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Review of "Combined Small Cell Lung Carcinoma"

Ladies and gentlemen:

I'm guessing that SOMEONE reviewed the above-entitled article, as the "New Unreviewed Article" tag has now disappeared. Many thanks to whomever did so. I have not been able to find any comments or criticisms on it anywhere, however, and I was just curious as to what people thought about it.

If anyone has a particular interest in lung cancer, particularly the less common variants, take a look at it when you get a minute and let me know what you think. I was considering doing a bunch more like that one, and I would appreciate feedback of any sort with a goal of trying to make sure subsequent ones are of the best possible quality.

I thank you all for your attention.

Best regards: Cliff Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS DDF 00:15, 27 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uploadvirus (talk • contribs)

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Thank you. Okip 08:00, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm bolding the text above to make it easier for other editors to scan this message, because I initially overlooked these critical little words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
thank you, there was some confusion about this message with others, and I apologize. Thanks for your efforts What.
Darn this is probably one of the most active projects on wikipedia--amazing how much has been written on this page in two days. Okip 05:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
Update: Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 18/Unreferenced BLPs has been created. This list, which is updated by User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects daily, will allow your wikiproject to quickly identify unreferenced living person articles.
There maybe no or few articles on this new Unreferenced BLPs page. To increase the overall number of articles in your project with another bot, you can sign up for User:Xenobot_Mk_V#Instructions.
If you have any questions or concerns, visit User talk:DASHBot/Wikiprojects. Okip 22:56, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Neurological disorders in children

I have created a new category Category:Neurological disorders in children, and am currently putting articles on neurodevelopmental disoders (such as (autism) and genetic neurological diseases (such as adrenoleukodystrophy) inot the category. I would appreciate your input on how to improve the category. Regards. Immunize (talk) 00:24, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

This is not a helpful category and the "in children" should be the clue. These are all neurological disorders one has throughout life. A few such disorders may be so devastating that life beyond childhood is unlikely, but that's not a "defining characteristic" of the disease, which is what categories are for. All the disorders currently in this category are category:Neurological disorders full stop. Some of them may also be category:Congenital disorders and/or category:Genetic disorders. It may be worth discussing whether each of those two categories deserves a sub-category like category:Genetic neurological disorders but I suspect it isn't useful. Many genetic diseases that have neurological impact also have impact on other body systems. Take tuberous sclerosis, which you've added to the new category. Its "defining characteristic" not a neurological disorder any more than it is a disorder of the skin, eyes, lungs, kidneys, teeth, toenails, etc.
Please try to get more familiar with our WP:Categorization guidelines. I encourage you to discuss potential categories here before they are created, or else find another vocation on Wikipedia. Colin°Talk 11:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

However, tuberous sclerosis has a prominent neurological component, in addition to the other manifestations, and one could argue that the neurological component is the most impairing feature of the disorder (most patients have seizures, behavioral disturbances, and mental retardation). Regards. Immunize (talk) 15:20, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

It is but not always. We need to be care that adding a very specific category doesn't give the impression of excluding another. Someone can have tuberous sclerosis but be unaware of any neurological effect, yet be greatly troubled by kidney or lung issues. As for defining autism as a "childhood disorder", that would really upset some people. Colin°Talk 17:33, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Viral encephalitis

I have also created the category Category:Viral encephalitis. Do you feel that this category wil be a more useful category? Immunize (talk) 15:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems reasonable but remember that categories can only link to whole articles. If encephalitis is a common or rare but not inevitable aspect of a viral condition, it might not have an appropriate article to link to. For example, we can fortunately link to Herpesviral encephalitis but it would have been wrong to categorise Herpes simplex as a viral encephalitis. Categories have some real limitations that lists don't and prose may be even better. For example the Viral encephalitis article could discuss common types, giving figures on epidemiology, treatment, outcomes, maps of world distribution, etc. Colin°Talk 17:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Are there any medical categories that are needed but that have not yet been created that we could discuss the possibility of creating? Immunize (talk) 17:52, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course autism is not a childhood disorder, it lasts throughout life. However, it has it onset in childhood, as opposed to some disorders such as Alzheimer disease, Huntington disease (barring the rare case of juvenile-onset HD), and Proggressive supranuclear palsy, which typically develops in those over 50-60. As for tuberous sclerosis, 90% of patients have epilepsy, and 70% have mental retardation, although you are correct to say that some patients may be more affected by lymphangiomyomatosis, or, in the case of infants and young children, cardiac rhabdomyomas then neurological problems. However, I still feel that the disorder could be considered va neurological diusorder, given the extremnely high precentage of patients with epilepsy and mental retardation. Immunize (talk) 18:07, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure there are many medical categories that need to be created, but you seem to be going about categorization backwards. Instead of trying to think of new categories and then find articles to put in them, how about looking at poorly categorized articles and making a better categorization hierarchy? I'd recommend picking your favorite from Category:Medical specialties and start to diffuse the category. Most of the specialty categories should have very few articles in them, as most should be sub-categorized based upon things like drugs, anatomy, physiology, signs, diseases/disorders, terminology, procedures, people, etc. Most medical-related categories that have more than 20 articles probably need to be sub-categorized. There is no real magic number (I just made up 20), but there are too many categories that inappropriately contain hundreds of articles. Also, many articles are in too many categories...articles only need to appear in a specific hierarchy once. (So for example, Herpesviral encephalitis should be in Category:Viral encephalitis, but not Category:Viral diseases or Category:Encephalitis because Category:Viral encephalitis is a subcategory of both.) --Scott Alter 19:21, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

So I should remove Herpesviral encephalitis from Category:Viral diseases? Immunize (talk) 19:28, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

One is a symptom with a particular cause, the other is a disease. It's all complex and messy. Colin°Talk 19:36, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
This one is rather tricky and complicated, and I rushed to give my opinion. Now that I think about it, Herpesviral encephalitis is not a good example and I don't think there will be a straightforward answer. Herpesviral encephalitis can be considered a symptom of a specific disease, so it might be fine with its current categorization. The problem is with the categories themselves. Usually, we try to have separate articles for symptoms, diseases, and infectious agents. But many of the articles in Category:Viral encephalitis contain a combination of these. Based on the name, Category:Viral encephalitis should not be a subcategory of Category:Viral diseases because encephalitis is not a disease. Therefore, Category:Viral encephalitis should only contain encephalitides and not articles about the viruses themselves (Tick-borne encephalitis would be appropriate, Deer tick virus would not for any encephalitis categories). A problem specifically with infectious diseases is that often, the infectious agent and the disease are combined into the same article. Add in the symptom too (encephalitis, etc), and it gets even more complicated. I don't think you will get a firm answer, but changing the hierarchy of the categories is a good place to start. --Scott Alter 20:15, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

So what should I do? Also did you notice the messages I left for you above? Immunize (talk) 19:44, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Meningitis

I am considering creating another category, Category:Meningitis, and would like to know your opinion on weather or not this category would be useful or not. The category would cover probably at least 5 pages (meningococcal disease, bacterial meningitis, tuberculous meningitis, fungal meningitis, neoplastic meningitis, viral meningitis) and possibly even more. What are your thoughts on this? Immunize (talk) 13:41, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I think I will go ahead and create the meningitis category now, as (at least to me) it seems that it would be a reasonably helpful category. Immunize (talk) 14:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Remember that the purpose of categorisation is to help readers find and navigate related articles. In this case, it looks a very useful addition as the 17 articles in the category have no other navigational relationship - that makes the creation of the category a good call. I've made the minor additions suggested by WP:EPON for eponymous categories. The only query I have left is that Category:Meningitis is a subcategory only of Category:Inflammations, and none of the 17 articles I checked were a member of Category:Inflammations, which is an oddity. I would suggest that Category:Meningitis would also be useful as a subcategory of Category:Diseases and disorders and I can see no reason why it should not be in both, but then again IANAD. --RexxS (talk) 19:57, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I just added Category:Neurological disorders and removed Category:Diseases and disorders as a parent. Neurological is more specific, and all diseases and disorders should be further classified by type (usually system-based). --Scott Alter 20:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I have taken your advice and added the Category:Meningitis to Category:Diseases and disorders. Immunize (talk) 20:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Scott (now that he's pointed it out) that Category:Neurological disorders is better than Category:Diseases and disorders as it is indeed more specific. I'm just in the process of asking Jfdwolff to reconsider his removal of Meningitis from two categories, as articles with eponymous categories should still appear in parent categories for ease of navigation. --RexxS (talk) 02:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
There is no definitive answer to categorizing articles with eponymous categories. I, too, am usually opposed to including an article in a parent category if there is an eponymous category. As you quoted from WP:EPON, "an article should not be excluded from any set category on the grounds that its eponymous category is made a "subcategory" of that category" (I italicized set). In a previous incarnation of WP:CAT, the word "list" was used in place of "set" (changed here). Therefore, I believe set category means a category containing an inclusive group of all related things. If set was used to mean a category set in stone, then the word set would not be necessary. Since it is almost impossible to have all articles about a general medical topic in one category, WPMED has almost always not included articles with eponymous category from the parent categories.
The example from WP:EPON uses Category:European countries and Category:France/France. European countries is a comprehensive set (aka list) and can be a category with distinct and finite member articles. Medical topics are not as black and white, and we can't put every article about "inflammation" directly in Category:Inflammations. --Scott Alter 23:24, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
There are 161 articles in Category:Inflammations, a perfectly reasonable number for navigation; and the number of inflammation articles is clearly a finite number, much less than the size of some categories. It is worth noting that Category:Inflammations already contains Category:Arthritis, Category:Dermatitis, Category:Encephalitis, and Category:Hepatitis as subcategories – in each case the corresponding eponymous article is also a member of Category:Inflammations. Why should meningitis be any different? The 328 articles in Category:Neurological disorders makes a stronger case for extra levels of organisation, but you can see there that WP:EPON is applied most of the time. Category:Neurological disorders is in need of cleanup – an obvious example is that the article Alzheimer's disease clinical research should not be in the category as it is more appropriately in the category Category:Alzheimer's disease, but the article Alzheimer's disease has just as much right to be in the Category:Neurological disorders as Category:Alzheimer's disease has. It merely frustrates the reader looking for an article to have to drill down another level to get the link to an article with the same name as a category that's already there. That's the whole point of WP:EPON
I think you may be missing the point of the word set in the quotation. It really means a diffusing category. Read WP:EPON together with the previous section, WP:DUPCAT. That section already suggests that "there is no need to take pages out of the parent category purely because of their membership of a non-diffusing subcategory." WP:EPON gives a further exception for diffusing categories when they are eponymous categories. The Category:France example in WP:EPON is an example of a non-diffusing category since the contents of Category:France is not a subset of Category:European countries. As you can see, both Category:France and France are members of Category:European countries.
In summary, I see no evidence that keeping the Meningitis article in Category:Inflammations and Category:Neurological disorders would be a variation from what is common practice on Wikipedia (and as such is documented in the relevant subsections of WP:Categorization). In addition, removing articles from categories where they would be expected to be found does nothing to improve the encyclopedia. --RexxS (talk) 00:39, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
There are a couple issues to discuss besides WP:EPON. First, I wouldn't say that WP:EPON has been used most of the time throughout WPMED based on Category:Inflammations alone. Categorization of medical articles has always been extremely poor. Most article authors simply dump medical/anatomical/drug articles into Category:Drugs, Category:Diseases and disorders, Category:Neurology, Category:Nervous system, and Category:Brain, for example on a neuro-related article. While the article may be relevant to all of these topics, it would not be beneficial to Wikipedia if there were thousands of articles in each of these categories. When someone mistakenly places an article into all of these categories, usually no one notices. Occasionally, someone may choose a specific, relatively broad category hierarchy to clean up - and then it is usually 1 or 2 people deciding how to do the categorization. There have been few people over the years who have attempted to organize the chaos, which usually results in the specific category targeted getting much better. For example, take a look at Category:Dermatology, which Kilbad has done a good job of organizing and maintaining. Other categories that have been worked on include Category:Drugs (specifically Category:Drugs by target organ system and Category:Drugs by mechanism of action) and Category:Human anatomy (specifically Category:Human anatomy by organ). These hierarchies are very well organized and contain almost all fully-diffusing categories. I believe having well-organized hierarchies like these are much better than using non-diffusing categories containing hundreds or thousands of articles each.
The categories we are currently discussing have never been pruned, as far as I am aware, so I would not use them as examples of a good practice. You may consider the size of Category:Inflammations reasonable, but it is far from complete. Theoretically, any -itis should be included. So not just Colitis, but also Pseudomembranous colitis, Ulcerative colitis, Ischemic colitis, Microscopic colitis, Collagenous colitis, and Lymphocytic colitis. Not just Pancreatitis, but also Acute pancreatitis, Chronic pancreatitis, and Hereditary pancreatitis. And all 162 dermatitis articles in Category:Dermatitis. Many of these sub-types are not currently included in Category:Inflammations, and their inclusion would drastically increase the size of the category. I don't see the utility to having all of these -itis articles in 1 big category in alphabetical order, nor do I see the role the category plays in the hierarchy of medical characterization. It is nice to have a central place where all of the inflammations are, and Template:Inflammation does this well, with appropriate grouping. The category could even be deleted and I doubt anyone would notice - since all of the articles are already better categorized in another hierarchy.
I think that a root of our disagreement is whether we consider certain categories to be diffusing or non-diffusing. I believe that almost all of WPMED's categories should be diffusing, and there should be few, if any non-diffusing sub-categories. All of the articles in any WPMED category should, and most already are appropriate subsets of all the parent categories at least up to Category:Medicine. Since I believe all articles should, and are entirely subsets of their parent categories, there should be no reason to have an article be placed both in a category and that category's parent - whether or not eponymous. The one exception I can think of is categories for specific diseases, like Category:Asthma and Category:Diabetes. However, when there is appropriate categorization, the parent category to these eponymous categories should contain relatively few items - so it should not be a big deal to only have a disease as a category, since it would not get lost among hundreds of dissimilar items.
Regarding Meningitis and similar -itis articles specifically, I could settle on having all of the -itis articles from Template:Inflammation in Category:Inflammations, but there is no way all of the neurological disorder articles should be in Category:Neurological disorders. You seem to want Category:Neurological disorders to be non-diffusing, but I believe it should be completely diffused with almost no articles, along with its parents Category:Neurology, Category:Medicine, and Category:Diseases and disorders. Category:Neurological disorders is far from completely non-diffused and is also far from being completely diffused. If it were completely non-diffused and contained all the appropriate articles, it might have 1,000 articles. If it is completely diffused, there may be 10-20 sub-categories, and further sub-sub-categories, ending with categories of less than 25-50 articles each. This situation is much easier to navigate than one huge category. Even a category of 200-300 is too many.
In summary, almost all of WPMED's categories should be diffusing. While there is no limit on number of articles in a category, having disorganized categories with hundreds of articles does go against WP:SUBCAT, since there would be better organization through diffusion to subcategories. Finally, diseases are not classified by presence or absence of one specific feature (unlike Toll bridges in New York City as a subcategory of Bridges in New York City); rather they are grouped on similarities. Therefore, there are no real distinguished subcategories within WPMED. --Scott Alter 03:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

That's rather more than a couple of issues. Perhaps it would be helpful to establish where we are all likely to agree, so that the discussion doesn't get sidetracked. Can we agree the following:

  1. No category should have more too many members, since that defeats the object of easy navigation.
  2. A category with a single subcategory as its sole member is redundant, since it introduces an unnecessary step in navigation.
  3. Editors will inevitably place articles in a broad category and somebody will eventually have to move them to a more specific category.

Now to the disagreements. I'm sure you don't want all of the -itis articles in Category:Inflammations, so let's dispose of that. The whole point of WP:SUBCAT is that Pseudomembranous colitis, Ulcerative colitis, Ischemic colitis, Microscopic colitis, Collagenous colitis, and Lymphocytic colitis could be all be grouped together in Category:Colitis, and anyone looking for disorders related to colitis would expect to find them there. The benefit is that related items are collected together; the cost is having to drill down the tree by one more step to find them. I hope we won't disagree on that. Where we seem to disagree is that I believe that the article Colitis should appear in Category:Inflammations (along with Category:Colitis) because there's no reason to have to drill down in that case – the searcher has found Colitis and there's no need to make them go via Category:Colitis – that's what WP:EPON is recommending.

