Faculty Bibliography

The motive for the bombing seemed apparent from the start. The Los Angeles Times was a "fiercely conservative" newspaper, [Howard Blum] says, and its publisher, Harrison Gray Otis, had vowed to turn Los Angeles into "a bustling, nonunion metropolis." Employing his army of detectives, [Billy Burns] traced the conspiracy, as well as other terrorist acts, to the Indianapolis headquarters of the Structural Iron Workers union and its secretary-treasurer, John J. McNamara, whose accomplices included his brother Jim. Business leaders praised Burns for saving capitalism from the clutches of working-class thuggery. But the union movement rushed to the McNamara brothers' defense. "I have investigated the whole case," said Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor. "Burns has lied!" With aid from the growing Socialist Party, organized labor raised the war chest needed to give the McNamara brothers the finest defense. Enter [Clarence Darrow]

BACKGROUND: Electronic health records (EHRs) may improve patient safety and health care quality, but the relationship between EHR adoption and settled malpractice claims is unknown. METHODS: Between June 1, 2005, and November 30, 2005, we surveyed a random sample of 1884 physicians in Massachusetts to assess availability and use of EHR functions, predictors of use, and perceptions of medical practice. Information on paid malpractice claims was accessed on the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine (BRM) Web site in April 2007. We used logistic regression to assess the relationship between the adoption and use of EHRs and paid malpractice claims. RESULTS: The survey response rate was 71.4% (1345 of 1884). Among 1140 respondents with data on the presence of EHR and available BRM records, 379 (33.2%) had EHRs. A total of 6.1% of physicians with an EHR had a history of a paid malpractice claim compared with 10.8% of physicians without EHRs (unadjusted odds ratio, 0.54; 95% confidence interval, 0.33-0.86; P = .01). In logistic regression analysis controlling for sex, race, year of medical school graduation, specialty, and practice size, the relationship between EHR adoption and paid malpractice settlements was of smaller magnitude and no longer statistically significant (adjusted odds ratio, 0.69; 95% confidence interval, 0.40-1.20; P = .18). Among EHR adopters, 5.7% of physicians identified as "high users" of EHR had paid malpractice claims compared with 12.1% of "low users" (P = .14). CONCLUSIONS: Although the results of this study are inconclusive, physicians with EHRs appear less likely to have paid malpractice claims. Confirmatory studies are needed before these results can have policy implications.

David Oshinsky reviews "American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-Making, and the Crime of the Century," a history of the explosion at the Los Angeles Times building on Oct 1, 1910 by Howard Blum

Eleventh Hour [Television Program] -- A 2004 British mathematical modeling study showed that isolating 90% of symptomatic cases is sufficient to bring a contagion under control; effective tracing of people who've come into contact with those people brings the number closer to 100%

OBJECTIVE:Patients with cortical dysplasia (CD) are difficult to treat because the MRI abnormality may be undetectable. This study determined whether fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET/MRI coregistration enhanced the recognition of CD in epilepsy surgery patients. METHODS:Patients from 2004-2007 in whom FDG-PET/MRI coregistration was a component of the presurgical evaluation were compared with patients from 2000-2003 without this technique. For the 2004-2007 cohort, neuroimaging and clinical variables were compared between patients with mild Palmini type I and severe Palmini type II CD. RESULTS:Compared with the 2000-2003 cohort, from 2004-2007 more CD patients were detected, most had type I CD, and fewer cases required intracranial electrodes. From 2004-2007, 85% of type I CD cases had normal non-University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) MRI scans. UCLA MRI identified CD in 78% of patients, and 37% of type I CD cases had normal UCLA scans. EEG and neuroimaging findings were concordant in 52% of type I CD patients, compared with 89% of type II CD patients. FDG-PET scans were positive in 71% of CD cases, and type I CD patients had less hypometabolism compared with type II CD patients. Postoperative seizure freedom occurred in 82% of patients, without differences between type I and type II CD cases. CONCLUSIONS:Incorporating fluorodeoxyglucose-PET/MRI coregistration into the multimodality presurgical evaluation enhanced the noninvasive identification and successful surgical treatment of patients with cortical dysplasia (CD), especially for the 33% of patients with nonconcordant findings and those with normal MRI scans from mild type I CD.

The ability to copy and paste text within computerized physician documentation facilitates electronic note writing but may affect the quality of physician notes and patient care. Little is known about physicians' collective experience with the copy and paste function (CPF). We surveyed resident and faculty physicians within two affiliated academic medical centers in order to describe physicians' CPF use, perceptions of its impact on notes and patient care, and opinions regarding its future use.

'Til Death [Television Program] -- Three recent studies in South Africa, Kenya and Uganda, published in PLoS Medicine and the Lancet, showed a dramatic decrease in the heterosexual transmission of HIV among circumcised African men, but it is unclear if this benefit applies to heterosexual men in other countries

Coronary artery calcification (CAC) and common carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) are measures of subclinical vascular disease. This 2000-2006 study aimed to characterize the associations among coronary artery disease risk factors, CAC quantity, and CIMT and to estimate shared genetic and environmental contributions to both CAC and CIMT among 478 asymptomatic Amish adults in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Heritability for CAC quantity and CIMT, adjusted for age and sex, was 0.42 (P = 0.0001) and 0.29 (P = 0.003), respectively. CAC quantity and CIMT were modestly correlated (adjusted r = 0.14, P = 0.003) but showed little evidence of shared genetic or environmental factors. However, significant genetic correlations were found for CAC quantity and total cholesterol (0.44 (standard error, 0.19); P = 0.03), for CAC quantity and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (0.55 (standard error, 0.17); P = 0.005), and for CIMT and waist circumference (0.58 (standard error, 0.25); P = 0.046), suggesting shared genes for these risk factors and measures of subclinical disease. Results suggest that some of the same genes influence variation in CAC and low density lipoprotein cholesterol, whereas a different set of genes influences variation in CIMT and waist circumference.