ESC releases the first European Guidelines on Percutaneous Coronary Interventions (PCI)
... despite the delay, due to transportation, between randomisation and the start of the treatment. 10. The superiority of primary PCI over thrombolysis seems to be especially clinically relevant, for the time interval between 3 and 12 hours after onset of chest pain or other symptoms, on the basis of its superior pr...New insight into link between homocysteine and stroke
...and colleagues used an approach known as Mendelian randomisation to overcome some of the problems of confounding factors seen in observational studies. The investigators analysed published data on the association between stroke and common variation in a gene called MTHFR, which is known to influence homocysteine c...Call for randomised criminal-justice trials
...T. The article provides details of how court-based randomisation could be put into practice. Sheila Bird (UK Medic...justice system: "Formal experiments, including the randomisation of sufficient numbers of offenders, are needed to inform judicial approval or "licensing" of new cri...Widely used treatment for head injuries found to be harmful
... clear-cut answer. The CRASH trial (corticosteroid randomisation after significant head injury)--a multicentre international collaboration--aimed to confirm or refute such an effect by recruiting 20,000 patients. In May, 2004, the data monitoring committee disclosed the unmasked results to the steering committee, ...Randomisation phase of the DIRECT programme (DIabetic REtinopathy Candesartan Trials) completed
The randomisation of patients into the landmark DIabetic REtinopathy Candesartan Trials (DIRECT) was completed in February. A total of 5238 patients in around 300 investigational sites in 30 EU countries have now been randomised into the 3 trial/studies that comprise ...Nordic collaboration gives new insights into adjuvant chemotherapy
...ients to include or exclude, be more liberal about randomisation and how quickly chemotherapy should be started and for how long it should be given," he said. "In this study some patients had quite a delay before starting chemotherapy, even though it was stressed how important it is to initiate treatment as soon a...Swedish trials suggest modest benefit for screening mammography
...mortality started to emerge at about 4 years after randomisation and continued to increase to about 10 years. There was no significant difference in death from all causes between screening and control groups. Lennarth Nystrom comments: The advantageous effect of breast screening on breast cancer mortality persists...