The next disagreement is the question of diffusing categories. A Wikipedia category tree is not constrained to having nodes that contain only articles or categories (but not both). We should be using that capability to our advantage, not artificially restricting ourselves for no good reason. I agree with you that high-level categories should be completely diffuse, but disagree with your insistence that all should be. The further down the tree you go, the more reason there is to add the most important articles to the category, alongside subcategories. The reality of that is amply illustrated by examining section 'A' in Category:Neurological disorders. I think we both agree that 328 articles is too many for easy navigation and the category should be diffused further. So for example, I'd remove Absence seizure as it can be found though Category:Epilepsy -> Category:Seizure types, which is where anyone might expect to find it. The principle of "least astonishment" is vital to designing good web navigation, and for that reason, I wouldn't want to remove the article Epilepsy from Category:Neurological disorders, as I'd expect to find it there, not solely in a subcategory. Furthermore, I'd like to diffuse the article Abarognosis out of Category:Neurological disorders, as I would have thought it (1) less important and (2) likely to be related to other disorders that could form a subcategory. Unfortunately, I don't see an appropriate subcategory in Category:Neurological disorders to place it in. Perhaps you can see why I advocate allowing categories farther down the tree to be non-diffuse: that's where you would be most likely to have a need for subcategories with single members if all categories had to be diffuse. --RexxS (talk) 06:20, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

We are agree on your initial 3 statements. We also agree that Category:Inflammations should not contain every single -itis. However, if most, or for argument's sake, all of the -itis types have their own sub-category (which theoretically could be feasible if there are multiple types of each -itis), should Category:Inflammations contain every -itis article and category? Essentially, you would see the same exact listing in the "Subcategories" and "Pages in category" sections. My argument is that this is unnecessary duplication, and an extra mouse click is okay - especially since each eponymous subcategory should be using {{catmore}}, so the desired target would be clearly identified at the top of the page.
Perceived importance to the reader should not be a factor in categorization. How do you define an important disease versus a non-important one? If you think Epilepsy is so important, should it also be included in Category:Diseases and disorders or in Category:Medicine? How about another disease, like Diabetes mellitus, which is at least equally important as Epilepsy, in my opinion. Relating to type of disease, Diabetes mellitus only categorized in Category:Diabetes. (I know, an almost eponymous category since Diabetes redirects to Diabetes mellitus, but ignore this sub-categorization issue for now.) Category:Diabetes is only in Category:Endocrine diseases, which is in Category:Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases, which is in Category:Diseases and disorders. Regarding "least astonishment," there would be no astonishment if everything was properly diffused and categorized. I would be astonished if someone hand-picked what they thought was important, and chose not to diffuse specific articles. To avoid this, I think all disease categories should be categorized by ICD-10 code, for at least the high levels. This is the easiest way for users to find information. Ultimately, there do need to be non-diffusing categories...otherwise every article would have its own category. But non-diffusing categories should be pretty low-level - at least 1 or 2 levels below Category:Neurological disorders, for example. And following the ICD-10 does just that. Regarding Abarognosis, there are some unusual diseases like this that are just categorized as other. Going along with ICD-10, it would probably get the code G98, "Other disorders of nervous system, not elsewhere classified," which is in the block "G90-G99, Other disorders of the nervous system." Is it appropriate to create a Wikipedia category called other? Or should this just sit in the highest category that exists? I'd probably create an "other" category instead of leaving it in Category:Neurological disorders. --Scott Alter 04:22, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
I suspect were not so far apart in our views as may have appeared initially. Personally, I would have no problem with seeing Category:Inflammations contain substantially the same titles in both "Subcategories" and "Pages in category" sections, since this is not paper and hyperlinks are cheap, so I'd prefer to give the reader the convenience of immediate navigation over an abstract notion of unnecessary duplication - the purpose of categories is to aid navigation. But then again, I'm a web designer, not a medic :) I would tend to agree more with you if the number of eponymous subcategories were so large that it started to become hard to find a particular entry, but I'd have to see such an example before changing my general principle for a particular case.
I'm sorry I didn't make it clear what I meant when I used the word "important". I hope you'll understand that I look at it from a design point of view, not a medical one. The most important titles are those that could be category names with a large number of members, so yes Category:Diabetes (6C 126P) is at least as important as Category:Epilepsy (7C 42P) and both are more important than, say, Category:Leukodystrophies (0C 7P) or the non-existent category Abarognosis (0C 1P). No, I obviously don't think the article Epilepsy should be in the high-level Category:Diseases and disorders or in Category:Medicine, but it should be (and is) in Category:Neurological disorders, where its eponymous category is a subcategory. I would find it astonishing if Category:Neurological disorders allowed me to find Abarognosis directly, but not the article on Epilepsy. That's what I want to avoid (and WP:EPON agrees with me).
Finally, I would never, never create a category called "Other xxx". That's a recipe for confusing anyone using categories as a navigational aid. How would I know to look for Abarognosis in Category:Other neurological disorders, rather than in one of the other 24 subcategories of Category:Neurological disorders? It would be fine for an expert who already knew that the article wasn't in those other subcategories, but we're writing this encyclopedia for the general public, not just for medical experts. So the answer must be that Abarognosis belongs in Category:Neurological disorders, for lack of any obvious subcategory. And that's the reason why Category:Neurological disorders is unlikely ever to be fully diffused. --RexxS (talk) 07:25, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
The medical disease categories are such a mess that eponymous categories are the least of their problems. Similar to you wanting to see the hypothetical examples in action, I too would want to see the same - and I may reconsider. However, we are far from achieving these situations given the current state of poor categorization. The purpose of categories is to aid in navigation, but when articles are categorized without rhyme or reason, categorization is not that helpful. Currently, there are no guidelines for classification of medical articles. Articles are usually wrongly categorized in too many categories. Many categories are created because someone thinks grouping on a certain topic would be beneficial. While the newly created categories are useful, they may fail to fit in to a larger scheme of having an integrated system of categorization between Category:Diseases and disorders, Category:Medical specialties, Category:Drugs by target organ system, and Category:Organ systems.
Because no guidelines have been followed in how articles have been categorized, I argue that even if "importance" were used (which it absolutely should not), it would be grossly inaccurate. You seem to be equating "importance" to "popularity" and what you think the user will want to find. How do you know what people want? An encyclopedia should not be organized or designed in a way that promotes some articles over others. A more "important" topic may have more content, but it should not be given more promotion than a less "important" topic. You use of "importance" would be appropriate for a commercial site where something is trying to be sold by having the most popular content featured, but encyclopedias do not, and should not work this way.
I do not think there is a good way to handle diseases like Abarognosis that fall in to an "other" category. I do not think your expert comment is valid. If you are looking for Abarognosis, you would just type that in to the search box. Categories are used to find articles pertaining to a certain topic. If I am looking for a category of "loss ability to sense things," and I don't see any relevant subcategories in Category:Neurological disorders, maybe I would then look in an "other" category.
In conclusion, I think the most important step to take is establishing categorization guidelines for medical-related articles. WP:MEDMOS only has a sentence about how to add a category to an article, which is inadequate and inappropriate for a MOS. I am going to start a discussion at WT:MEDMOS, and I encourage you (and anyone else following this discussion) to contribute. --Scott Alter 19:03, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Lymphoma

I have created another category Category:Lymphoma, which I feel will be as helpful, if not more helpful, than Category:Meningitis, as it provides a navigational connection between the articles on various forms of lymphoma. Immunize (talk) 14:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem with "lymphoma" is figuring out what goes in such a cat. Would you include B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia?
Does your answer change if I tell you that an older name for it is small lymphocytic lymphoma?
It might be better to plan a larger cat, e.g., Hematological malignancies (perhaps as a subcat of Category:Blood disorders?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

So you oppose this category? Immunize (talk) 18:47, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Given the enormous number of different lymphomas, I could justify the creation of a category for lymphomas more than any of the others under discussion. JFW | T@lk 21:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Sarcoma and Colitis

I have created 2 more categories, Category:Sarcoma and Category:Colitis. Immunize (talk) 14:37, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Kidney cancer

I have now also created the category Category:Kidney cancer, however just after it's creation I realized that there were benign kidney tumors that needed a category more specific than Category:Kidney diseases, which is what they are in, and that by naming this category "Kidney cancer" I was excluding these articles on benign renal neoplasms from having there categorization improved. I briefly considered proposing a renaming kidney cancer kidney tumors, but I have now decided that the best course of action would most likely be creating a new category, Category:benign renal neoplasm, and then having both Category:Kidney cancer and Category:Benign renal neoplasms as a subcategory of Category:Kidney diseases. I plan to start work on Category:Benign renal neoplasms immediately. Please let me know of your opinions on the matter. Best wishes. Immunize (talk) 17:53, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Ventilation/perfusion scan

Ventilation/perfusion scan seems to behave like a subpage of Ventilation. Does anyone know how to fix this? Is there an alternative name we could use? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

It is a limitation of the MediaWiki software. The (article) namespace does not have subpages, so Ventilation/perfusion scan looks fine there. However, in the talk namespace, Talk:Ventilation/perfusion scan is a subpage of Talk:Ventilation. This isn't a big deal, and I don't think the page needs to be renamed. --Scott Alter 19:42, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
The same is true of Ventilation/perfusion ratio. Both of these are effectively subpages of Ventilation as you can see from the full urls: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilation/perfusion_scan and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventilation/perfusion_ratio. As described in Wikipedia:Page name#Problematic names, using '/' in article titles is not really a problem (although as you've seen it does affect the talk pages). If you really wanted an alternative name, then (grammatically) you could move them to the corresponding title with a hyphen, giving Ventilation-perfusion scan and Ventilation-perfusion ratio, and leave behind redirects with the '/'. Like Scott, I don't think it's really worth worrying about. --RexxS (talk) 03:50, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Id reactions

I want to have a complete listing of all the different types of id reactions. I know of tuberculid, pintids, syphilid, candidid, and dermatophytid. What others are out there? Thanks again! ---kilbad (talk) 23:49, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

New Auscultogram diagrams

Auscultogram from normal and abnormal heart sounds

Hi, I created this diagram, I wanna ask if this is useful??, If it is I will create a separate diagram for each murmur comparing it to normal MaenK.A.Talk 11:01, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Any Ideas ?? MaenK.A.Talk 14:42, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
It's attractive visually and potentially very instructive, but I'm not sure about the science behind it. You list the Netter image as a source, but that's not specifically supportive. Imagine this were text - you'd need to be able to support each sentence. Do you have sources that would support the contours and timings shown in your drawing? For what location on the precordium are these profiles representative? Also, there is no indication of pitch, and it might help to have a timing indication, e.g. an ECG lead, or perhaps a few pressure curves. The latter would help provide a mechanistic basis for the timing of the various murmurs. Ultimately, it really needs sources that specifically validate the content (just like text), otherwise it's more art than science. -- Scray (talk) 16:05, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Actually these diagrams was based on the macleod's book of clinical examination[1], so how would you suggest i refer to it??, and about the locations I can add them to the diagram easily, its a good idea, but I missed it, I think separating this diagram into individual murmur diagrams would be better if we want to add pressure diagrams or timing, Or shall we add them to the same Image??
  1. ^ Robertson, Colin; Macleod, John; Douglas, Graham (2009). Macleod's clinical examination. St. Louis, Mo: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone. ISBN 0-443-06845-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
MaenK.A.Talk 16:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
By the way, I totally agree with you that it should be referenced, and I personally believe that unreferenced statements in medical articles are meaningless, and I always add referenced statements check the complications of hypertension article. I am just asking about how we should add theses references MaenK.A.Talk 18:26, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
What do you suggest ?? Shall I split or add pressure diagrams, locations, and timing?? MaenK.A.Talk 19:39, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
New version with pressure diagrams
New version with pressure diagrams and locations on the precordium
Here is a new version with pressure diagrams incorporated into the diagram MaenK.A.Talk 21:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Here is a new version with Locations of auscultations on the precordium MaenK.A.Talk 15:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Also, the filename has two periods just prior to the file extension (i.e. "hearts..png"). I was tempted to move my comments to the Talk page for the image on Commons, since that's where it belongs, but I realized that if the file naming isn't fixed first, then creation of the Talk page will result in a need for two file renamings instead of one. -- Scray (talk) 16:12, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Sorry for the file name mistake, I asked for the rename it will become Phonocardiograms from normal and abnormal heart sounds.png  Done MaenK.A.Talk 16:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Should I keep working on these?? MaenK.A.Talk 18:54, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I think these are much improved and useful as a first approximation, to illustrate basic concepts, but it will be important to couple them with supportive language that is well-referenced. For example, many of these occur in complex combination, and the stage of disease will shift timing, volume, and location. -- Scray (talk) 19:09, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

merging Digestive system and abdomen symptoms and signs templates

Looking at the oldest article to be merged on the above list noticed the nav templates look a bit odd, one has Template:Digestive system and abdomen symptoms and signs, and the other Template:Eponymous medical signs for digestive system and general abdominal signs, there was brief talk of a merge but can't see if it went anywhere. I think it would be clearer to merge the two templates and drop the 'eponymous' ? Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 01:24, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

second thoughts - there's a whole heap of 'eponymous' nav templates in Category:Medical symptoms and signs templates the couple I checked were created as a 'split' by Arcadian in 08, probably with good reason. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 18:56, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Saturated fat dispute.

I am arguing with an other editor in the Saturated Fat talk page about making some changes to the article. Currently the first sentence under subsection Cardiovascular diseases is "Diets high in saturated fat have been correlated with an increased incidence of atherosclerosis[7] and coronary heart disease[8]." The sources are irrelevant to the claim, because they do not talk about the correlation between SFA consumption and CHD risk determined by observational studies. They simply say SFAs are unhealthy and increase cholesterol. But it has nothing to do with the direct correlation that observational studies determine. I changed the sentence to "The vast majority of observational studies have found no connection between saturated fat consumption and heart attack risk.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Three review papers, one of them including 21 cohort studies, concluded that there is no significant association between coronary heart disease and saturated fat consumption.[17][18][19]". I provided extensive evidence and three reviews done by independent investigators, that reviewed the observational studies and concluded there is no significant correlation. The person I am having a dispute with, Nutriveg, who reverted my edits, now says I don't have a consensus, because he doesn't agree with the changes and I can't put my edits back. So I would appreciate if I could get someone else to comment on it and look into it.--Whatdidyoudo (talk) 08:52, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Uptodate says "Saturated fatty acids — Saturated fat, derived chiefly from animal products, raises the total serum cholesterol. There is a continuous, graded relationship between the total serum cholesterol concentration and coronary heart disease events and mortality (graph 2) [40,41]. Two large cohort studies also found a small positive association between the intake of saturated fat and the incidence of coronary heart disease; for each 5 percent increment of energy, there was a multivariate relative risk of 1.17 among women (95 percent confidence interval 0.97 to 1.41) and 1.12 among men (95 percent confidence interval 0.97 to 1.28) [5,42]."--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:21, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I would appreciate if you could give me those references.--Whatdidyoudo (talk) 23:43, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks James. Could I ask you the favour of posting that info to Talk:Saturated fat/Archive 1#Opposing statements about the effect on cardiovascular diseases, please? Having another opinion there would help a great deal. --RexxS (talk) 18:11, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Just to be clear that discussion is about this change made Whatdidyoudo, removing the previous section introduction of the "cardiovascular diseases" section replacing by "no association" text, where he uses a bunch of questionable sources to support his POV, despite "prevailing national and international dietary recommendations"(...)and "a vast array of concordant multidisciplinary research evidence" including the WHO: "The evidence shows that intake of saturated fatty acids is directly related to cardiovascular risk."--Nutriveg (talk) 19:23, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
"Questionable sources", like the systematic review published in Arch Intern Med last year, and a meta-analysis published in Am J Clin Nutr this month?
I agree that the string of older sources should be removed (they're historically significant, yes, but not useful for building the article), but the recent sources clearly support what he wrote. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:46, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
He included a bunch of primary (old) research and made a conclusion by himself that "the vast majority of observational studies have found no connection", despite reliable sources like the WHO saying exactly the opposite.
Talking about the recent secondary sources the Arch Intern Med analyzed only 11 "saturated fat" studies, it did found a risk but called it "insufficient", maybe due to the low number of studies analyzed and a similar methodology problem of evaluating all "saturated fat" as the same when they carry different risk. The Am J Clin Nutr (16 studies, "saturated fat") review is also problematic as exposed in the article talk page.
On the other the WHO wrote that beautiful document stating "The relationship between dietary fats and CVD, especially coronary heart disease, has been extensively investigated, with strong and consistent associations emerging from a wide body of evidence accrued from animal experiments, as well as observational studies, clinical trials and metabolic studies conducted in diverse human populations"
So, who is (more) reliable and who is questionable here?--Nutriveg (talk) 21:07, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
No, the question is which source is relevant here. Saturated fat is not spelled d-i-e-t-a-r-y. The bad outcome of a high-fat diet cannot be laid at the door of saturated fats. The WHO source you quote here[1] does not say that saturated fats are connected to any particular clinical outcomes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:04, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
That ongoing discussion is about "dietary", all the sources provided from both parties were are about "dietary", if you want to discuss serum open a new topic.
It's the same WHO document, but a different section if you want to discuss a specific reference I used on the talk page respect the context and use the talk page! I provided this source here: "The evidence shows that intake of saturated fatty acids is directly related to cardiovascular risk."---Nutriveg (talk) 22:29, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Again: a risk factor is not a disease. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Nutriveg, I have cited 10 studies spanning the last 5 decades that are all consistent, all report no significant correlation between SFA consumption and CHD or CVD risk. I didn't make the conclusion, it is what the studies found. You have yet to cite one study showing the opposite. "Insufficient evidence" is just scientific talk, they cannot say the correlation doesn't exist, the correct way of saying is that the evidence they reviewed is insufficient to conclude there is a significant correlation. You say there is a problem evaluating SFAs as a whole, but they are not eaten in isolation as specific fatty acids. The beautiful WHO quote is irrelevant, dietary fat does not mean saturated fat. Please Nutriveg, read the section(5.4.4) preceding the sentence "The evidence shows that intake of saturated fatty acids is directly related to cardiovascular risk." under the summarizing table. They make it very clear the relation is due to cholesterol, they do not talk about the direct correlation between SFA consumption and CHD risk. Please keep in mind, correlation doesn't mean "has something to do with", we are talking about the statistical term, and correlation is determined by observational studies. What I am trying to say is that the statement that there is a correlation between SFA consumption and CHD is wrong and should be replaced by a statement which says that reviews on the subject and vast majority of observational studies have found no correlation between SFA consumption and CHD risk when confounding factors are accounted for.--Whatdidyoudo (talk) 00:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
It appears that the state of the science may be changing significantly there. The size of the LDL molecules apparently matters significantly (a given mass of small LDLs will cause heart disease, but the same mass of large ones is harmless). Saturated fat increases the 'harmless' LDL particle size, but not the deadly smaller ones.
Wikipedia's stuck in a complicated place when "what's known" is at risk for a significant change. We can't look in our WP:CRYSTALBALL to figure out which sources will be accepted as having the True™ word. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:34, 26 March 2010 (UTC)


