of a project working on the Hypertrichosis. We have submitted for peer review and already have a few sections and general improvements that we need to make. I was wondering if anyone from this task force would look over our article and see if there are any improvements we need to make. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TimHAllstr (talk • contribs) 15:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Nerve path template?

Hey all, I have just created this template for nerves: {{User:Captain-n00dle/Sandbox4}} and would like to know if you think it would be at all useful. I shall provide some examples: (I removed these previous examples because I changed the template)

Please message back with any suggestions, and discuss whether this template could be useful. Thanks, best regards, Captain n00dle T/C 02:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I also just added another condition: small=yes now makes the text 80% and gives a grey background Captain n00dle T/C 02:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
You could also add if it contain motor sensory or both. Might be better if the template was long and narrow rather than short and wide. And thus could go on the left side.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I think this is somewhat redundant to the existing nerve templates, but if it is created, it should probably be in the long and narrow format, so that it's stackable, and is compatible with a greater variety of displays. --Arcadian (talk) 06:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback. Jmh649, with motor sensory or both, would that be each nerve or just the terminal branch? Arcadian, there appears to be only one nerve template ({{Infobox_nerve}}) which doesn't have an option for root values and only has options for branch to and branch from. Perhaps my template would be useful for nerves who's path may be slightly complicated, for example:

{{User:Captain-n00dle/Sandbox4|title=Superior innervation of Sternohyoid|C1=yes|[[Hypoglossal nerve]]|[[Superior root of ansa cervicalis]]|branch to [[Sternohyoid muscle]]|direction=motor}}

{{User:Captain-n00dle/Sandbox4|title=Inferior innervation of Sternohyoid|C2=yes|C3=yes|[[Inferior root of ansa cervicalis]]|branch to [[Sternohyoid muscle]]|direction=motor}}

Thanks, best regards, Captain n00dle T/C 11:35, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

p.s. I just updated User:Captain-n00dle/Sandbox4 with documentation so that you can see what the variables are. Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 13:13, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I was thinking even more narrow. Were the arrows pointing down rather than to the right and each line hold one nerve / branch / root description.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:55, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Do you mean were they pointing down? Or were you suggesting to put arrows pointing down? I didn't quite follow you :-s I can make it thinner it is easy, but I used this standard width template: {{Side box}} Regards, Captain n00dle T/C 20:18, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
How about this:
is that what you meant? Captain n00dle T/C 20:39, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Can we use this arrow ↓ Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:48, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Like that? and yes as long as all browsers can see it Captain n00dle T/C 21:57, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

(undent) better yet. How does it look it the arrow is centered and on a line of its own?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:11, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Here it is. I can't decide which is better Captain n00dle T/C 22:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
And center the down arrow and maybe the text too? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:33, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I will do that tomorrow, my anatomy homework needs completing by tomorrow ^_- Captain n00dle T/C 23:07, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
Could this be added as a field into Template:Infobox nerve? When we have multiple navigation tools in the upper right hand corner, it can lead to navigation issues. --Arcadian (talk) 01:51, 16 November 2009 (UTC)
I can try :-) give me a bit of time with that one Captain n00dle T/C 22:37, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Help needed on Megalomaniac paranoia

I have a deletion request Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Megalomaniac paranoia which needs more opinions. As i understand it, megalomania is still a commonly used word by the general public as a synonym for grandiosity but ceased to be recognised as a medical condition a long time ago if it ever was (nothing in DSM or ICD). There are plenty of problems with both megalomania and Megalomaniac paranoia articles--Penbat (talk) 14:09, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

This needs more attention from wiki med project, an editor there is getting rather defensive over this article making erroneous accusations against myself and Penbat.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:16, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

LOL, the responses are making me laugh now. :) You guys are funny.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:22, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

In the future, please (also) list (transclude) such discussions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Medicine. The deletion sorting page is followed by some people here, plus people at related subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:06, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Might be worth having a fixed notice about Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Medicine somewhere here? Apologies if there is one and I missed it, but I didn't even know that project existed. --RexxS (talk) 22:45, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
It's in the (vertical) navbox at the top of most WPMED pages. Look for "How to help", then "Nominations for deletion".
Personally, I don't like keeping it in my watchlist. Instead, I've bookmarked it in a folder with other pages that I like to keep track of (or, in the case of User:MastCell/FDA links, which is also in that list, "pages that I apparently like to ignore"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Talk:Thiomersal controversy#Introduction Neutrality Dispute

