Head lice: boring for doctors, important to patients

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7401.0-g

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Richard Smith, editor

Doctors don't become famous through working on head lice. Presidents of royal colleges are never experts on head lice. Nobody dies of head lice. Nobody even gets very sick. Head lice are boring to doctors. But head lice matter a lot to patients and can cause great distress. “I felt lost and hysterical,” writes a mother who has head lice, along with her two daughters (p 1258). “My older daughter was humiliated by the way the school nurse treated her… My paediatrician (who I really like) had no suggestions.”

A cluster of short pieces beginning on p 1256 considers what …