Nutriveg (and others), perhaps this magazine article will help. It's totally lay-language, so I think you'll find it extremely accessible. Please read that, and then come back here if you still think that the entire medical community is 100% convinced that saturated fat actually causes heart attacks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
I am away and will not be taking part. The passage above can be found at Uptodate. I can get more details for it for you when I get home.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Request for Images

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I was wondering if anyone could possibly add a few images to my Combined Small Cell Lung Carcinoma article - of course, at your convenience. It would be greatly appreciated, and thank you in advance.

With best regards: Cliff

Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS DDF 02:35, 28 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uploadvirus (talk • contribs)

Two gentle reminders: (i) no article on WP can be owned by any of us, so your reference to "my ... article" is understandable but misstated (I realize that you did not mean to suggest you own it, but it's best to suppress use of that possessive determiner when referring to WP articles), and (ii) it's easy to sign your posts in Talk space with 4 tildes, i.e. "~~~~". BTW, very nice work on the article, sorry I don't have images to offer. -- Scray (talk) 19:06, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Wikimedia Commons has a category commons:Category:Lung microcitoma with 3 images and a search on Commons for 'small cell carcinoma' gives 22 results. Any of these images can be inserted into the article if they are suitable, but you would be a much better judge of that than I. If one or more of those are suitable, just leave a note here and I can show you how to insert the image on the page. Otherwise, we'll have to find someone with an appropriate image and get it uploaded before it can be used. --RexxS (talk) 04:11, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Help with image identification

Can someone find out what specific palmoplantar keratoderma is shown in this photo? Thanks in advance. ---kilbad (talk) 20:13, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Er, aren't you a dermatologist? Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:02, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, but I need more than the sole of the foot to diagnose one of the many palmoplantar keratodermas lol! Perhaps someone knows the image author and can find out? ---kilbad (talk) 20:51, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I contacted the authors Grendelkhanand Drgnu23 that previously uploaded the image, lets hope we get an answer :-) MaenK.A.Talk 15:02, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Freeman-Sheldon syndrome and Sheldon-Hall syndrome

I passed by the Freeman-Sheldon syndrome article while adding some images from commons, and I could not confirm whether these syndromes are separate syndromes, or variants of the same syndromes, the resources about the subject are few, and I found here a review suggesting that FSS is a variant of SHS, while other sources like this, this, and this one state them as separate disorders, and some other resources state that they are sub types of Distal arthrogryposis syndrome, so what should be done here?? shall we have separate articles for each?? or shall we have an article for Distal arthrogryposis syndrome linking to articles about FSS and SHS?? any ideas?? MaenK.A.Talk 17:38, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Category:Neurooncology

Is it a duplication to add a page (for instance, Glioblastoma multiforme) into both Category:Nervous system neoplasms and to Category:Neurooncology? Immunize (talk) 13:59, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

In general, it is perfectly reasonable to have an article in more than one category, as long as it's not placed in both a category and one of its subcategories (the discussion above concerns a specific exception to that rule).
Nevertheless, the duplication in this case looks to me like a duplication of categories. Is Category:Neurooncology sufficiently different from Category:Nervous system neoplasms to justify existing as a separate category? --RexxS (talk) 15:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

In this case, I am inclined to agree with you that this is a duplication. I favor the title over that of Nervous system neoplasms over Neurooncology as categories are meant to be specific, and I feel that Nervous system neoplasms is more specific than category:Neurooncology. However, there are articles (Grading of the tumors of the central nervous system and WHO classification of the tumors of the central nervous system) that I feel fit much better into Category:Neurooncology than they would in Category:Nervous system neoplasms. Immunize (talk) 15:24, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I saw those, but was uncertain how different the categories really are. Perhaps the best solution is to place Category:Nervous system neoplasms as a subcategory of Category:Neurooncology? You could then put Giant cell glioblastoma into Category:Nervous system neoplasms (and remove it from the three over-broad categories that it is currently in). If that were done, then Glioblastoma multiforme would obviously only be placed in Category:Nervous system neoplasms. --RexxS (talk) 16:10, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Or perhaps we could nominate one of the categories for deletion? Immunize (talk) 21:15, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

And if we were to consider one for deletion, I would think it would be Category:Nervous system neoplasms because Category:Neurooncology covers more articles and thus would seem to be more useful. I suppose will go ahead and begin populating the category Category:Neurooncology with the articles on specific tumor types, but I am somewhat reluctant to do this while the pages are in Category:Nervous system neoplasms. Immunize (talk) 23:10, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

If you are going to nominate a category for deletion, I'd recommend Category:Neurooncology instead. If both categories are kept, Category:Nervous system neoplasms should become a subcategory of Category:Neurooncology as RexxS mentioned. דוד55 has recently created a lot of new, useful disease categories according to the ICD-10. I'd not only suggest keeping Category:Nervous system neoplasms, but organizing all of the articles within Category:Diseases and disorders by ICD classification. If there are proper disease categories, there should be no reason to place disease articles in the -ology categories. Properly categorized disease categories should be within the hierarchy of Category:Diseases and disorders and the appropriate subcategory (or subcategories) of Category:Medical specialties. Category:Nervous system neoplasms wasn't in a subcategory of Category:Neurology, but I just added it to Category:Neurological disorders. --Scott Alter 00:29, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Scott is right. In fact, if you think about it, a category that covers too many articles is less useful, as it's harder to navigate through. That why we diffuse broad categories (by creating more specific - and hence more manageable - subcategories and moving the articles into them). I'm convinced now that Category:Nervous system neoplasms should be a subcategory of Category:Neurooncology, if the latter category is to be kept. --RexxS (talk) 02:22, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I have nominated Category:Neurooncology for deletion, with the main reason being that it is underpopulated, and that the topics that would fit into it are already covered under Category:Nervous system neoplasms. Immunize (talk) 14:48, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Update Category:Neurooncology has been deleted per CfD discussion, and the few pages that were within have been recategorized. Immunize (talk) 19:31, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:Research

There's a proposal at WP:Research to provide an official Wikipedia group to authorize surveys and other research projects by outside groups. Its major 'thing' seems to be a special bot to canvas randomly selected editors (e.g., to invite editors to participate in a survey about why they are editors).

Since several participants here know a bit more about research than the average editor, I thought you might like to know about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Reflexes

Is the Vagovagal reflex the same thing as a Vasovagal reflex? Is it the same as a Vagus reflex? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

No. Vagovagal is both afferent & efferent providing normal gut control, vasovagal is really a one way process to control heart rate. Vasovagal reflex currently redirects to Vasovagal episode, vagus reflex I think should be merged with it. David Ruben Talk 01:26, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Then Vasovagal reflex = Vagus reflex? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
I would have thought so - I've set up a merge proposal Talk:Vasovagal episode#Merge vagus reflex. I've also suggested Talk:Vasovagal episode#Rename to vasovagal response, per commoner usage. David Ruben Talk 00:51, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Peer review, nocturnal enuresis

I would appreciate the project's help with a peer review of the nocturnal enuresis article. Please see the peer review page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wshallwshall (talk • contribs) 20:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Use of templates ("footer" navboxes) within sections

(also posted on Portal talk:medicine, not sure where the best place to post this is) Whilst trying to make a couple of articles clearer, and more useful as entry portals into their subject matter, I copied some of the collapsible templates into the relevant sections as a navigation aid. As a narrow strip they are fairly unobtrusive to someone just reading through the article and when opened put the whole topic in context. I personally feel that at the bottom of the page, especially whilst collapsed they are largly ignored/ignorable. In an article such as nervous system there are now so many of these that they they just put you off exploring them and the way some of the nested ones expand it just begins to look messy. If a template such as this is put in the relevant section (see visual system which for the moment has been allowed to stand) then they actually give a really great overview of the material that is available in wikipedia about that subject and put it all in context. I think it would also help editors as you get a clear idea of which pages are covering which parts of the material and so avoid duplication and unnecessary sidetracks. At the moment 2 out of three articles have just had my changes reverted quoting the WP:MOS (which doesn't actually mention them) and I think the bit on WP:LAYOUT about the order of bits at the bottom of the page is what the editors meant. I don't think it excludes using these templates in the body of the article as well. Even if it did then perhaps it needs review but obviously a much bigger body of opinion. Consistency is good but not at the loss of useful functionality. I obviously can't make a change like this on my own and I don't want to start an edit war over a few pages. Does anybody else think this is a useful way to go?

BTW I chose to re-use the footer navboxes because they already exist in large numbers thanks to a lot of peoples hard work. Does anybody think we need this sort of topic navigation but in a different format? Arfgab (talk) 06:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

You make a good point and I appreciate the reasoning behind it. Looking at WP:FOOTERS, where the positioning of navigational templates is documented, there is a reference to a discussion on the rationale. It seems to offer the following reasons to have navboxes at the end:
  1. that's where everyone puts them;
  2. they look better on the bottom or side of a page, giving the appearance of a border;
  3. it places them next to the category links, which might otherwise get missed.
The first reason is self-reinforcing, but does at least result in a standardised layout across articles. The second is only an aesthetic consideration, so depends on individual taste. The third reason is purely for editors, and makes no difference to readers, who don't necessarily see the categories as adjacent to navboxes.
All things considered, I'd say that improved functionality for the reader might outweigh the considerations above. However, the approach I'd recommend is to argue a change to the guidelines along the lines of: "Where an article has a very broad scope and contains a considerable number of navigational templates, some of these may be placed at the end of sections to improve usability for the reader. This exception must be agreed on a case-by-case basis." If you could generate a consensus for something like that to be accepted, then you could start a discussion at Talk:Nervous system to make the case. By the way, WP:FOOTERS is part of WP:LAYOUT which is effectively part of WP:Manual of Style (see the right hand navbox), so I wouldn't worry about folks reverting per MOS - at present they are essentially correct. --RexxS (talk) 21:56, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

We must be doing something right

I don't know if anyone noticed, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Unreferenced BLPs lists: zero unreferenced BLPs. We must be doing something right. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:42, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it means you're not tagging unreferenced BLPs with the project tag! We had the same problem at WP:CHEM! I found 57 unreferenced BLPs for WP:MED by running this intersect on CatScan. Still, that's not bad for the number of articles covered by the project. Physchim62 (talk) 00:59, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Actually, it appears as though this project has not actually been checked for unreferenced BLPs. I think the bot is only looking at articles directly in Category:WikiProject Medicine articles, and not its subcategories. --Scott Alter 01:12, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I doubt that the bot looks just in Category:WikiProject Medicine articles. Any project with an assessment scheme will have a top-level "Category:WikiProject Xxx articles" that is empty of articles, which would render the bot useless. I expect that the bot only reports to a project those articles which have been tagged as being in the scope of the relevant project. For example, the first article returned by Physchim's toolserver query is Abdullah Al Khayat, which is in the category Category:Medical biography stubs, but does not have the {{WikiProject Medicine}} template on its talk page. It ought to be a simple job to run through the list produced by that query and either add our template to the talk page or remove the medicine-related category from the article if it is there erroneously. --RexxS (talk) 02:32, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Physchim's toolserver query uses articles within Category:Medicine, not specifically articles which are part of this project. I'd say that very few articles about people are, or should be part of this project (see WP:MEDA#Is WPMED the correct WikiProject to support this article?). I did a little experiment, taking a random sample of around 50 projects participating in DASHBot's UnRefed BLPs, listed at User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects. Almost all of the projects with articles directly in the top-level "Category:WikiProject Xxx articles" had articles with unreferenced BLPs. No projects with empty top-level "Category:WikiProject Xxx articles" had any articles with unreferenced BLPs. I don't think it is a coincidence. --Scott Alter 03:11, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the query finds unreferenced BLPs that are within 5 sub-levels of Category:Medicine. The question is should any of them be within the scope of WikiProject Medicine? You quite rightly point out that not all biographies in a subcategory of Category:Medicine are in scope, as WP:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment says "[Use judgment] ... Add WPMED only if the person is notable for substantial contributions to medicine." The four possibilities are: (1) No and not tagged; (2) No but incorrectly tagged; (3) Yes and tagged (4) Yes but not tagged. Since tagging is a manual process, the possibility of option 4 has to be continually considered. It may be that all 57 hits in Physchim's query are outside the scope of WikiProject Medicine, but we don't know that until we look at them.
There is an additional factor that ought to be considered regarding your sample. WikiProjects that have no assessment scheme are very likely to be small and under-supported, making them far more likely to have unreferenced BLPs. That leaves me uncertain about the significance of the test you made, although I would agree that it's worth bringing to the attention of DASHbot's owner, to make sure it is scanning the WikiProject sub-categories. --RexxS (talk) 05:19, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I read through the talk pages relating to the bot, and as I suspected, it has not been scanning our subcategories. This issue is currently being discussed at User talk:DASHBot/Wikiprojects#Subcategories, with with 2 recently-developed (and not well documented) possible solutions. One is to use a wildcard in the category to search. Using "* medicine articles" would include categories outside of "Medicine articles by quality", so I chose the other option - to use transclusions of {{WPMED}}. Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Unreferenced BLPs should be populated the next time the bot is run. --Scott Alter 15:08, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for spotting that, Scott, and for finding the fix for us. I'm amazed that the bot wasn't looking in the quality sub-cats, as any big project will be being effectively bypassed in the search for unreferenced BLPs. --RexxS (talk) 15:21, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Scott, will your fix pick up the articles using the redirect? There's a lot of {{WikiProject Medicine}} out there. (Also, I suspect that WP:PHARM has the same problem.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I asked that question at User talk:DASHBot/Wikiprojects, and the response I just got from the bot's creator was "Yep, to the best of my knowlege redirects are listed." --Scott Alter 01:19, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
We would normally accept any article about a physician (or other healthcare professional) if the person is notable primarily for being a physician/something about medicine. If it's, say, a politician who happens to have been a physician, then we don't.
Bios (living or dead) default to low-importance, on the theory that articles about individual people are lower priority than the vast majority of disease articles (which are rated "Mid"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
If it's ok, I'll try a little experiment. I've tagged Abdullah Al Khayat (whose only claim to notability is as a paediatrician and head of a hospital) for WikiProject Medicine. The article will appear in our categorisation in Category:Stub-Class medicine articles and Category:Low-importance medicine articles. If DASHbot is functioning correctly, it should spot it and report it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Unreferenced BLPs sometime soon. --RexxS (talk) 15:16, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, I agree with your thinking about which biographies should get the WikiProject Medicine template on their talk page. I labeled Dr. Lillian H. South because her notability is primarily from her work as a State Medical Lab director and her affiliations with national and international health associations. (Thanks for accessing her :-). I think that it makes the most sense for her to be connected to this project. And agree that low priority makes the most sense for most biographies. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 00:26, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Update: There are currently 14 pages listed in the report. This represents approximately one out of every 1,500 articles tagged by the project. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Clean-up needed

As previously posted above, another user had received permissions to use photos from dermnet.com. However, after e-mailing the dermnet support email address, it seems there was a misunderstanding about which images were approved for use on Wikipedia. The following e-mail is what I received:

"Hi Brendan,

I have looked at the Dermatology related articles on Wikipedia and you are doing a very nice job with them. As for images from Dermnet.com I think there has been a misunderstanding. I was originally contacted by someone from Jordan (Madhero88) asking permission for specific images to be used in specific articles. There are 19 images altogether that I received approval for from the copyright holders. As you know, the Wikipedia user then started posting many more images than I had received copyright holder permission for. You had attempted to make me aware of this but I didn't read the email you sent me closely enough (the email I am responding to). I personally do not own the copyright to any of the images on Dermnet and therefore cannot give permission to repost all the images from Dermnet.com, nor would I want to do this. I have talked to the copyright holders for these images and they have not given permission for these images to be reposted on Wikipedia. I am a big fan of Wikipedia and the work you are doing. I know that this was an unfortunate misunderstanding by myself and the contributor from Jordan (Madero88). I request that you remove all the images from Wikipedia that are reposted from Dermnet.com, except for the original 19 that were agreed to (listed below). If there is a future request for any specific photos from Dermnet.com I would appreciate it if you would be the one to make it.

