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Contents page (PDF)

Editorials

Pollution pandemic
Air pollution is a global problem that needs further debate and concern, as Alexander Finlayson and Nicholas Mills discuss

Grieving the death of a child
Health professionals need to be particularly sensitive to the needs of parents, argues Beverley Raphael

News

Tossed aside

Age is no barrier to pleasure

Medics worldwide: news and opportunities from the IFMSA
Jana Kammeyer president, International Federation of Medical Students' Associations

Education

ABC of wound healing: Pressure ulcers
A pressure ulcer is defined by the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (EPUAP) as an area of localised damage to the skin and underlying tissue caused by pressure, shear, or friction, or a combination of these. Pressure ulcers are caused by a local breakdown of soft tissue as a result of compression between a bony prominence and an external surface.

A patient with dysphagia
A 19 year old man presented to the accident and emergency department with acute onset inability to swallow and a feeling of a lump in his throat after having a meal. On examination he was distressed and was drooling saliva. The patient showed marked dysphagia when asked to take sips of water.

Understanding scuba diving incidents
Duncan Tarry explains the pathologies associated with scuba diving and outlines aspects of appropriate medical management

Chemical warfare
Hardly a month passes without press reports of tear gas being used in a public setting. Laxmi Vilas Ghimire and Sagun Narayan Joshi discuss its effects

Osteoarthritis
Each week the BMJ publishes a clinical review. Here is a recent one that covered osteoarthritis, by David J Hunter and David T Felson

Careers

From medical student to junior doctor: Working outside the box
What less mainstream specialities are available to medical graduates? Richard Beasley and colleagues give an overview, in the ninth article of the series.

A consumer guide to the world of e-learning
Fancy keeping up to date from the comfort of your swivel chair? From educational CD Roms to web based learning programmes, e-learning means you can. John Sandars and Kieran Walsh help you decide what sort of e-learning will suit you best

Pressure drop
Philip Hendy, Christopher Williams, and Jules Eden highlight the ways in which you can get involved in diving medicine and what a career in this field entails

A life on the ocean wave
Imagine fresh sea air, luxurious surroundings, and a different shoreline each morning. Add unpredictability, adventure, and the scope to develop professionally and you have the unpredictable yet exciting life of a ship's doctor, says Kaji Sritharan

Networking as a junior doctor

Do tomorrow's doctors really know no anatomy?
There's more to problem based learning than just skipping training in basic medical sciences, thinks Jessie Morgan

And the winner of the Ig Nobel prize for medicine
Peter Barss worked as clinical physician, surgeon, hospital director, and teacher in rural Papua New Guinea and Angola for 10 years. Falling coconuts were a common cause of severe and sometimes fatal injuries. He won the 2001 Ig Nobel prize in medicine for a 1984 paper on the phenopmenon.He now works as an associate professor in the United Arab Emirates. Livia Puljak caught up with him

Papers

Partner notification of chlamydia infection: a randomised controlled trial
Tom Fahey and Vishnu Madhok take you through a randomised controlled trial that assessed the effectiveness of strategies for notification and treatment of partners of people with chlamydia infection

Life

Flight school:learning lessons from aviation
Aviation can help us to understand the impact of human factors in medicine, Vincent Helyar points out

Many heads make light work of med school exams
When it comes to exams, there's strength in numbers, feels Sabreena Malik

When I saw Kashmir
Kashmir experienced hell on 8 October 2005: an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale claimed at least 70 000 lives in just 40 seconds. Farah Salahuddin recounts her experiences as part of a team that helped survivors

Letters

Circumcision in men: BMA should decide

Precipitation of angle closure may not be a disservice

Undergraduate societies supplement medical education

Reviews

Medics face the music

Patients prefer anecdotes

Just a guinea pig

A grandson's perspective

Diving and hyperbaric medicine

eyespy