An IP editor (131.215.40.141 and 131.215.6.110) seems to need advice regarding the importance of not depending on primary sources, on the difference between in vitro and in vivo, and on how the dose makes the poison. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:30, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Eubulides for showing up to help out (and to Yobol, who was already there). If you need more help, please ping us... but for myself, I'm going to assume that you don't need another cook to help spoil the broth. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Benzodiazepine -- an Austrian invention

Would editors here please have a look into the slow edit war with an IP/newbie on whether the Benzodiazepines count as an "Austrian invention". Colin°Talk 22:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I had already blocked TSChymist (talk · contribs). It's not clear to me whether this is an impostor or a sockpuppet of The Sceptical Chymist (talk · contribs) - my question in that regard went unanswered. It would still be worth having uninvolved editors weigh in on the content question, I suppose. MastCell Talk 22:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
That is a sockpuppet of indefinitely banned Mwalla. He follows me about trying to cause fights after I reverted his vandalism to talk page comments. This has been going on for a year now. I recently got two of his puppets banned. It is not a content dispute, just a hounding thing which has been going on. Do NOT feed the troll, be aware that he is trying to cause drama and disputes, just revert him and I will report him to WP:SPI. See, Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Mwalla and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Mwalla/Archive for background information.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:42, 18 November 2009 (UTC) Struck comment because the sock is blocked indefinitely.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:49, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
He followed my contribs over to antibiotic resistance as well.[19].--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:49, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
The Sceptical Chymist reverted some of Mwalla's sockpuppets and has previously had other sockpuppets of Mwalla banned so that is why the sock master Mwalla is impersonating The Sceptical Chymist.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 04:00, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

If anybody is interested in knowing the motivations behind this, it is sustained disruptive editing on paroxetine article, which has calmed down a bit with the sock blocks. The article has an FDA citation which states that paroxetine (seroxat, paxil) is unsafe in pregnancy and recommends switching to or using different SSRIs during pregnancy and also about suicidal information and edit warring over it, faking refs, using irrelevant refs or primary sources to delete or debunk it. Mwalla's actions, assuming bad faith per WP:COMMONSENSE is likely connected to ongoing multi-million dollar lawsuits against GSK about these issues.[20],[21]. This drama spilt out onto this wiki med project talk page a year or so ago and I went over to the article and contributed to some of the talk page over there (not realising how political an article it was). I reverted talk page vandalism to user comments and faked refs of Mwalla and I must have had views another editor didn't like, I think I agreed with another editor about it being misleading to general public/lay person to say antidepressants were non-habit forming. The result is that I have Mwalla and his army of sockpuppets and another editor who have started a campaign of hounding me popping up on admin noticeboards, wiki projects and even arbcom (as an "independent" "concerned" wikipedian) alledging all sorts of distortions like ownership (which is ironic because it was I, not them who was forced off of the article), hounding, POV, civilty issues (which I have been during a couple of heated disputes). This then leads admins to accuse me of being the harasser and me the problem editor. The drama with Mwalla and myself might end or at least reduce when the class action lawsuits are finished or else if I give up reporting his sockpuppeteering to WP:SPI. I was content to allow myself to be hounded off of the article because I don't have any big interest in antidepressants but sadly a battleground against me still persists.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:37, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I will never be hounded off of wikipedia though! I am here to stay. :) I have learnt from my mistakes during past disputes and learnt how wiki processes work so I am stronger now against such editors. --Literaturegeek | T@1k? 07:50, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Colostrum article may be POV/promotional