Thomas Habif, MD Adjunct Professor of Medicine Dartmouth Medical School"

He also sent an attachment with images approved for use on Wikipedia...

Therefore, with all that being posted, would some of you help clean this mess up? ---kilbad (talk) 14:09, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

All we need is to request the deletion on commons, and the delinker bot will remove the images from here. I can do that all by my self. I can request the deletion from an admin whom I will request a deletion of a whole list except for the approved pictures MaenK.A.Talk 16:26, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
I have requested specific permission for more images, especially those on Kawasaki disease article since the article is undergoing good article assessment and the images are important to improve the article quality. So please postpone the deletion of those until I get a replay from Dr. Habif MaenK.A.Talk 16:42, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
I guess I am partially responsible for this. I am the OTRS agent that handled a lot of these tickets, and tagged them, and created the licensing tag, and category. I guess it was a misunderstanding, as we did receive a declaration of permission from Thomas Habif. And that permission was clearly regarding all the content on dermnet.com. But I guess that was a mistake. I'll contact the copyright holder through OTRS to have record of that attached to the ticket, and work on deleting the content. -Andrew c [talk] 13:24, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
We all had a misunderstanding about that, Can you please delay the deletion of the images on Kawasaki disease till I receive the replay, since I ve added descriptions and linked images together as you can see, and you know this takes time, and I don't want to do it again, while I am working on the good article review of Kawasaki disease. I ve sent Dr. Thomas Habif an e-mail and I am waiting his replay. Thank you MaenK.A.Talk 13:59, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I have started at post at the Common's village pump. See [2]. Perhaps someone could follow-up to make sure all the images in the dermnet category are deleted? ---kilbad (talk) 00:04, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
I have deleted like 500+ images related to this. We only have permission for 21 images right now, and I have confirmed that on OTRS with the website owner. If more permission comes forth, I can personally undelete the necessary files (or we can have any Commons admin do it). New permission can also be uploaded if it hasn't been already. I guess this is a lesson that we need to make sure all the content in question is being released before uploading 500 images ;) If there are any more issues, or if I missed some files that need deletion, or anything else, feel free to contact me on my talk page or at the Commons.-Andrew c [talk] 22:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Notification regarding Wikipedia-Books

Hadronic Matter
An overview
An example of a book cover, taken from Book:Hadronic Matter

As detailed in last week's Signpost, WildBot has been patrolling Wikipedia-Books and searched for various problems in them, such as books having duplicate articles or containing redirects. WikiProject Wikipedia-Books is in the process of cleaning them up, but help would be appreciated. For this project, the following books have problems:

The problem reports explain in details what exactly are the problems, why they are problems, and how to fix them. This way anyone can fix them even if they aren't familiar with books. If you don't see something that looks like this, then all problems have been fixed. (Please strike articles from this list as the problems get fixed.)

Also, the {{saved book}} template has been updated to allow editors to specify the default covers of books (title, subtitle, cover-image, cover-color), and gives are preview of the default cover on the book's page. An example of such a cover is found on the right. Ideally, all books in Category:Book-Class medicine articles should have covers.

If you need help with cleaning up a book, help with the {{saved book}} template, or have any questions about books in general, see Help:Books, Wikipedia:Books, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, or ask me on my talk page. Also feel free to join WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as we need all the help we can get.

This message was delivered by User:EarwigBot, at 00:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC), on behalf of Headbomb. Headbomb probably isn't watching this page, so if you want him to reply here, just leave him a message on his talk page. EarwigBot (owner • talk) 00:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Rich put together a great list of derm ICD9 codes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/ILDS-ICD. However, many times the redlinks utilize a comma, like Balanitis, amoebic. Therefore, I wanted to know if someone would help reverse all the redlinks with commas. So, with the previous example, the redlink would be changed to Amoebic balanitis. Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 17:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

why don't we redirect the Balanitis, amoebic to Amoebic balanitis?? MaenK.A.Talk 17:32, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Swallow a spider to catch a fly. The back-to-front order one finds in an index, say, is not a recommended style for an article title or redirect title and I don't think we have any precedents on WP for adopting that style for redirects. Colin°Talk
I think that the turned-around version might be a reasonable search term: People might start typing "balanitis" into the search box, and it would be nice to have something relevant turn up in the auto-completing options. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Then propose that at the Village Pump. It isn't an issue specific to medical terms. Colin°Talk 21:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
(ec) That's a nice idea, but I doubt we have that variety of articles. In the example offered Amoebic balanitis is already a redirect to Balanitis, so anybody typing "balanitis" into the search box might as well go to that article anyway. I know that won't be true for all related articles, but it does show we need caution in creating redirects. The software won't follow multiple redirects (to avoid infinite loops like A -> B -> C -> A), so if we made redirects for the names in the list, we'd have to check each one to make sure the target wasn't already a redirect. In the above example, we'd have to check and then redirect Balanitis, amoebic to Balanitis --RexxS (talk) 22:07, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Great. Of course all redirects are redirected to target pages, this is done whenever a redirect is made. I agree with WhatamIdoing on the auto-completing options, since these redirects would maximize the options enormously MaenK.A.Talk 13:35, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Whether or not balanitis, amoebic should be a redirect, I will leave to the rest of you. However, I think that most of us agree that for the reordered links, like amoebic balanitis, a redirect might be an appropriate addition to Wikipedia. Therefore, with that being the case, would someone help reverse all the redlinks that contain commas? ---kilbad (talk) 19:22, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

I have redirected Balanitis, amoebic to Balanitis. Immunize (talk) 16:41, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

List of causes of hypoglycemia

I recall a discussion about list of causes of... articles a month or so ago. This article perhaps fell through the cracks, as it is unreferenced and in need of attention. Regards, PDCook (talk) 16:05, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I just had a look. I have to question the value of such a list. Who would find it useful? I suppose that the obvious answer is "anyone who wants a list of causes of hypoglycaemia". I'm unconvinced. Axl ¤ [Talk] 18:42, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
As indicated way above, list of causes of fever and list of causes of diarrhea were deleted at AfD, so this one might end up with a similar fate. PDCook (talk) 18:51, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
I agree that there are significant problems with this list. "Some of these causes are represented by single case reports." is not very reassuring that we are providing sound information!! especially since the list is not sourced. Since it has been tagged for clean up for several years, I think it needs to go to Afd unless someone has a better plan for assuring the accuracy and verifiability of the information. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 20:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
It needed to go. It's 25 yrs out of date. It's gone. alteripse (talk) 21:15, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
It seems like blanking a page is a rather odd way of going about this. I think it would be best to restore the content and AfD it. PDCook (talk) 21:41, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Blanking it AND going to Afd seems like a good plan. The content is unreliable so should not really be on site. But since more than one person edited it a speedy deletion is not appropriate even if the initial editor decides to remove the content. So a Afd is the way to go as well as the blanking. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 21:49, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
(ec)I restored the content and AfD'd it. Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of causes of hypoglycemia, whatever your opinion may be. If you want to re-blank it, go ahead I won't restore it again, but I've never seen a blank page at AfD before, no matter how bad it was. PDCook (talk) 21:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Blanking the article was not appropriate. Per our guidelines: "Under normal circumstances, Wikipedia articles should not be blanked. If you think an article has no useful content, then either fix it, or else leave it in its present state and propose it for deletion." Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:44, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Agree with Axl. The only exception (outside of BLP) is if there is an obvious copyright violation, and we have the {{copyvio}} template that does the blanking. I don't think that's the case here. --RexxS (talk) 07:57, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
I was the one who put it there several years ago. I intended to reference it and bring it up to date but obviously never got around to it. I didn't think anyone else has ever noticed it or cared about it. I was simply trying to stop it from being a waste of community time and energy but if you want to kill it with legal procedure be my guest. alteripse (talk) 04:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
It's not a matter of following "legal procedure". WP:BLANK is a "guideline", not a "legal procedure". However in this case, there doesn't seem to be any good reason for not following the guideline. In my opinion, it is particularly important to follow guidelines when deleting articles, partly to allow editors to make a case for keeping the article and to prevent grievance. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:58, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Herpangina =?= Hand, foot and mouth disease

I saw something to the effect that Herpangina and Hand, foot and mouth disease are the same disease. We have two separate articles on these, neither of which seems to mention the other.

Are these the same (in which case presumably we should merge these), or different? (in which case, is there any point in adding to each article a mention the other disease?)

Thanks as always. -- 189.122.83.71 (talk) 22:52, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Well both may be caused by the same virus they are not in fact the same thing. "The hand, foot, mouth syndrome (HFM) is a common acute illness, affecting mostly children, which is characterized by fever, oral vesicles on the buccal mucosa and tongue, and peripherally distributed small, tender cutaneous lesions on the hands, feet, buttocks and (less commonly) genitalia [7]. And Coxsackie A virus is the etiologic agent of herpangina, a vesicular enanthem of the tonsillar fauces and soft palate that principally affects children 3 to 10 years of age." Uptodate Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:58, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Disagreement over formatting

We are having a disagreement over formatting at ADHD. Would anyone like to comment? A great deal of hide show boxes were added along with primary research. Talk:Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder Thanks Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:57, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Help with the creation of a few stubs...

Could someone create stubs on the follow-up conditions?

Please add dashes/adjust the capitalization as needed. Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 18:03, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Slim disease is also AIDS wasting syndrome and HIV wasting syndrome and Hiv wasting syndrome, which are redirects to AIDS. The AIDS article could probably add a little info about it specifically. Cmcnicoll (talk) 02:22, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Lutz-Splendore-de Almeida disease aka South American blastomycosis and Paracoccidioidomycosis. Cmcnicoll (talk) 02:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Is Ross River virus infection just Ross River fever? I'll create a redirect for that, which someone can change if I am wrong. Cmcnicoll (talk) 02:52, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing medicine topics

I've updated my list of missing medicine topics - Skysmith (talk) 13:19, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

We also have this page for requested articles Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine and this page for list of diseases Lists of diseases. Wondering if your list should be merged into one of these two? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:56, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I'd rather have a separate list for myself but feel free to use it as a material to merge into those page. More the merrier - Skysmith (talk) 10:22, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

error in article on Xerophthalmia

There is an error tn this article on xerophthalmia.Instead of causes of xerophthalmia what is published is causes of Cyanosis.This is to be corrected.Kvdev (talk) 11:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes some long standing vandalism. Thanks and removed.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Cholestasis question for a biography

ETA I've also asked the question at the Science Desk.

Hello all.

I'm currently working on a bio for toxicologist Gabriel L. Plaa. For talking about his primary research, I'm basing mostly on doi:10.3109/03602539709037571, an account by himself of his career. There's one aspect regarding his research on cholestasis I'm quite unclear about. Basically a significant interest for him was the elaboration of a protocol to detect cholestatic properties in drugs by animal test, but this was made difficult because, I think, the common lab animals (he specifically discuss rats and mentions hamsters and rabbits) are much less suceptible to cholestasis than human. Is that correct? I'd ask on that article's talk page, but it is little edited (and the article is currently rather... curt).

As an aside, has such a protocol been devised since Plaa's retirement? Since I'm no medical student, I wouldn't quite know where to look regarding the state of the art of this subject.

thanks in avance, Circéus (talk) 12:40, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I want to occasionally add an external link to dermpedia.org, but am concerned that the link will occasionally be removed as spam. How do I go about making sure that does not happen? I have not included any external links thus far. Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 14:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Read through WP:External links, especially Links normally to be avoided and make sure that links you add don't fall foul of those restrictions. If there is content on Dermepedia that "cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues, amount of detail ... or other reasons", then add a deep link along with a description that makes clear its rationale - for example:
For other content, try to integrate the text into the article, and consider using the Dermepedia article as a reliable source attributed to the author's statements. By that, I mean that although Dermepedia is unlikely to be accepted as reliable source (because of lack of reputation for error-checking and accuracy), it may be reliable source for a given author's opinion - and if that author is an acknowledged expert in the field, that should carry weight. One test of expertise is to see if the author has a wikipedia article.
The other possibility is make a wikipedia article about the Dermepedia wiki. That would only be possible if it meets the general notability guidelines. If such a wikipedia article were to exist, then in some circumstances, a "See also" internal link may be appropriate.
Sorry that's a rather diverse answer to what seems a simple question, but it probably needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis. I'd recommend that you bring up the external link on the talk page of the article where you want to add it first (and perhaps make a note here) to get some consensus on an actual example. --RexxS (talk) 14:51, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
See WP:ELNO point 12, which is a specific guideline regarding wikis - "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors." It ultimately needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis whether a particular link to a particular derpedia page is worth having. If it's primarily pictures as RexxS seems to believe, then that might not be an issue but you may be better off seeing if the images could be simply reused under fair use or (even better) uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons which could be used everywhere on all wikimedia projects. If you're linking to content, I would suggest not doing so since it is a tertiary source and thus more or less redundant and not an improvement on wikipedia itself. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 16:29, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Given the behavior of users such as Rsk2010 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), it is best to be very careful in linking to this site - MrOllie (talk) 16:33, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Calm editors sought

It appears that Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis#Mixed_results_in_Lead would benefit from some level-headed editors.

If memory serves (and it might not), the typical story runs something like this: Women who have either voluntary abortions or involuntary miscarriages (early in the pregnancies) have (approximately) the same breast cancer risk as those who never got pregnant. Since (the hormones associated with) (full-term) pregnancy protects against breast cancer, then women who end or lose their pregnancies have a higher risk of breast cancer compared to those who achieved a full-term pregnancy.

As a result, the choice of control group (never got pregnant vs did not abort) determines the outcome, especially if you're considering the outcome of a first pregnancy. Mainstream sources have universally chosen "didn't get pregnant" as the suitable control group. The sources also address some other confounding factors, such as the use of oral contraceptives, number of other pregnancies, etc.

All of the usual agencies say that abortion/miscarriage does not cause breast cancer. Most of the usual agencies plainly say that there is no statistical association, and a few weasel slightly on the point (see "confounding factors" and "it's a bit more complicated than that"). The article has relied largely on a major report from the NCI, which takes a strong view on this point.

A single recent study (more recent than the NCI paper) says that there might be a small association -- a little lower risk than drinking 2 to 5 servings of alcohol each day, and puny compared to BRCA1/2 -- and there is a dispute about whether to incorporate this recent information into the lead.

Much of the talk page has been MastCell vs RoyBoy for over a year, and I think that the addition of several new editors would really improve matters. Please consider reading the current discussion and watchlisting this article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Have commented.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:31, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Thank you, and thanks also to 2/0, whose comments are also calm, reasonable, and helpful. It's great to work with people who are willing to show up, even on tense pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Just noticed this, but it explains the welcome influx of new eyes and outside opinions. Thanks to WhatamIdoing for bringing this here, which is probably what I should have done in the first place. MastCell Talk 18:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Question for the experts

I'm trying to figure out what to do with irritable bowel disease. From a bit of digging, it looks like it is an undefined term often used as a synonym for irritable bowel syndrome (for which it is currently a redirect) but stands at tremendous risk of being mistaken for inflammatory bowel disease. Does anyone know if irritable bowel disease is an actual (presumably rare) diagnosis? And what would all y'all think of turning irritable bowel disease into a disambiguation page for both IBS and inflammatory bowel disease? Nothing turns up as a primary definition, google search is not helpful, nor is google scholar nay google books. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 13:57, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

PubMed though has 55 hits, of which a good number use "irritable bowel disease" in their titles as a synonym for irritable bowel syndrome. As such, while I too would have leant to a disambig page for what seemed a mix-up of the words, would opt now to keep as a redirect straight to irritable bowel syndrome. David Ruben Talk 20:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Think a hatnote would be warranted? Perhaps {{for3}}, {{Redirect4}} or {{Distinguish}}? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 14:25, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 Done - hatnote a good idea, {{about}} seemed easiest to word, but feel free to rephrase :-) David Ruben Talk 15:49, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Re: Proposal to Merge Pleural Fibroma into Solitary Fibrous Tumor

Ladies and Gentlemen:

My name is Cliff, a/k/a "uploadvirus". I am writing to respond to a proposal someone made to merge Pleural Fibroma into Solitary Fibrous Tumor.

