1843 Oestrogen receptors and breast cancer
Richard M Elledge, C Kent Osborne

1844 Reforming the New Zealand health reforms
Chris Ham

1845 Vitamin E and cardiovascular protection in diabetes
Anastasios Gazis, Simon Page, John Cockcroft

1847 HIV associated tuberculosis
Richard Coker, Rob Miller

1848 Devolution and the Scottish NHS
Colin Currie, Anthony Toft

1855 Corticosteroids in acute traumatic brain injury: systematic review of randomised controlled trials
Philip Alderson, Ian Roberts

1860 Prospective study of effect of switching from cigarettes to pipes or cigars on mortality from three smoking related diseases
N J Wald, H C Watt

1864 Prospective cohort study of factors influencing the relative weights of the placenta and the newborn infant
Lucy A Williams, Sharon F Evans, John P Newnham

1868 Diabetes in institutionalised elderly people: a forgotten population?
Susan J Benbow, Angela Walsh, Geoffrey V Gill

1869 Drug points: Drug induced psychosis with doxazosin
M Evans, P W Perera, J Donoghue

1870 What future for continuity of care in general practice?
George Freeman, Per Hjortdahl

1874 Statistics Notes: Units of analysis
Douglas G Altman, J Martin Bland

1875 Reliability of health information for the public on the world wide web: systematic survey of advice on managing fever in children at home
Piero Impicciatore, Chiara Pandolfini, Nicola Casella, Maurizio Bonati

1879 Commentary: Measuring quality and impact of the world wide web
Jeremy C Wyatt

1881 Netlines
Mark Pallen

1882 Science, medicine, and the future: Colorectal cancer
Malcolm G Dunlop

1886 ABC of mental health: Anxiety
Anthony S Hale

1890 GP budget holding in New Zealand: lessons for Britain and elsewhere?
Laurence Malcolm

1892 New Zealand's health reforms: a clash of cultures
Andrew Hornblow

1895 Managed care: Implications of managed care for health systems, clinicians, and patients
Gillian Fairfield, David J Hunter, David Mechanic, Flemming Rosleff

1898 Health in China: Maternal and child health in China
Therese Hesketh, Wei Xing Zhu

1901 Rationing health care
T Marshall; M F St Leger; C Woodroffe; A Bowling

1902 Prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms after bacterial gastroenteritis
D Gorard; P Maxwell and M Mendall; D M Hambidge; R Barber and A Blakey; K R Neal and others

1903 Dual publication of surgical abstracts is acceptable
J J Earnshaw and others

1904 General practitioners prefer to work in cooperatives for out of hours work
P Hughes and others

1904 Trial of prescribing strategies in managing sore throat
M De Meyere and others; W J McIsaac; P Little and others

1905 Compliance and concordance with treatment
I Bamforth; H J Milburn and G M Cochrane

1906 Donations of orthopaedic equipment also cause problems
A Gregori

1906 Overcoming racism in the NHS
N Turner; R Bedi; U M MacFadyen

1907 Treatment for haemophilia by calendar in Hungary
G Sas

1907 Quoting intermediate analyses can only mislead
J M Bland

1908 All doctors are problem doctors
G Bennet; B A Noble

1908 Court ordered caesarean sections are discouraging women from seeking obstetric care
B A Lawrence Beech

1908 Conclusions about why doctors change their practice were not supported by the data
R M Poses

1909 D W Davies, M Erdohazi, T Evans, P Golding-Wood, C H Goodliffe, D Malcolm, S F Marshall, W E S Marshall, R Maxwell, G W Milledge, J Moss

1911 Local medical committee conference

Soundings

1914 Man's best friend
Trisha Greenhalgh

1914 Burundi ... an illustration of the problem
Christina M De Wind

1915 Unfamiliar territory
Charles Swainson

1916 Managing Manic Depressive Disorders
Ed Ved Varma
David Ames

Health Economics: An Introduction to Economic Evaluation
Gisela Kobelt

Elementary Economic Evaluation in Health Care
Tom Jefferson, Vittorio Demicheli, Miranda Mugford
Fiona Bradley

Health at the Crossroads: Transport Policy and Urban Health
Eds T Fletcher, A J McMichael
Dimitrios Trichopoulos

1918

Editor's choice

A week for hedgehogs over foxes

One big problem is knowing how to treat patients with acute traumatic brain injury, caused mainly by road accidents. Road death rates are falling in industrialised countries but increasing in Asian countries. Road death rates in China and the United States are now similar despite China having five vehicles for every 1000 people and the United States 770. Acute traumatic brain injury may thus become commoner worldwide, but the message from a systematic review is that we don't know how best to treat it (p 1855). Many intensive care units give patients corticosteroids in the hope that they will reduce the raised intracranial pressure that probably kills many patients. The authors found 13 randomised controlled trials, but they have shown conflicting results. Corticosteroids could either worsen or improve the outcome. We don't know, yet a "small" effect could have substantial public health importance because the problem is so big.

Another big problem is how to reform health care. The Dutch, Swedes, New Zealanders, and British have all tried introducing markets into health care in the past 10 years, and they are all now having second thoughts. Two papers describe how the New Zealanders have effectively dumped their 1993 reforms (which are similar to those introduced in Britain) and are now trying "integrated and managed care based on professional rather than commercial values (pp 1890 and 1892)." Let's hope these reforms will prove to be more than slogans. Chris Ham argues in an editorial that healthcare reform will not work in any country until "politicians ... acknowledge that 'rationing in any health system ... is inevitable' and face up to the consequences (p 1844)." (The BMJ and others will be holding a debate and conference on just this issue on 10 and 11 July in London. For more information contact Jane Lewis on 0171 383 6605 or click here.)

The Scots have had to go along with the market oriented health reforms devised in London despite the reforms being antipathetic to "the more left leaning and less deferential" culture north of the border. Now the new government's commitment to devolution gives the Scots a chance to try their own healthcare experiments. Colin Currie and Tony Toft welcome this opportunity (p 1848) in the week when the BMA clans will arrive in Edinburgh for their annual gathering (and occasional bloodletting).