The article Colostrum has a distinct promotional tone to it, but it appears to be well-cited and I don't know near enough to determine if the citations are representative of mainstream opinion on the topic. Can someone more knowledgeable take a look at it? YeOldeSacke (talk) 07:14, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I have no specific knowledge of the effects of colostrum, but I share YeOldeSacke's concern, and indeed fear that some of this may be pseudoscience. My interest is in dementia, so I've looked up the two relevant references:
  • "As our bodies age, they produce less IGF-1, which makes it more difficult to lose weight and can often lead to the development of type 2 diabetes and even dementia.[36]" (Arai et al.) This study found p=0.049 for a higher prevalence of dementia in people of around 100 years of age with lower-than-median blood IGF-1 levels than those with higher-than-median levels. As no attempt is made to correct for the many multiple comparisons in the paper, this is not a statistically significant finding. Even if true, it would be an observational finding and would not establish causality. The reference therefore does not support the statement.
  • "PRP has also proven to be effective in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease[62]" (Bilikiewicz and Gaus). I have only been able to look at the abstract of this paper. The key claim in the abstract is that ""The [overall] analysis at week 15 [the end of the double-blind period] showed a stabilizing effect of Colostrinin on cognitive function in ADAS-cog (p = 0.02)". 15 weeks is not enough to show a stabilizing effect, since no significant deterioration would be expected over this period in the untreated patients. The authors do not claim to have shown any improvement in the treated group. There was also a second primary outcome, CGIC, in relation to which no effect is reported, so again the p-value for the ADAS-cog outcome should be corrected for at least two comparisons. Again, the reference does not support the article's claim.
Parts of the article are worded like an advertisement, e.g. "Literally hundreds of scientific, peer-reviewed research studies...", and use potentially misleading wording such as "Colostrum has been used by athletes to improve their performance" which appears to claim that colostrum improves athletes' performance while not actually claiming this.
I would also point out that the parts of the article which give cause for concern (diff) are the work of User:Lamasboy. This is a redlinked username, and no contributions have been made to any other articles under this name.
The same user inserted an external link to www.icnr.org. On this website, it is claimed that "Medical Research shows that Colostrum is possibly the one supplement that can help everyone that’s ill.", and colostrum is claimed to be "anti-aging" as well as effective against AIDS.
I leave other editors to draw their own conclusions, but would support a revert to undo Lamasboy's contributions.
Neurotip (talk) 15:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
My opinion is that the website is for the purpose to deceive the vulnerable and gullible into buying their product via deceitful claims. Wikipedia should not be used to promote this charlatan stuff so have removed the external link.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
One might make similar comments about one of the other external links, which makes similar claims alongside nonsense such as "Antibiotics kill all bacteria in our bodies" and "With the use of colostrums helps support your immune system naturally is your best defense against illnesses [sic]." Neurotip (talk) 18:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I deleted that one shortly before you sent this message. :)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] My initial instincts were to try and get this article deleted but on looking at article history it seems to have been edited by many editors since 2004. Perhaps one or two editors have inserted so much distortion that it will need a full rewrite to fix ref misrepresentations. Does anyone think that it should be completely deleted?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 18:05, 17 November 2009 (UTC) Struck out comment per search on pubmed and comments by Mastcell, subject is notable.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This article illustrates a difficult area and a significant challenge that Wikipedia faces. There are actually a number of primary studies (mostly in vitro and animal models) suggesting health benefits from bovine colostrum, published by reputable journals. There are also a few review articles (e.g. PMID 18538107) on the topic. Here is the problem: colostrum has advocates in the scientific community, and a research base supporting its use. However, it has not caught on the to the extent that this research has been subjected to extensive critical review. When ideas are limited to relatively small groups, then the result is a volume of largely positive results without much in the way of critical evaluation or context. This makes it hard to present the topic rationally on Wikipedia - any summary of the published literature will be overwhelmingly positive, but yet the application of bovine colostrum remains largely non-mainstream. Reflecting that distinction without veering into excessively positive and caveat-free coverage (as the colostrum article currently contains) is difficult or impossible under current policy. My 2 cents, anyway. MastCell Talk 19:09, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Another controversial (or difficult) article on wikipedia! I thought when I read the web site and comments here that this was just some weird remedy being touted for sale. I had no idea it had been subjected to quite a lot of research with positive results albeit mostly primary sources. I guess it is a matter of keeping out dubious statements and weak refs etc.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:18, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Interesting situation. Still, the Human consumption section of the article is more than just biased: it's written like an advertisement, the wording is misleading, at least some of the references don't support the relevant statements, and there are statements which are simply false ("there are no side effects from its use"). Nonetheless, the references are not irrelevant and the section could potentially be rewritten. Is there a way of removing the section but keeping it in a safe place until someone wants to rewrite it? Neurotip (talk) 23:23, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
Just tag it {{npov}} or whatever you think fits and leave it there. Explain your concerns about the section on the article's talk page. --Una Smith (talk) 00:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