BACKGROUND: I was looking around on Project Medicine for things people wanted done to see what I could contribute, and I noticed (somewhere) that someone had requested that an article be written on Pleural Fibroma. I went ahead and made the current page for Pleural Fibroma, which included a definition of it as "... an outdated synonym for a mesenchymal neoplasm originating in areolar tissue adjacent to the pleura (membranes surrounding the lung). The current favored term for a pleural fibroma is "solitary fibrous tumor of the pleura", and referencing the most current WHO lung tumor classification system. I then (thought I) included a redirect to the Solitary fibrous tumor article, which I began writing. I haven't worked on it recently though.

I have no problem merging Pleural fibroma into Solitary fibrous tumor, and working the term "pleural fibroma" into a synomyms section. Lastly, the dead link to the WHO classification system us baffling - thats the correct address, and I just downloaded the file from that address earlier today, but for whatever reason, it keeps bringing back "Page not found" from there.

Therefore, I went back and fixed the link by changing it to the Download page for the classification system .pdf's, from where folks can download the lung tumor classification .pdf (or the other classification .pdf's) directly.

Best regards: Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 18:43, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:56, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Drug addiction

Is the Drug addiction article within our scope? Currently it is tagged for the psychology project, and was surprised not to see us there - thought I'd check first! Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 23:36, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes drug addiction should be tagged with WP:MED.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
I have tagged it for wiki med.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Eating disorders

This page could use a few more eyes to get it going in the right direction.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Weather pains

I've had this since I was a child, but I just noticed that someone created an article about it in August 2009. Every physician I've talked to about it refers to as a form of arthritis. I'm curious, is this the appropriate name for the article, or is there an actual clinical term? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 01:18, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Pain in babies

I would like to draw attention to this newly created article, which is obviously important to the WikiProject and as currently written is far from encyclopedia-quality. Looie496 (talk) 17:14, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Should be a subpage of the main pain article than split off when it is big enough. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:31, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
It is plenty big enough. Too big in fact. Looie496 (talk) 18:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I agree. A large part of the problem is the style of the writing which appears to be pushing a point of view. It is repetitive, too. FloNight♥♥♥♥ 18:51, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
As for the contents, the history is basically correct: different ages had different opinions about whether pain in neonates was "really" pain.
The tone, however, is dreadful. It also appears to be a cut-and-paste from Citizendium, which (it says) is not GFDL-compliant. I wonder how that comports with our policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes I guess what I should have said is that this should be condensed into a couple of paragraphs and combined with the main pain article. Currently it needs a rewrite.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I have proposed the merge. There are a couple of good editors at Pain, so I hope that if they agree, one of them will undertake the work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Alcoholism versus alcohol dependence naming disagreement

There is some disagreement on the name of the alcoholism article. The World Health Organisation, ICD and others favour the term alcohol dependence instead of alcoholism, but other editors prefer the term alcoholism as it is more widely known. Perhaps WP:COMMONNAME favours alcoholism or does the official medical term trump common name? I am in support of a move of alcoholism to alcohol dependence to keep with ICD and WHO, but I can see why some prefer to keep it as alcoholism as it is in more common usage. So we have a conundrum. It would be much appreciated if wiki med members/contributors could comment either in support or oppose on the alcoholism talk page. I would suggest reading here, User_talk:Arcadian#Alcoholism_and_alcohol_dependence and here Talk:Alcoholism#Alcoholism_and_alcohol_dependence for background information. Thanks.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 00:38, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I forgot to say that we have two articles, one for alcohol dependence and one for alcoholism and both have the same ICD10 and ICD9 codes.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:13, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Request for (Peer) Review

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I would like to respectfully request a review of the article I've been working on lately entitled large cell lung carcinoma with rhabdoid phenotype. I would consider it 90% or so finished, and would appreciate any suggestions, edits, etc. If anyone has some time, take a look and let me know what you think.

I thank you all for your time, attention, and courtesy.

Best regards: Cliff L. Knickerbocker, MS (talk) 00:02, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Not a bad looking article. If I were to offer a suggestion, it would probably be to add an illustration or diagram of some kind. Other than that, it looks pretty good. Tyrol5 [Talk] 00:42, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Prostatitis

There's a discussion over at Talk:Prostatitis (and CP/CPPS) over whether or not some cases of CP/CPPS are associated with infection despite a negative culture, and the role of antibiotics in the treatment of the condition. Input from more editors would be helpful. (Context should be clear from edit history and talk page.) --Arcadian (talk) 23:51, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Announcement to WikiProject Medicine community prior to trial editorial review

This is an announcement of the initial stages of what will hopefully become a long-term collaboration between the Wikipedia Foundation and Google.org, a charitable foundation funded by Google. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:30, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Google announcement

We at Google.org admire WikiProject Medicine’s improvement of health-related articles on Wikipedia. As others have already noted, you've created an important body of knowledge that ranks among the best sources of health information on the English web – no mean feat! We'd like to accelerate the momentum you’ve already established, and help in making the fruits of your labor available to more people around the world.

As I'm sure you all know, there's an urgent need for reliable health information, especially in developing countries. According to one recent estimate, tens of thousands die every day due to lack of an informed parent, caregiver or health worker.

We'd like to help in two ways. First, we'd like to provide vetting of a subset of popular medical articles by recognized authorities. We'll post these reviews on the corresponding Talk pages, and we hope that you'll use them as stepping stones to improve the articles. (We'll alert you on this WikiProject Talk page as the reviews become available.) Second, we'll work with volunteers to translate your work into other languages – such as Swahili, Arabic and Spanish – in collaboration with the communities of editors on those Wikipedias. We've been pleased with the success of this approach during our recent Kiswahili Wikipedia Challenge and have received positive feedback from the Wikimedia Foundation.

This initiative is primarily a project of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google that uses information and technology to address global challenges in areas such as health, poverty and the environment – but we'd really like to make it a team effort! We sincerely hope that you'll join us in this important cause by responding to the reviews, participating in the discussion, and finding ways to improve the articles. We're optimistic that our joint efforts will benefit both Wikipedia and the world as a whole.

We're going to start small by reviewing a sample of forty medical articles on the English Wikipedia, which you can find listed here (article list). This trial will allow us to gradually scale up as we learn more about the best ways of working with you. Your suggestions and comments are very welcome!

Thanks so much for your help, and congratulations again on all your valuable work to date.

- Google.org April 2010

This is really good news, Tim. What's you're involvement in this? Colin°Talk 17:59, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I've been helping set this up along with User:Proteins, and advising Google on how best to work with the Wikipedia community. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:00, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
This would be a great addition to our project, it will be very helpful, I am currently working on the Cystic fibrosis article, and I have previously worked on the Hypertension article, both of these articles are on the list you mentioned. actually such a thing will be very useful when we are working on such important articles. Thank you MaenK.A.Talk 18:02, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I assume the experts are going to vet/review the articles from a subject-matter POV rather than, say, how well the article follows WP guidelines and policy. Perhaps we could aid the effort by providing our own peer reviews of these articles. A combination of both forms of "honest opinion" about their current state would be a good place to work out how to improve. Colin°Talk 18:05, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
The experts will be professional medical writers, rather than academics working on the subjects. I'll be giving an introduction to the reviewers about writing and reviewing on Wikipedia before they start, which will focus on the GA criteria and the level of writing we're aiming for. More feedback will be valuable, but probably most valuable will be experienced Wikipedia editors who can act on the suggestions and spruce up the articles. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I am also very delighted to hear the news. I was thinking, perhaps it might be useful to set up the list in a chart format that contained more information about the articles and the status of the reviewing. For example, the first entries could look like this:
# Name Status as of April 2010 Page views for March 2010 Reviewed by outside experts
1 2009 flu pandemic Good article 274 Not yet
2 Hemorrhoid Start class 326 Not yet
Let me know what others think. Remember (talk) 18:15, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Seems an excellent idea, please go right ahead! Tim Vickers (talk) 18:18, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I don't have time now to set up the whole thing, but I will help get it started. Remember (talk) 18:19, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
shall I work on the table?? continue here or create a sub page?? MaenK.A.Talk 18:27, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I've revised the list to be a table here (article list). Feel free to revise and improve it in any way. Remember (talk) 18:31, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I am working on the list, and I would appreciate any help :-) MaenK.A.Talk 18:41, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
50%  Done MaenK.A.Talk 18:58, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Refactored above link to avoid redirect. Happy to helpUser:LeadSongDog come howl 18:59, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
100%  Done MaenK.A.Talk 19:13, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Importance column added. Done Further discussion should be on the (article list talkpage)User:LeadSongDog come howl 20:15, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Even though it would be good to have some more feedback what we really need is more people who are willing to write high quality articles. There is tons of work to do just a lack of people willing to do it.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:33, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

  • Tim, that's fantastic news. You're my hero. I think this will be great for the WikiProject, our medical coverage, and the encyclopedia. :) MastCell Talk 23:05, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
  • (1) Fantastic news, and congratulations! (2) Since these 40 are about to get much higher visibility, if there are issues with naming or scope we ought to address that quickly. One thing I noticed: Compliance (medicine) could probably use a better name, so it doesn't collide with Compliance (physiology). Suggestions? --Arcadian (talk) 23:21, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
    • The politically correct term is adherence rather than compliance (I was taught that "compliance" implied a paternalistic power differential, and that "adherence" to a cooperatively developed treatment plan was the preferred conceptualization. Seriously). I see that these terms are already merged, so if we move it, I'd suggest moving it to adherence (medicine). MastCell Talk 23:31, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
      • "Compliance" with a treatment is still standard usage in UK. With better appreciation of the need for patient engagement, the treatment is generally agreed by mutual discussion (the process of which most UK GPs would still recognise as one of concordance). Adherence is not term I encounter and would perhaps conjure scenario of a patient agreeing to take a treatment and involuntarily being lax about rigorously remembering (i.e. a patient who agrees that aspirin is useful in secondary prevention but forgets to take several days a week and might find use of a dossette medication box helpful). That contrasts to a diabetic patient eating high sugar foods, missing out medications routinely and failing to attend clinic reviews despite repeated reminders. The Read codes system used to code GP consultations mostly has "compliance" terms, with the largest software supplier EMIS using just a few proprietary codes using terms concordance or adherence. David Ruben Talk 01:21, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
        • Yeah, we all still say 'compliance' but not for want of the official push for 'adherence' all over the place...interesting to see whether adherence will 'stick' (adhere) really... :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:52, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, you're quite right. That was the intended meaning. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:12, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

(undent) Acute pharyngitis IMO would be a better page to review for starters rather than strep pharyngitis a subtype of acute pharyngitis.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:59, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

You should announce on those selected articles talk pages as well, not everybody that watches/edits those articles read here, I got this by accident.--Nutriveg (talk) 23:23, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Task force?

Should we create a task force or other dedicated Medicine subpage to help ensure that the Google collaboration is a success? Remember (talk) 17:17, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Support Its the best way to organize this MaenK.A.Talk 17:44, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Support --Arcadian (talk) 19:38, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Sure - sounds good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:47, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Support Maybe this group could also put forwards what other pages should be added to the list eventually? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:55, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Support. At the moment the list of interested editors is at User_talk:TimVickers/Health_translation_project, but please feel free to move this into mainspace. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:13, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Support. Axl ¤ [Talk] 20:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Support as a sub-page, but I wouldn't call it a task force. This seems to fit closer to the sub-pages grouped as "Departments" or "How to help" than "task forces." {{WPMED}} could be used to categorize these articles, like it does for MCOW. --Scott Alter 21:07, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Support Good call. Tyrol5 [Talk] 00:33, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
Any Ideas for the name of the subpage, task-force, or the project?? MaenK.A.Talk 22:02, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
The page for the project is ready here, please help improving it MaenK.A.Talk 21:44, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Page names

Dyspepsia and heartburn are often used interchangeably. Should we merge the two?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:27, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

The ICD has these as separate terms and specifically excludes them from one another, so probably not. --Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 10:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Stem cell treatment importance

Stem cell treatment is missing an importance rting from us, as it could be a major therapy and is a major controversial subject I would've place it High ( or even Top ), but MCB project has it tagged as low on their importance scale... What should it be?--Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 10:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

It would most undoubtedly be high on our importance scale. I don't think that controversy has anything to do with importance. I would rate it High, maybe not top. Tyrol5 [Talk] 12:30, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Marked as high, please change if you feel strongly otherwise. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 21:46, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Abortive therapy

The article Cyclic vomiting syndrome states that "abortive therapy has limited success", but abortive therapy isn't wikilinked. I felt that understanding it would help me with understanding of CVS, so I searched to see was there an article. There wasn't. I googled, and got some idea what it means. I have no expertise in medicine, but surely that's a topic that has scope for an article? Could someone start one - even a stub? Thanks. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 18:06, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Any therapy designed to stop a process at an early stage can be referred to as abortive therapy. If you have a bad menstrual pain and your doctor tells you to take ibuprofen at the first twinge of discomfort, the treatment is intended to abort full-blown severe pain. alteripse (talk) 18:59, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
I've created a redirect to Therapy (which basic concept certainly deserves a much better article), and provided a simple definition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:02, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, both. The therapy article is helpful. I did find out what abortive therapy was through googling, but I felt that within the CVS article, a link would be useful. Girlwithgreeneyes (talk) 09:21, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Looking for articles on medical note formatting

Can any of you recommend some good articles on formatting of a medical note. Restated, when I write a note on a patient (i.e. CC, HPI, ALL, PMH, PSH, FH, SH, PE, A, P), are there any articles on how to best format the note, particularly in the context of an EMR. ---kilbad (talk) 01:01, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Best format? It depends on custom. Different sub specialties do it in different ways.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Admission note is a good start. --Arcadian (talk) 05:20, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I mean how to best format a note (indentation, bolding, underlining, etc), not necessary the content or order of a note's components. ---kilbad (talk) 02:35, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

No standardization. Until the last decade, most notes were handwritten. EMRs generally have not had fancy formatting capabilities like indenting, bolding, fonts etc. Some of the newer ones do, but no doctor has the time to make a note pretty. alteripse (talk) 10:58, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Port (medical) article

The illustration under 'How it works' in the Port (medical) article] does not seem to fit the accompanying text, nor is it helpful in illustrating the article. Lriley47 (talk) 18:51, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

New disease article creation

I ve been working on an input box that would help greatly creating new disease articles. you can try it here, If we agree to use it, I can move all subpages to wikiproject medicine subpages

Medical Article Creator
 Edit

Help


MaenK.A.Talk 18:12, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

By the way on clicking create, there is a custom editnotice, and a preloaded infobox template MaenK.A.Talk 18:13, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
We could add it to the Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine page aswell.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Shall I add it ?? it can be added in many places MaenK.A.Talk 22:49, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
How should it be titled? Also is there a page which explains how it is used? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:59, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
I have added a documentation link on the template, please help me making it better. About the name I dont know, please suggest something :-) MaenK.A.Talk 21:33, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I ve added a new menu for external links that are helpful for doing more search about the article to be created MaenK.A.Talk 22:08, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

I ve created a collapsible type of menu with the same content of the editnotice for the tool, can we add it to the Wikiproject medicine template that we use on articles talk pages?? here it is

