Head lice: boring for doctors, important to patients

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7401.0-g

BMJ 2003;326 (7 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7401.0-g

Editor's choice

Head lice: boring for doctors, important to patients

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Doctors don't become famous through working on head lice. Presidentsof royal colleges are never experts on head lice. Nobody diesof head lice. Nobody even gets very sick. Head lice are boringto doctors. But head lice matter a lot to patients and cancause great distress. "I felt lost and hysterical," writesa mother who has head lice, along with her two daughters (p 1258)."My older daughter was humiliated by the way the schoolnurse treated her... My paediatrician (who I really like) hadno suggestions."

A cluster of short pieces beginning on p 1256 considers whatwe know and don't know about head lice. They come from BestTreatments, a website for patients and healthcare workers basedon Clinical Evidence that the BMJ Publishing Group has developedtogether with United Healthcare. The material on head liceis available on bmj.com, but most of . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Smith, editor

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