I have just removed most of the worst offending text and did a brief rewrite.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 09:38, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

drugs in phase II and III trials

an interesting question about when they are notable has come up on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ALD518. DGG ( talk ) 02:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I've listed it at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Medicine WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

pubmed cits to wiki conversion tool, temporary test

I have temporarily set up a web test for my tool to convert the pubmed search results into a list of wiki citations. If you change the "url=" value to your desired search,

http://www.spottext.com/wikimed.cfm?url=integrin+signalling

you should get back up to 50 citations in wiki format. While this isn't designed for spamming, it is easier to delete a reference that try to type if by hand.Note you should be able to enter a pmid, http://www.spottext.com/wikimed.cfm?url=19915538 or otherwise return a single entry if that is what you want- your request is forwarded to an eutils search script and should support all features except that I wasn't real careful setting up the web interface so spaces and other things may get mangled. This uses a cygwin bash script to invoke java code and some other pubmed eutils scripts so it is very slow- give it a minute or two to return results. Note this is only temporary for feedback and comments. You should be able to integrate this into your own scripts if desired for testing. Thanks. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 11:54, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Good job, beta tested and working fine here. :) I look forward to seeing the final product. Are you planning to give it a web based GUI?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 12:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
No plans, just getting feedback. I'd have to find a more permanent host etc. I'll see if we could put it up as ad supported if there is enough demand. But, I'd also have to fix the implementation ( I'm not even sure if two simultaneous users would get results comingled LOL)

as it is quite slow. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 12:31, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah ok. :) Keep us all updated or me at least. Those tools come in handy.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 13:59, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
Any idea where else to post this for more users to try? Thanks. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 10:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Great idea and seems to work fine on a very quick test. I hope you find a permanent home for it; it'd certainly make me more likely to reference my contributions properly. Thanks. Neurotip (talk) 15:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, if we can get a little more feedback maybe I can clean it up and put it somewhere. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 18:22, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Cystic fibrosis FAR

I have nominated Cystic fibrosis 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) 20:04, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Immunizations and Juvenile dermatomyositis: The JDM article says immunizations are a common trigger of JDM.D

The "Juvenile dermatomyositis" article says immunizations are a common trigger of JDM.

Is that currently regarded as likely true? Or does the article require correction or qualification?

Cause

The underlying cause of JDM is unknown. It most likely has a genetic component, as other auto-immune disease tend to run in the families of patients. The disease is usually triggered by a condition that causes immune system activity that does not stop as it should, but the trigger is almost certainly not the cause in most cases. Common triggers include immunizations, infections, injuries, and sunburn.

(I'm an adult DM patient who has done some reading on PM, DM and JDM, and this was the first time I noticed immunizations being mentioned as a possible trigger.

Since lot of the bad press immunizations have gotten has recently been discredited, I want to verify whether immunizations are still regarded as generally accepted triggers of JDM, or if the theory regarding them triggering JDM is obsolete and alarmist.)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.216.74.94 (talk • contribs) 05:23, 10 August 2009

GA Reassessment of Malaria

Malaria has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.

New article

I am making a new article regarding Limb salvage surgery. If someone could proof read for me that would be very helpful. Since I had this type of operation performed on me I know a lot about it. - BennyK95 - Talk 19:14 ,October 5 2009 (UTC)