MaenK.A.Talk 13:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this will be a good addition to the WPMED banner. For one thing, it's disease-specific, and many of our articles are about procedures, equipment, treatments, drugs, people, and organizations. For another, creating articles is probably not the single most important task for medicine-related topics on Wikipedia. (Some 20,000 already exist.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I am not talking about the disease creator, I meant the toolbox That I have linked, I customized it so that it look as a tool box that helps expanding articles no matter what is its subject as long as its related to medicine. We can also develop it together, It will be like a handy and readily available tools for all editors on the talk page of any article in the scope of our project MaenK.A.Talk 21:24, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Any other suggestions?? MaenK.A.Talk 22:34, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I Moved the template to the project subpages here MaenK.A.Talk 14:48, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of having these links accessible on {{WPMED}}, but I do not like the toolbox...the link looks out of place, and when expanded, it is too obtrusive. Also, I don't see the purpose of the "External Resources" section. While it may be convenient to have links to searches on the article topic, I'm not sure it would be that helpful or utilized much. We had a brief discussion a few months ago to modify the MAIN_TEXT of {{WPMED}} to include links to WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS, but the discussion got sidetracked and nothing was implemented. The last suggestion from the previous discussion was:
My only potential issue with this is the grammar...the use of "it" could refer to either the page or the project. However, I can't think of a better way to say all of this in one sentence without being redundant. I had earlier proposed using separate sentences as in:
But this seems to have come off as being too "prescriptive." Does anyone else have any suggestions? --Scott Alter 19:44, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
You can deal with the ambiguous pronoun by replacing it with the antecedent: "recommends that this page conform to..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I think that mentioning this page twice is redundant, but it will do. I updated {{WPMED/sandbox}} and hope to implement this within the next few days. --Scott Alter 20:58, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Why not to add the external links menu??, or a link to the citation generator tool??, actually that was the idea of the toolbox. MaenK.A.Talk 21:39, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
There are a bunch of reasons why I am opposed to this, including design and content issues. Regarding the design, I think the toolbox looks very out of place, as if it was just stuck into {{WPMED}} (which it was). Whether the external links are kept or not, it is essential to better integrate any links. As I mentioned before, the design of the toolbox is obtrusive with lots of wasted (unused and misused) space.
Regarding content, there are some issues. What is the purpose of these links and to who are they targeted? Is it to help readers by providing more information on the topic? If so, then the links would belong in the article itself. If it is to help editors to improve the article, then any links need to be in line with the encyclopedia's and project's policies and guidelines. By putting these links in {{WPMED}}, it would be as if the project is globally promoting the use of any items found by these search engines. I would not consider Google (except for scholar) to provide reliable sources for any content. Even scholarly articles, whether found by PubMed or Google Scholar, need to be individually evaluated for relevance, scientific rigor, etc. The purpose of WP:MEDRS is to determine what is a reliable source - not to provide a listing of potential reliable sources. It would fall to WPMED to recommend reliable sources, which it could do in a sub-page of WPMED, within the "how to help" realm. If WPMED is going to support using any specific external resources (which I do not think it currently does), the project should comment on their appropriate usage and not just provide links without any guidance. Also, who is the target demographic for these links? Is it for any article editor, or only WPMED contributors? The way the toolbox is organized, it would be most helpful to editors familiar with WPMED, and possibly confusing for editors unfamiliar with PubMed or what a "citation generator" is needed for. {{WPMED}} should not be directed solely for members of WPMED, which is why I am for integrating any links into the MAIN_TEXT of the banner in relatively simple English.
Finally, I don't think I've seen any other projects' banner have external links. While WP:EL does not cover non-articles, I am hesitant to place any permanent external links in the talk namespace. Even WP:MEDRS does not have external links to what are considered to be reliable sources. What I might support is transforming the toolbox into a WPMED subpage, and having the banner link directly to this new page. --Scott Alter 15:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I've been looking at it for a few days, and I'm also not happy with it. For one thing, WPMED banners are very frequently (1) invisible/buried in a banner shell -- in which case, nobody will see the toolbox -- or (2) the only content on the entire talk page -- in which case, it's unlikely that anyone will look at the page at all.
Most experienced editors already have these things bookmarked, so the links are completely unnecessary for them.
It might be better to put these links on the main project page, possibly under 'how you can help'. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

1st degree heart block?

Hi there, Just noticed while searching for heart block types that neither "1° heart block" or "1st degree heart block" redirects to "First-degree atrioventricular block". In fact, "1° atrioventricular block" doesn't even do that either. I suggest adding that redirection. On a slightly related note, I think adding trace ECGs of sinus rhythm verus first degree heart block would be useful. I happen to have both traces if they are wanted. FruitywS (talk) 14:44, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Redirects seem to be  Fixed User:LeadSongDog come howl 15:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes if you wish to upload those that would be great. I think I have some around here somewere too.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


Just as another addition, could you redirect 2nd degree heart block too? 3rd degree is done fine already it seems. FruitywS (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Sir James Black

Hello, I'm hoping I can find someone here to help me with the article James W. Black (the inventor of beta blockers inter alia). I'd really like to get the article to GA, but my knowledge of his field of medicine is pretty much limited to what I can comprehend from the sources, so I'd really like either a bit of informal feedback or a collaboration with somebody so I can make the article as informative as possible. Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I would probably contact the Biography wikiproject, as they are the primary caretakers of people related articles. Tyrol5 [Talk] 17:01, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Cystic fibrosis....

Is lingering at good article nominations. I am reviewing it and it could use a little help with comprehensiveness. Any british folks (or other nationalities) - some more worldwide data is needed at the Prognosis section - and possibly at the Epidemiology section. Come join in the discussion at the review page - all input on comprehensiveness and sourcing welcome. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:35, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Random question

I have a personal website. Would it be safe to post my resume online there? I have seen a few of you do that. Is it safe to do so? What precautions should I take, etc. ---kilbad (talk) 22:09, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

You might prefer not to provide home address/phone numbers in an online resume. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:16, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
The rule of thumb that I use is to assume that any information you post online is immediately visible to everyone and you will never be able to remove it. Be careful. Neurotip (talk) 07:36, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
I Agree with Neurotip, Once something is online you cant expect any limitation on its visibility to everyone, and removing it wont really remove it MaenK.A.Talk 16:21, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Hyperventilation syndrome

I browsed to this article just now, redirected from a link to Chronic Hyperventilation Syndrome (capitals in original) in Buteyko method. I'm not an expert in this field and I apologise in advance if I'm wrong, but I'm concerned that the Theory section in the latter article has the stylistic characteristics of a fringe opinion. This is also suggested by its stating that 'PEF and FEV1 lung function tests are not appropriate tests for testing asthmatics': they certainly were when I was working in general hospital medicine a few years ago.

My reason for posting this here rather than on the Buteyko article's talk page is that Hyperventilation syndrome appears to have been affected by the same problem: it begins 'Hyperventilation syndrome (HVS; also Chronic Hyperventilation Syndrome or CHVS)' (note capitalisation) and continues with a mixture of uncontroversial statements about the effects of (acute) hyperventilation alongside some rather odd-sounding material such as a large table illustrating chronic hyperventilation in various diseases.

Can anyone verify this material, or confirm my suspicion that some of it is bogus? Neurotip (talk) 01:06, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes I came across the buteyko method article when I removed it from the asthma article. I agree that it is a fringe theory. Have not had the energy to do more.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:13, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
I've watched the HVS article for a long while, and I also agree that it needs major work.
At least the first paragraph in Buteyko method#Theory is wrong: a subset of Da Costa's patients certainly had mitral valve prolapse, which has nothing to do with "over-breathing". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:25, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Table just a synthesis of 2nd sources (patients with COPD might hyperventilate, but not same as hyperventillation syndrome, and they do not end up with abnormally low CO2 levels). Deleted this at Hyperventilation syndrome and its duplicate copy at Buteyko method. Suspect this will need wider input re WP:MEDRS and maintaining POV balance as to what the conventional medicine prevailing viewpoint is. David Ruben Talk 19:13, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
A bit more legwork reveals this site (reached via this diff and this userpage), which makes things clearer I think. Thanks David for your contribution. I notice that you corrected the capitalisation I mentioned - while of course I agree with this in principle, I've stopped doing so in practice, since I've found Spurious Capitalisation Syndrome to be a useful marker of unreliable information. ;) Neurotip (talk) 19:35, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
I only removed the table and a phrasing issue - no changes to any capitalisations[3]. WP:AGF makes no implication to capitalisation, personally I find WP:MOS couterintuitive to what I would write in the real world in capitalising names of disorders for easier reading. David Ruben Talk 20:27, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Graves disease and longterm neuropsychiatric effects

A new editor has worked hard on Graves disease posting over 250 edits in the last few days. Aside from copyedit issues (article length incr 35 to 135kb despite existing subarticle links) and listing abstracts on lots of research papers, issues of cherry picking primary sources for there being long term psychiatric sequellae (beyond normalisation of thyroid function) and impact on jobs etc. Other primary sources dispute this, and general consensus would I think be that there is no consistent longterm neuropsychiatric prognosis (eg per eMedicine article's one paragraph to this citing 2007 review) - ie WP:MEDRS, WP:PRIMARY, WP:NPOV issues.

Much of the work repositioned or rephrased the article sensibly, but impossible to untangle 250+ edits, a few by other editors too in midst of this large viewpoint/balance/weight realignment.

Anyway please have a look at the prior & current version (I've reverted back to April 9) and the additional material version, and help this new editor with their earnest contributions - further discussion should be had at Talk:Graves' disease#Major edits revert. David Ruben Talk 23:58, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Own article for Physiological changes in pregnancy

I think there should be a separate article for Physiological changes in pregnancy. Currently, there are two large sections dealing with the subject, Obstetrics#Maternal_change, and Pregnancy#Physiological_changes_in_pregnancy. However, the scope of Obstetrics article is rather the medical profession per se, and few readers wanting to know about the physiological changes expect to find them there. The Pregnancy article, on the other hand, is 59 kilobytes long and on the verge of really needing to have some of it forked away. Merging these sections together would make a more powerful piece than each of them separately. Mikael Häggström (talk) 16:13, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

It is a good idea, and would make the pregnancy article easier to navigate, but as you know you need to replace the section with an informative summery MaenK.A.Talk 17:28, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Orthopedics?

WP has an article and category for Orthopedic surgery but not the more-general "orthopedics", or something similar. Is this an oversight or intentional? Maurreen (talk) 07:37, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Ref formatting on non-English journals

Just a heads-up about a formatting problem that you may encounter with Diberri's ref tool:

If a journal isn't written in English, then PubMed puts the name of the article title in [square brackets] -- which creates odd formatting effects in {{cite journal}}. The simple solution is just to remove the stray square brackets. If you happen to see something that looks like [Article title] in a template-using ref, then that may be the issue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Why does that cause a problem, unless the article title itself happens to start "http://" etc.
Nothing wrong with {{cite journal |author=Weickert H |title=[Comparison of sonographic findings and roentgen findings and pathologico-anatomic changes in hip dysplasia] |language=German |journal=Beitr Orthop Traumatol |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=93–7 |year=1987 |month=February |pmid=3555455 |doi= |url=}}
showing as Weickert H (1987). "[Comparison of sonographic findings and roentgen findings and pathologico-anatomic changes in hip dysplasia]". Beitr Orthop Traumatol (in German). 34 (2): 93–7. PMID 3555455. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
and if one adds url paramater as: Weickert H (1987). "[Comparison of sonographic findings and roentgen findings and pathologico-anatomic changes in hip dysplasia]". Beitr Orthop Traumatol (in German). 34 (2): 93–7. PMID 3555455. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
seems fine to me? David Ruben Talk 21:43, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
I see the double quotes after the right bracket displaced inside in error. This, I believe, is new.LeadSongDog come howl 21:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
Can always use the |trans_title= for these cases as:
  • {{cite journal |author=Weickert H |trans_title=Comparison of sonographic findings and roentgen findings and pathologico-anatomic changes in hip dysplasia |language=German |journal=Beitr Orthop Traumatol |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=93–7 |year=1987 |month=February |pmid=3555455 |doi= |url=http://www.example }}
  • Weickert H (1987). Beitr Orthop Traumatol (in German). 34 (2): 93–7. PMID 3555455 http://www.example. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
It appears citation bot used to fix this prior to r43, but that it has since been disabled per a request from Eubulides. I've queried the operator.LeadSongDog come howl 15:47, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Help improve the Laryngopharyngeal reflux article

I recently merged the content of Extraesophageal reflux disease to Laryngopharyngeal reflux, as the terms refer to the same condition. Any assistance to improve this fledgling article would be appreciated.

Can anyone identify any other appropriate templates to place at the bottom of this page? Is there a template for disorders of the larynx, and, if so, would Laryngopharyngeal reflux be an appropriate addition? Any help is appreciated, thanks. TypicalUser (talk) 23:29, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Larynx article needs to be watched (anti-vandalism)

Larynx was targeted for vandalism over a month ago, which I only just now discovered and restored. Interested people, please add Larynx to your watchlist to resolve any further vandalism. Thanks. TypicalUser (talk) 23:32, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Deleting all medical treatment sections as violations WP:HOWTO

See the history of edits on arc eye. We have an ambitious editor named user:wizard191 who, rather than accept my edits to make the treatment section less dangerous, decided to delete it entirely. He's coming to a medical article near you. What say you all? SBHarris

From what I see, it needed deleting per WP:V, though of course some discussion would have been better. It can still be rewritten outside of article space to meet WP:HOWTO and then reintroduced when ready. LeadSongDog come howl 01:03, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Treatment is certainly permitted per its relevant section as set out in WP:MEDMOS, just needs to read as an encyclopedia rather than a self-treatment manual. In any case, arc eye and snow blindness are same disorder, and per WP:MEDMOS should be merged and renamed as photokeratitis (see Talk:Snow blindness#Merge and rename). David Ruben Talk 01:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
There is plenty of WP:V material on the web for treatment of photokeratitis. In that case the answer is merely to tag the section for awhile as {cite needed}, not delete it immediately like some unrefed BLP (you'll have difficulty even doing that with a BLP). Agree with the merger of the articles, but that doesn't help with the problem, as there's the same treatment section in snowblindness. Will one or the other, or both of you, explain these distinctions to user:Wizard191 (how to write a treatment section so it doesn't sound like an instruction manual, rather than delete it)? In case I'm not being clear, I came here to seek concensus opinion. I am not about to start a 1-on-1 edit-reversion war with somebody if nobody cares about this issue but me. So, step up the plate, or else I'll just leave you guys with the problem, and go work on something else. You've got a basic attack on medical articles by a non-medical editor, here; heads up. SBHarris 18:16, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Tagging the section with {{howto}} might have been appropriate, but I suspect that most editors don't know about that template.
Also, with respect to the situation (rather than the article content): IMO this is not an emergency. If it takes us a week to sort out what to do, that's okay. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
LOL. I suppose it's good you're not worried about how things look, since photokeratitis now redirects to arc eye and arc eye redirects to photokeratitis and neither of them have any content at all. :) SBHarris 19:17, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Could we get an admin to move this page to photokeratitis? I have merged snow blindness and arc eye leading to the temporary confusion mentioned above. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:26, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Moved and double redirects fixed. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:44, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
I've left this editor a note on their talkpage, might have been a misunderstanding based on SBHarris' suggestion that one option for them would be to delete the section entirely. Possibly not the best option of the ones suggested, but I can't fault them for acting on his advice! New merged article looks good. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:59, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Wowzers...I didn't realize my edit was going to spurn all this. Just to make a few notes:

  1. The sarcasm in SBHarris' first post definitely didn't come through. I thought he was serious about me deleting it.
  2. WP:HOWTO is a global policy that I felt was applicable to my edit, but I do believe that there is a way to properly list treatments in a non-how-to way. I felt that the section wasn't recoverable and that it was unreferenced so its loss was not of great consequence. Obviously SBHarris didn't agree, and I feel that a non-sarcastic discussion on my talk page or on the article talk page could have easily cleared up any misgivings.
  3. @SBHarris, I feel that you aren't assuming good faith, especially with a comment like "He's coming to a medical article near you". If you look at my contrib log you will see that I edit mostly metalworking and engineering articles, of which this is a welding related article, which is why it's on my watchlist. As such, I am not going around attempting to remove all med how-to's.

I honestly meant my edits in good faith, and not as a personal attack against SBHarris' edit to the article. I hope that there are no hard feeling from here on out and that we can move on to bettering our encyclopedia (as it appears you guys have through merging related articles). Wizard191 (talk) 21:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, I wondered if that might have been it! Another reason for us to implement <sarcasm>Insert text here</sarcasm> tags. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Hopefully, the end-result is an improvement on the previous articles, and any angst generated in working out the best solutions is the price we pay for our hobby. I've had the pleasure of interacting with both Steve Harris (on scuba articles) and Wizard (when he's sorted out my cock-ups), and recommend each of them to the other as valued contributors. I also hope that everybody is happy with the copyediting I've just done on Photokeratitis - please feel free to improve it. Many thanks are due to Doc James for doing the grunt work of merging. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:50, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of HOWTO violations, the following 15 pages are tagged as needing attention on that point:

Any editor should feel free to pick one and improve it -- even small efforts are valuable! WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Hep C electromicrograph question

There's a disagreement regarding this image that is purported to be an electron micrograph of the Hepatitis C virus. I believe the preferred image of viruses and bacteria is a micrograph rather than a diagram or drawing (that's my general recall of specific pages) but can't find guidance. Any advice? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 01:07, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

The full discussion is here, here and here. BruceSwanson (talk) 16:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe that I've ever seen any such advice, and if both are available, I can't really imagine why we wouldn't include both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:46, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
I have no problem with both being present; in fact, I would prefer it. I can't see any reason to remove the image at all. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 00:18, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
The current image is obviously available. The question is what the image is of. Why not use this one? It's from the Hepatitis C Dartmouth Medical School website. I don't know if it's a fair use pix though.
WLU, you wrote I can't see any reason to remove the [present] image at all. Did you check here and here? BruceSwanson (talk) 19:58, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
That the image is not fair use is a reason not to use it. See WP:IMAGE. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 20:36, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
On the other hand, File:Em flavavirus-HCV samp1c.jpg seems to be lacking explicitly both an author and source, which are pretty compelling reasons not to use that either. Perhaps contacting Dartmouth Medical School and asking if they would be prepared to release the image under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence may be a way forward? --RexxS (talk) 23:41, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I have contacted Dartmouth via the feedback page on their Hepatitis C website. Will update. BruceSwanson (talk) 00:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Citation

Would someone help me format the following reference into the citation template?

