In a randomized trial, overall survival was longer among patients with resectable gastric cancer who received preoperative and postoperative chemotherapy than among those who underwent surgery alone.

Exposure to air pollution has been associated with the loss of lung function in epidemiologic studies. In this study, exposures of individual children were assessed through the measurement of carbon in macrophages and were shown to be related to exposure to local pollution and to lung function.

In this report, investigators from the New Vaccine Surveillance Network, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prospectively assessed the pediatric burden of undiagnosed influenza infection in inpatient and outpatient settings. In children presenting with fever or an acute respiratory tract infection, influenza was clinically diagnosed only 28 percent of the time in the inpatient setting and 13 percent of the time in the outpatient setting.

In this study of more than 20,000 nonsurgical patients receiving mechanical ventilation at 37 acute care hospitals from 2002 to 2003, higher hospital volume was associated with improved survival. After adjustment for the severity of illness and the characteristics of the hospitals, mortality in the hospital was 34 percent in hospitals in the lowest quartile in terms of the number of patients receiving mechanical ventilation per year and 26 percent in the highest quartile.

This review summarizes the molecular and genetic lesions underlying the progression from benign nevus to malignant melanoma.

A 52-year-old woman experienced the sudden onset of bilateral arm tingling and numbness, and noted that the words on her computer screen appeared "mixed up." She improved over the next 24 hours, but then difficulty swallowing and slurred speech developed, progressing over the next three days to no speech.

The author reviews the history of employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States and outlines how it became the cornerstone of the nation's health care system. He discusses the implications of employer-based insurance for access to and the affordability and quality of health care.

A recent trio of studies involving mouse models of type 1 diabetes rules against the spleen as a potential source of therapeutic beta cells and refocuses attention on how best to cultivate the recovery of host beta cells.