Limits for advocacy

This edit added a link which that editor has added many times, including before he started editing as a regitered user. In an article of this type (where it's not a biography where links to the subject's website are allowed, even if they're not RS), can we allow such a commercial website with obviously misleading information as an EL? How does MEDRS relate to this situation? -- Brangifer (talk) 05:44, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Is not in the area of WP:MED. Try skepticism WP.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:39, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
WP:MEDRS does not apply, because it's not being used as a reliable source. WP:MEDMOS#External_links does apply, but probably won't be much help, as its primary focus is eliminating charity- and fundraising-related spam.
Non-RS websites are permitted in external links: see WP:ELMAYBE #4. (If they weren't, then the Quackwatch links would have to be removed as well.)
Depending on the details, you might consider the applicability of WP:ELNO#EL2. You can post such questions to the external links noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
Craniosacral therapy is covered by MEDRS, which is why I'm here. I also came here because the last time this situation came up, I approached MEDRS and was told to come here because more medically savvy editors are here. You're probably right that WP:ELNO#EL2 also applies. (We should have a MEDEL guideline ;-) The link does seem to violate "Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research, except to a limited extent in articles about the viewpoints which such sites are presenting." (WP:EL) What are your thoughts on this aspect?
WhatamIdoing, "what are you doing" by mentioning Quackwatch? Is that a slur? At Wikipedia it's been found to be reliable for its purpose, and its information doesn't "... misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research,..." All mainstream RS consider it reliable and trustworthy. Only fringe and scam sources attack it when it exposes them and defends mainstream science and medicine. You can read more about the lengthy discussions of its reliability here:
It should be used wisely and on a case-by-case basis, just like all other RS we use here. None of them are RS in ALL situations. Brangifer (talk) 02:07, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
Ummm.... unless I'm sorely mistaken, WhatamIdoing was lifting up Quackwatch as a source of useful links that we would not want to lose by placing overly-narrow limits on external links. You might want to re-read his post and begin with the assumption that you agree. -- Scray (talk) 04:49, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
That would be her post, actually... Fvasconcellos (t·c) 12:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
I apologize if I've misread her comment. It appears to me that she's equating QW with "Non-RS websites". Am I really parsing that sentence incorrectly? BTW, I do agree with all but that one detail. -- Brangifer (talk) 23:00, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
I think that the confusion is to do with medical articles and non-medical articles. To make a scientific statement peer reviewed sources, preferably secondary sources (eg review articles, meta-analysis, national or international scientific panels etc) or high quality medical book published are what this project would consider reliable for medical articles. Most contributers here edit articles such as on cancer, diabetes, heart disease and a wide range of other medical topics etc and would not consider using websites such as quackwatch to make medical statements, instead preferring peer reviewed sources in high quality medical journals etc. The article that you are discussing is alternative medicine, not mainstream medicine; I think alternative medicine articles fall under WP:RS rather than WP:MEDRS, except for when discussing scientific evidence, then MEDRS would apply. I think that it also depends on what you are using the source for, a controversy section in an article quackwatch it might be reliable but to make a scientific statement of fact then peer reviewed sources would need to be consulted. For example, one wouldn't use a website such as quackwatch to say the most widely used and effective drug to treat X medical condition is,,,, and then cite quackwatch or a similar website but using it in non-medical articles, eg alternative health articles to make non medical statements then yes it is likely a reliable source; either way it is acceptable external link for articles on quackery. The project which would better be able to address your concerns is this one, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Rational_Skepticism as it is more focused on fringe and non-evidence based articles or else WP:AN/I if you are having problems with disruptive editors.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Just to make it clear, this thread isn't about QW, and of course it wouldn't be used for the nitty gritty scientific details, but for other aspects of the subject. Any part of an article at Wikipedia that contains statements regarding the nitty gritty details of medical science is covered by MEDRS. -- Brangifer (talk) 03:57, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
(ec) It's possible some of the confusion is arising from the different requirements for sources which support the text and sources which could be linked to as additional material. On a case-by-case basis, QW may be a reliable source to support text. Nevertheless, unless it is "material that cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article", it is unlikely to be appropriate as an external link. The simple answer to the original question is that neither WP:RS nor WP:MEDRS are intended to apply to external links. One of the problems with allowing too many external links is that POV-pushers will add them because they avoid the scrutiny of WP:RS by not having to support the main text. Therefore it is important to make use of WP:ELNO to show that a site containing misleading information should not be an external link either. --RexxS (talk) 00:53, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
  1. ^ Turner EH, Matthews AM, Linardatos E, Tell RA, Rosenthal R (2008). "Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy". N. Engl. J. Med. 358 (3): 252–60. doi:10.1056/NEJMsa065779. PMID 18199864. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Retrieved from "https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_15&oldid=1255166904"