Ryan T: Cutaneous Circulation. In: Physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology of the skin. Goldsmith LA (ed). New York:Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 1019.

Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 15:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Find the ISBN using google books. Plug into deberri tool: Goldsmith, Lowell A. (1991). Physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology of the skin. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505612-4. --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:30, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, but how do you specify the chapter title and chapter author? i.e Ryan T: Cutaneous Circulation ? ---kilbad (talk) 15:40, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Do not know. I just put the page number.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:52, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
You use the |chapter= parameter to specify the name of the chapter. The |author= is the chapter's author, and Goldsmith is the |editor=, which gives you:
  • Ryan, T. (1991). "Cutaneous Circulation". In Goldsmith, Lowell A (ed.). Physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology of the skin. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. p. 1019. ISBN 0-19-505612-4.
There may be other ways of doing this, but that's what I would do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with WAID 99%, except that if you follow the generated ISBN link to Worldcat, it seems OUP publishes this book (2nd edition) in New York, so I'd offer this:
  • Ryan, T (1991). "Cutaneous Circulation". In Goldsmith, Lowell A (ed.). Physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology of the skin (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1019. ISBN 0-19-505612-4.
It's no big deal, and I may be wrong in assuming it's not printed in Oxford, but the NY location is verifiable. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 23:25, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Genetic disorders

While working on categorization of diseases, I have come across many articles that are categorized into Category:Genetic disorders and a type of heredity subcategory (such as Category:Autosomal recessive disorders). Is it necessary to put articles in both of these categories? For diseases with known inheritance patterns, I do not think they need to be in the overly generalized Category:Genetic disorders. After all, almost all diseases can be said to have a genetic component. Therefore, I would like to clean up and diffuse Category:Genetic disorders into subcategories based on things like involved chromosomes and dominance. --Scott Alter 15:45, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Could you also create a subcategory for genetic disorders with no OMIM code? --Arcadian (talk) 16:43, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
More specific categorisation is good, there's allways List of genetic disorders if someone wants to find them all in one place! Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 21:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
I'm currently not going through Category:Genetic disorders directly, rather coming across diseases in other categories that are also in Category:Genetic disorders. Are you referring to diseases with no OMIM code or articles lacking the information? In either case, there should be a better way to find genetic disorders without OMIM codes...like maybe having a bot going through all of the articles within Category:Genetic disorders (and 1 sublevel) and create a list. Another option (which I don't think is possible) would be to use {{Infobox disease}} to categorize articles with no OMIM code but are in Category:Genetic disorders. I'm just hesitant to manually categorize articles on this basis. Perhaps we can do something similar to the categorization of drugs without ATC codes (see Template:Drugbox#ATC, ATCvet and CAS, Category:Drugboxes with an unspecified ATC code, and Category:Drugs not assigned an ATC code). Maybe this should be done for other codes (such as ICD) as well. --Scott Alter (talk) 19:46, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Microscopy illustration

Since microscopy is within your scope, I'm letting you know about this figure that I composed (from previously existing material) that might be useful for illustrating aspects of light and/or electron microscopy. If you need to make changes that will reduce the EV in the three butterfly-related articles where it's currently placed, please create a fork instead. Thank you.

Photographic and light microscopic images
Zoomed-out view of an Aglais io. Closeup of the scales of the same specimen. High magnification of the coloured scales (probably a different species).
Electron microscopic images
A patch of wing Scales close up A single scale Microstructure of a scale
Magnification Approx. ×50 Approx. ×200 ×1000 ×5000


Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 11:38, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Those images look amazing. ---kilbad (talk) 15:14, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Wow. This is fascinating. I feel like I did when I was a little kid at the science museum! Great job! TypicalUser (talk) 15:31, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

UpToDate use or overuse

I raised a query re use of this subscription only source at WT:MEDRS, initial reponse suggested here might have been a better location for the query - see WT:MEDRS#Use or overuse of UpToDate. David Ruben Talk 23:08, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Use of a source that one cannot access at a major university library should be discouraged IMO. One should either use the source that Uptodate quotes or verify the content in more accessible literature. I BTW do love Uptodate and this is what I base my practice on but the cost of $1000 USD for three years is to much for most of the world.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Although UpToDate is a subscription source, that does not affect the consideration of whether it's a reliable source. The requirement of verifiability is that someone (not necessarily everyone) can check the source to see if it verifies the claim made (see WP:PAYWALL).
Looking at WP:RS#Overview, the opening sentence is "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." I believe that UpToDate is independent and peer-reviewed, but further research would need to be done to establish if it has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. If so, then it's clearly a reliable source for the purposes of Wikipedia. The only question then left is whether it should be considered as a secondary or tertiary source, and that may well depend on the nature of its own sources, so I guess that would have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
In the case of the refs inserted in Graves disease, perhaps we could ask Doc James to have a look when he has a moment to spare? I'd be willing to trust his judgement on how well the refs support the text made there. --RexxS (talk) 00:36, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
I am able to give out one time one month memberships to Uptodate. I am also allowed to forward single topics to people. If someone wishes one to go over these edits I would be happy to send access to Uptodate. All I need is an email address.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:26, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I have never regarded UpToDate as a useful source for Wikipedia. It is a continuously-changing professional resource, much like Emedicine articles, and is clearly intended to be a practical resource. In contrast, high-quality journal reviews do not change until they are updated and are clearly more suitable. Having skimmed a fair number of UpToDate articles, I'm also struck by the fact that its authors sometimes get really obscure. On the whole, UpToDate entries are not equivalent to journal reviews and should be avoided. JFW | T@lk 07:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

That's a very sensible point, JFW, and I think it translates in Wikipedia terms into treating UpToDate more as a tertiary source than as a secondary. The question I think David raises is how to respond to an editor who relies on a lot of UpToDate citations. Perhaps we could agree that we can recognise UpToDate as a starting point for finding sources, but we ought to discourage editors from relying on just the UpToDate source for medical claims? --RexxS (talk) 11:44, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree with JFW as well - Uptodate might be a great place to mine for sources, but not necessarily a great place to draw from directly. Pity it's a paywall site, because it could certainly be useful for infoboxes, like eMedicine... WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 13:30, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

UpToDate is certainly one of the best online resources for clinical care in the US. It is expensive and most of us rely on hospital or university access. It is typically more comprehensive and less uneven than Emedicine, with better details of treatment. While UpToDate is fairly well referenced, I agree w JFW that it is not a reference of choice for WP because of the expensive cost of access and frequent revisions, but also because to this point there is nothing in it for which there is not a standard reference. {Parenthetically I am always surprised and slightly disturbed at how many house officers will openly admit they start with WP, since UpToDate has a considerably burdensome log-in threshold). alteripse (talk) 17:39, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the above and would support a statement from WP:MED saying that Uptodate should not be used to reference content on Wikipedia due to issue of access and the fact that the content changes over time. Emedicine is easier to access but I do not view it as the best source either. We should really emphasize that the majority of references should be to either: 1) journals, 2) textbooks, 3) government publications Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
I think that 'banning' or even 'dis-recommending' UpToDate is a bad idea. I'd choose UpToDate over nearly any patient-oriented website, and even over a stack of primary sources. Telling someone, "Thanks for all of your work in providing accurate and properly sourced information, but we think you're using a second-best source, so please stop it" -- when we have thousands of articles with truly lousy sources -- is IMO a poor use of our energy and a lousy way of thanking someone for their clearly positive efforts.
The fact that it is behind a paywall is absolutely irrelevant: A lot of top-quality journal articles are equally hidden behind paywalls. It's silly to reject UpToDate, at $40 a month, on the grounds of cost while approving, in the same sentence, of journals that charge $40 per article, or medical textbooks and reference works at $400 each.
The fact that UpToDate changes is (or could be) an issue, albeit an issue that applies to thousands of online sources. The |accessdate= parameter is designed for exactly that situation.
The bottom line is that while I think we can encourage the use of academic sources, we should not reject, or even discourage, use of good sources like UpToDate. We don't need the best to be the enemy of the good here, especially when the battle with truly dreadful sources is still underway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:56, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree with WAID above. UpToDate appears to provide reliable information which is actually used by practising professionals: in my mind, that puts it on a line with textbooks. The fact that it gets updated more often than most textbooks should hardly be a barrier to its use: we can find a way to cite a particular version. Access costs shouldn't be an issue either: most Wikipedia users don't have access to medical textbooks or UpToDate, that's precisely why they use WP! Physchim62 (talk) 01:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I must say that I agree that it is better than both vertically all websites. It is definitely reliable however well one can get access to journals at most University libraries Uptodate can be harder to access. So I would say that review articles published in journals are preferred. Uptodate is in line with textbooks.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I have never thought of it as a "patient oriented website". I would not dispute that it is an excellent site for practicing physicians who have access to it. That said, abstracts of standard journal articles are still far more accessible to those who simply want the gist of a reference or to verify that the reference says what the referencer claims it does. While buying single journal articles is prohibitively expensive, there are greater chances of access to many clinical journals at local hospital and university libraries than to UpToDate for most of our readers. Finally, for many purposes, if you have a choice of references the original citation, the most authoritative citation, or the most accessible citation might be preferred, and those three criteria are still not likely ever to be UpToDate. alteripse (talk) 02:33, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

  • I agree with Doc and JFW that it should be discouraged. While perhaps it couldn't be technically prohibited under MEDRS, it can certainly be discouraged, and there's nothing preventing us from replacing it or asking the editor to verify. The fact is that if Doc James was suddenly to disappear, we might be left in a situation where nobody but the editor adding the content could verify it. I can get pretty much any book or journal article with an interlibrary loan, fairly conveniently. Asking Doc to check these articles is an unreasonable burden on his time. I don't imagine that UpToDate wants its articles sent electronically either. Practical verifiability is a legitimate concern - certainly not absolutely irrelevant, and all else equal, there's no excuse for using a less accessible source over a source which is accessible. Someone who consistently uses inaccessible sources is not following best practices and they should be reminded of that. II | (t - c) 22:48, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Merge of food allergy and protein allergy

We are discussing the merge of these two pages here: Talk:Protein_allergy#Merge. Comments would be appreciated.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:54, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

"merged"Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:46, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Olive leaf

An editor with a chip on their shoulder (see their possibly forbidden username) has made an edit that has been reverted. That article may need to be gone through to make sure it lives up to our MEDRS guideline. -- Brangifer (talk) 00:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Platelet#Activation could be improved/in sync with Coagulation?

Hi all, First off please correct me if it's wrong to ask for improvements in this manner. I'm just looking through the entire platelet activation process in detail and I notice that there seems to be some considerable difference in manner between the coagulation article and the platelet activation subsection. Personally I find the coagulation article much clearer, and in better depth. I'm wondering if maybe the platelet article be brought up to this level, or perhaps a see also marker be placed in the section and a broad overview given instead. At the present time I just found it to be slightly poor compared to the usual standard on these topics. I'm not well enough accustomed to wiki (or endowed with enough knowledge on the topic) to edit it to a suitable standard I feel. Any thoughts? FruitywS (talk) 15:20, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. Would be happy to help you get access to good journal article and / or textbooks to aid you in improving this article. Google books will often give partial access to recent textbooks well if you find journal you need we here can usually help you get an electronic copy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:52, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Convulsion and seizure same thing

I was under the impression that a seizure and convulsion are the same thing but we have two seperate articles with the same ICD9 and Mesh codes. I think that they need merged, but I am open to persuasion. :)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:02, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

We also have Non-epileptic seizure and Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures as well, so seizure probably needs to be considered a rather broader term than convulsion. I'm also willing to be persuaded, but I think that convulsion is specifically characterised by muscle spasms, and seizure (while encompassing that) can occur without that symptom (as in Absence seizure). Take that for what it's worth, as I'm just Joe Public, not a medical practitioner. --RexxS (talk) 19:41, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
I think that they should be merged as they are essentially the same think. Non epileptic seizures and psychogenic seizure are subtypes of seizure however convulsions is just a laymen term for seizures. I looks at the classification system Seizure types and it does not appear to mention convulsions.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:37, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Both our seizure and seizure types articles deal solely with epileptic seizures. The reason they are at seizure and not epileptic seizure is our WP:COMMONNAME policy. There is an argument that they should be at the full unambiguous name and that seizure should be a DAB. However, that would require fixing many links and break WP:COMMONNAME. This is the problem we have that accurate naming conflicting with WP policy. The proposed mergers don't help without fixing the above accurate naming issues.

A convulsion is a muscle spasm and when the cause is epileptic, the precise term would be a clonic seizure, which is listed in seizure types, and this can occur as a phase within a tonic-clonic seizure that many people are familiar with. An older term was grand mal seizure. But convulsions can have non-epileptic causes. There are many non-convulsive epileptic seizure types, though many people (including medics) are unfamiliar with them. The word "convulsion" isn't just a lay term: it accurately describes the visible manifestation that the patient or an observer saw.

The term seizure is imprecise but when used by medics is nearly always an abbreviated way of saying "epileptic seizure". A medic wouldn't describe a heart attack as a seizure or a fit of rage as a seizure. The word "fit" also has a broad range of uses, and is used by both lay and medics as a word for epileptic seizures too.

Non-epileptic seizures (of which psychogenic seizures are one kind) are a different kettle of fish. Some might argue they are simply a classification of misdiagnoses rather than a disorder someone should be diagnosed with. For example, someone might be suspected of having seizures but it turns out they are having fainting fits. They don't belong in the ILAE classification of (epileptic) seizures. To say they are a "subtype" of seizure is wrong in much the same way as a classification of animals doesn't have "stuffed toy" as a subtype, even though "teddy bear" shares the same word and has some similarities with a "bear". Colin°Talk 22:00, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

It may be helpful to remember that WP:COMMONNAME allows many specific exceptions and WP:MEDMOS#Naming conventions is an important one. The argument, in brief, is that COMMONNAME is a default position where no other considerations overrule it. In the case of medicine-related articles, universally recognised naming and classification schemes exist and it makes sense to use those, rather than try to reach a consensus on what is the commonest name used in English. Redirects will always take care of the synonyms. Since it seems our Seizure article deals almost exclusively with epileptic seizures, I'm attracted to the idea of renaming it to Epileptic seizure and creating a dab page at Seizure to replace Seizure (disambiguation). The alternative would be to split off Epileptic seizure and re-write Seizure as a summary article, covering all of our articles that contain the word seizure in the title, as well as Convulsion. I suspect that the latter would be overkill, and that a reader looking for an article on seizures would be as well served by a well-constructed dab page.
As an aside to Colin, it's also interesting to note that Wikipedia's classification system is not always consistent. Hopkin Green Frog, a stuffed toy, is in Category:Fictional frogs and toads, which is a sub-category of Category:Animals in popular culture, which is a sub-category of Category:Animals. So there's at least one stuffed toy in Animals (although, perversely it's not in Category:Stuffed toys!) <grin> --RexxS (talk) 23:21, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Even though I agree convulsions is technically slightly different than seizure I do not think it warrants its own page but could be satisfactorily explained in the definitions section of the seizure article along with pseudoseizures.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:04, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Since the Convulsion article is so short, I'm tempted to agree, James. The two problems I can foresee are: (1) that (per WP:MEDMOS#Sections), there is no Definition section, and the lead should contain very little material not covered elsewhere in the article; (2) we should have a section that Convulsion would redirect to. I suppose that the contents of the Convulsion article could be written into the lead of the Seizure article and Convulsion redirected to Seizure, but I'm not sure that improves things for the reader. --RexxS (talk) 00:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Agree that one good solid article under seizure is the best way forward. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:44, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
If you look at the Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-related_articles)#Symptoms_or_signs it does have a section for definitions. I have added definitions as an option to WP:MEDMOS as the classification section is usually a good area to define related terms. If the convulsion section than becomes to big it can be slit off but I think as there is so much overlap between these terms that this will probably not be an issue.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
That looks sensible, James. I was looking only at WP:MEDMOS#Diseases or disorders or syndromes as that was where I thought epileptic seizures fitted, and that part of MEDMOS didn't have a definitions section until you just added it. I'd say go ahead with the merge. You might want to use the formal procedure or just drop a notice on the Talk:Convulsion page. --RexxS (talk) 07:15, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I'll have a think about convulsion to see if it could be expanded or would remain little more than a dictdef. I'm a bit confused about Casliber's point. What would the "one good solid article" cover? I would be very much opposed to an article (as opposed to a DAB) that mixed epileptic and non-epileptic "seizures": this is never ever done in the literature and would confuse the readers. Again, this would be like animal having paragraphs on the stuffed variety. Colin°Talk 08:02, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Wrt renaming seizure to epileptic seizure and having Seizure (disambiguation) become seizure. WP:COMMONNAME recognises there are competing arguments for the current situation and the suggested one. Precision is the main reason for using epileptic seizure. But it fails on the recognizable, easy to find, concise and consistent tests. For example, the test for a name "which editors will most naturally link from other articles". The links seizure or seizures are used 1,101 times; the links epileptic seizure and epileptic seizures are used only 281 times. Nearly all of those 1,101 times refer to an epileptic seizure, though in some cases it may be hard to know.

