Minerva

A simple, low tech procedure seems to have resulted in 23% fewer deaths and 9% fewer readmissions to hospital for cardiovascular patients: the introduction of the patient care guidelines, including a discharge checklist for patients about the drugs they've been prescribed, reminder cards, follow up phone calls, and educational brochures. Researchers compared the records of 26 000 inpatients at a group of hospitals in the United States before the programme started and of more than 31 000 patients afterwards (Wall Street Journal 2004 Sep 21).

Wanted: enthusiastic members of the public interested in having their say about how the medical research agenda should be shaped in Britain. The Medical Research Council is inviting people to join two public involvement advisory groups that have been set up to expand the MRC's work on public health and research issues. Topics influenced to date include strategies for research into autism, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, and stem cell science. For more information email fatima.deabreu@headoffice.mrc.ac.uk by 8 October.

If you already have diabetes and have a heart attack, your chances are much worse than for your neighbour without diabetes. But what about people who have just developed diabetes? A study in Circulation (2004;110: 1572-8) compared people with previously known diabetes who had a myocardial infarction with people with …