The other test is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, where we judge whether "epileptic seizure" is what is nearly always meant by the term "seizure". I believe it is. This is reinforced by the article linking stats.

Lastly, our policy requires us to be "guided by the usage in reliable sources". A search on PubMed for article titles, shows that "seizure" or "seizures" are used 21,871 times and "epileptic seizure" or "epileptic seizures" are used only 1,777 times. Again, the articles with "seizure" in the title are almost universally referring to an epileptic seizure.

If this was an non-hyperlinked medical encyclopaedia, I'd probably vote for the article to be epileptic seizure as this is the precise term. But Wikipedia isn't. Colin°Talk 09:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Another option is to rename seizure to epileptic seizure, keep seizure as a redirect to epileptic seizure, leave seizure (disambiguation) as is, and redirect convulsions to epileptic seizures. A hatnote, such as {{Redirect6|seizure|non-epileptic seizures|Non-epileptic seizure}}, should be added to epileptic seizure, which would say "seizure" redirects here. For non-epileptic seizures, see Non-epileptic seizure. For other uses, see seizure (disambiguation). I like the idea to include the definition of convulsion in the epileptic seizure article. This solution is a way to keep the epileptic seizures under the common name and primary topic of seizures, yet still be medically precise. --Scott Alter 14:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Seizure has quite non-medical meanings as well that will not show on PubMed. A court of law may be "seized of a matter", pirates may "seize a ship", and in tribology poorly-lubricated surfaces in contact may "seize" each other. Any of these kinds of seizure could merit articles of their own, but would seem inappropriate to class as "non-epileptic". Seizure should be a simple disambiguation page with epileptic seizure as the first entry. Other medical meanings might come near the top of that page, but users should not need double redirects to find those other meanings. User:LeadSongDog come howl 15:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I still believe that "seizure" has a primary use, and it is an epileptic seizure. Therefore, the epileptic seizure article, whatever it may be called, should be what seizure directs to (whether directly located there or as a redirect), and seizure should not be a disambiguation page. WP:DAB mentions that disambiguation is only needed for existing articles - so if there are no articles about the other uses you have mentioned, they do not need to be disambiguated. The fact that articles on these other uses of "seize" further indicates that they are not the primary topic of the word. The hatnote on seizure currently says, This article is about epileptic seizures. For non-epileptic seizures, see Non-epileptic seizure. For other uses, see Seizure (disambiguation)., which is why I recommended using {{redirect6}}. However, if you believe someone might consider "pirates seizing a ship" to be a "non-epileptic seizure," I might consider making the hatnote, "Seizure" redirects here. For other uses, see Seizure (disambiguation). ({{redirect}}). --Scott Alter 15:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I would be happy with Scott's suggestion.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
In the news, it mostly refers to seizures by authorities. See [4]. User:LeadSongDog come howl 16:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Most of the other uses involve the verb "to seize" but not the noun "seizure". And although "seizure" is used wrt the enforced capture of goods (illegally or legally), it is just a boring word that wouldn't inspire an encyclopaedia article. We aren't a dictionary so don't have to consider all uses of a word to be equal. I think Scott's suggestion could work and I'd certainly be happy with the article being at the precise term and it avoids having over 1000 articles suddenly pointing at a DAB.
Having looked at most of the wikilinks for convulsion, it seems to be generally be being used as a synonym for a seizure. Drugs can be classified as convulsants and anticonvulsants. So turning this into a redirect to epileptic seizure would seem to fit the WP:PRIMARY usage. I think an admin is required to make the proposed changes. Colin°Talk 17:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Have a look at search and seizure. Note that it is not search and seize. This present venue is principally of interest to editors of medical articles, so it is not surprising that editors here are focussed on the medical meanings, but the change being discussed impacts, for example, WP:WikiProject Law where the perception may be different. User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I notified WT:WikiProject Law. User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:30, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I also like Scott's suggestion. If desired, the page can be moved to Epileptic seizure if desired to clarify the medical topic under discussion, so long as Seizure remains a redirect to it. Anecdotally, I work with legal matters as my day job, and I feel strongly that the common usage of seizure means epileptic seizure and so shouldn't be turned in to a summary or dab. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I also agree with Scott's suggestion, and would add that an admin isn't needed to move Seizure to Epileptic seizure over the redirect, since the history is trivial. However, when checking that, I noticed the log:

  • 15:59, 26 June 2008 Fvasconcellos (talk | contribs) (21 bytes) (moved Epileptic seizure to Seizure: per discussion and WP:NC)

So it seems that we're proposing to reverse a move that had discussion in June 2008 – although I don't see that discussion at Talk:Seizure. --RexxS (talk) 19:09, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

There's some conversation regarding that and other related moves here. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:23, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I found the discussion the move refers to at User talk:Colin/Archive 4#Seizure types. The discussion we are having now is not the reverse of the previous discussion. To summarize, in June 2008, Seizure was moved to Epileptic Seizure, and Seizure was turned into a disambiguation page (currently at Seizure (disambiguation)) without consensus. It was then decided that "epileptic seizures" were the primary use of the word "seizure," and Seizure should not be a disambig page. So the dab page formerly at Seizure was moved to Seizure (disambiguation), and Epileptic seizure was moved back to Seizure. At that time, there was no discussion of making Seizure a redirect. Convulsion was not created as its own article until after this discussion, in September 2008. Also, since it seems like Seizure is going to be renamed, should Seizure types also be renamed, perhaps to Epileptic seizure types (or Types of epileptic seizures, Epileptic seizure classification, or Classification of epileptic seizures)? --Scott Alter 19:26, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I thought we had discussed this all before, glad you found the link to remind me. Note the situation at June 2008 was a result undiscussed changes by Tatterfly. I think Fvasconcellos mostly moved things back to how they always had been, with the exception that convulsion became an article rather than the redirect to seizure that it was. So I think the above commentary just confuses things by describing a temporary and broken situation. The last time, we nearly went for something close to the option suggested by Stott but chickened out and just reverted back to how it was. Although there are WP:NC arguments for using the shortened for seizure as the main article, there are also WP:NC arguments for using the precise term provided the shortened form (the common form) doesn't become a DAB. I don't know if there are any double-redirect problems with making seizure are redirect: perhaps they need fixed too. I think the case for moving seizure types is less strong as we should favour the concise term unless there are good reasons. Colin°Talk 20:28, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks very much for finding the previous discussion. That makes things much clearer now, as we don't need to worry about a previous consensus on the actual article name. Since Seizure is at present in the scope only of WikiProject Medicine, it seems clear to me that WP:MEDMOS#Naming conventions is the principal guidance to follow. The current article is wholly about epileptic seizure and that should be the name of the article. I understand that it's not quite as clear-cut as the situation with Heart attack and Myocardial infarction, but I think the principle remains, as well as satisfying a desire that article titles be precise and unambiguous as far as possible. As the primary use of the word, Seizure should redirect to Epileptic seizure with the {{redirect6}} hatnote that Scott suggests. For me it's important to retain the link to Non-epileptic seizure (which does need improvement), as I'm more normally concerned with seizures resulting from CNS Oxygen toxicity, which I don't think meet the definition of epileptic, but are a concrete example of a seizure as a symptom of another condition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RexxS (talk • contribs) 21:44, 23 April 2010
Just for the record: seizure is the accepted medical term for an epileptic seizure (witness the 20,000 usages in journal article titles on Pubmed, and in fact there is a journal called "Seizure"). So this isn't really a MEDMOS vs NC argument. It is more about deciding which of the various conflicting WP:NC qualities we should favour (precision over conciseness, etc). I'm going to post a notice on the seizure article pointing to this debate. Colin°Talk 09:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I can't figure out what template to add to seizure to point to this discussion. Anyone help? Colin°Talk 09:37, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I've simply posted a notice linking to this section at Talk:Seizure#Suggested move to Epileptic seizure. If we need to make a move request, then that section can be referred to in the template requesting the move, and will serve as a permanent marker in the article history to our debate. I'm happy to defer to you in the argument that seizure is an accepted medical term, but would then suggest that – because an article covering all uses of seizure as a medical term would be impossibly huge – we should be up-front and call the present article 'Epileptic seizure' as that is precisely its subject. --RexxS (talk) 12:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Another just-for-the-record: not all seizures are convulsions (e.g. absence seizures, complex partial seizures, atonic seizures). Colin alluded to this at the start of the discussion and of course it's made clear in the articles, but I thought it was worth mentioning explicitly here. Neurotip (talk) 19:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
I thought I mentioned that explicitly in the second comment of this discussion. Before we wind this up by repeating ourselves further, can I just ask if the implication in Convulsion that convulsions can occur without seizure is also true? The article mentions electric shock, but there's no source to back any of that up. The article Electric shock doesn't mention convulsions, other than stating that the objective of the Electroconvulsive therapy is to induce a seizure. The ECT article is rather more explicit in stating that it induces a clonic seizure, but doesn't back that up with a source. I would be nice to find a reliable medical source that clearly states the relationship between seizure and convulsion. --RexxS (talk) 20:53, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
The principle difference is that a convulsion is an observable symptom that anyone from parent to neurologist can use to describe what occurred. An epileptic seizure says something about the cause (though doesn't on its own imply epilepsy). Unless an EEG is being taken and the results of the EEG interpreted by an expert, it can sometimes be hard to determine whether an event was really an epileptic seizure. Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures can include convulsions that mimic seizures. Electricity could cause a seizure but can also make a frog's legs twitch. Dorling's medical dictionary mentions a "tetanic convulsion" which seems to have no neurological aspect. Colin°Talk 22:23, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I did not realise that I would have kicked off such a debate. :) I have been convinced that there is indeed a difference between convulsion and seizure, despite that they are commonly used interchangably. Hopefully a sensible agreement can be reached or consensus. Perhaps what is needed is a vote to gather people's views together more clearly.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:32, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick note – before this gets archived – that Scott has now kindly done the work of moving Seizure to Epileptic seizure and used {{Redirect6}} to make a sensible hatnote. Hopefully, this will stick and should then reflect much of the consensus here (in case editors want to refer to it in the future). --RexxS (talk) 23:37, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

To reiterate, I only moved Seizure to Epileptic seizure, as there seemed to be consensus for that move. I did not touch Convulsion, but something should probably still be done between it and Epileptic seizure. --Scott Alter (talk) 02:07, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
To add to convulsion we also have fasciculation, twitch, and tremor. Do we need all these terms separate Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:23, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
What would you merge to? How would that be better? Colin°Talk 08:06, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Have added the term to the main twitch page. A convulsion is twitching. Wondering if we should add seizures too?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:50, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Rubeosis

Would someone create a stub on the term rubeosis?? Thanks in advance! ---kilbad (talk) 23:55, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean just reddening of the skin, or are you referring to rubeosis iridis, a specific pathology causing reddening of the iris from neovascularization after surgery or trauma? SBHarris
The term as used in this list. ---kilbad (talk) 20:45, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Münchausen by Internet

We have a page called Münchausen by Internet which is currently listed as a GA under the WP:MED project. It gets 8 pubmed hits. Wondering if other could take a look? --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:21, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Pretending to be someone that you aren't is a social phenomenon, not merely a medical one, so I don't think that PubMed hits is the obvious measure of its notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I think that this is a notible article. I know people who have been victims of what is described in that article and there has been some high profile cases in the media over the years. The sourcing will not be able to reach the standard of well researched disorders such as alziehmers, alcoholism or asthma etc but that is just the name of the game; we do our best using the best available sources on the subject matter, which may be substandard for certain disorders or phenomena.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 17:35, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
I am impressed by the quality of the article. It is good enough to make me wonder if it was published elsewhere. alteripse (talk) 22:29, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
If it was, I can't find any sign of it online. One simple method of looking for plagiarism is to search Google for unusual phrases, such as "development of factitious disorders in online venues" or "monk with end-stage cancer". The only results are obvious mirrors of Wikipedia, such as Nethelper.com. I'd guess that it's simply a well-written article. --RexxS (talk) 01:38, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Harm reduction

It looks like there's a relatively civil POV battle at Harm reduction, and it might be helpful to have more editors adding their comments. Most of it revolves around the drug policies in Sweden, so if there's anyone who reads Swedish or is familiar with their program, your involvement would be especially helpful.

The dispute largely involves the need to accurately interpreting sources (without going well beyond them), so I suspect that many of our editors could be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

List of causes of... articles

Are lists such as List of causes of diarrhea and List of causes of fever acceptable topics? Tim Vickers (talk) 20:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

They're fundamentally lists of differential diagnoses, and as such, I think they're sourceable (and therefore probably WP:Notable). Whether they're really desirable is a different story.
Another proposed approach is to add an external link to an outside list, as discussed above. An external link has the advantage of being less work for us, and the disadvantage of not taking readers to the Wikipedia articles about the individual ddxes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I feel that the lists are desirable, as they are typically fairly comprehensive, provide references, and educate the reader. Immunize (talk) 20:56, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I do not think we can do these lists well and therefore they think they should be discourage. Have suggested as WIAD mentioned that we add a link to DiagnosisPro which does an excellent job of differentials and does by the way take suggestion. Than possibly get rid of all these lists. Template_talk:Infobox_symptom#Differential_diagnosis. I recommend that when writing articles about signs and symptoms that rather than writing the differential in list form we provide a brief summary of each condition mentioned such as has been done at limp and testicular pain.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Why not use DiagnosisPro as a source, rather then adding an external link and then mass-deleting lists? Immunize (talk) 21:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Problems with using DP extensively as a source is copyright issues as this would basically be a cut and past. How many of these lists do we have? I am suggested to keep the info in article and expand each to a brief summary of the condition with hopefully comments on the relative prevalence of different condition in the DD.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
(ec) I think the problem with these articles is that, from my perspective, they sort of encourage people to use WP for medical advice. If people want to look up diarrhoea, they go to the diarrhoea article, but people with those symptoms who want to look it up could often go to one of these lists to find out what is causing it, and misunderstand something or get worried, partly because it is out of context. IMO, I think these are only desirable if they provide sufficient context and additional information, for example the prevalence of the conditions, rather than just a list, as one would find if it were part of the main article. Jhbuk (talk) 21:11, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It already states that WP should not be used for medical advice, but if you feel it is still an issue, I would suggest putting a statement on every list of symptom causes explicitly stating that this list should not be used as medical advice. We could even create a template for this purpose. Immunize (talk) 21:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles: A disclaimer is neither necessary nor appropriate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes. My point was really more that these types of article specifically are probably more prone to people using them for advice than with most articles, and that they could do more harm than good if we don't put the information in context. Jhbuk (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

All lists should be merged with their parent articles. If a cause for diarrhoea is not worth mentioning on diarrhea, it is probably not notable for the list either. JFW | T@lk 22:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with JFW and that without appropriate context these lists should probably be deleted not cut and pasted and moved over to the main article.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I was not aware that disclaimers were not allowed on articles, but does a template really count as a disclaimer if is says sometinhing like "not intended as medical advice"? Immunize (talk) 23:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes that would count as a disclaimer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, I feel that if the lists cannot remain in there current form, they should be merged into there parent articles not deleted. For instance, I feel list of causes of fever should be merged into Fever, which has only a short causes section. However I still feel that it would be best for the lists to remain in there current form. Yes, there is a risk that these pages could be taken as advice, but we have an appropriate disclamier that should dissuade this use of the lists here. Immunize (talk) 23:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I have no concerns about this being health advice. My concern is I do not think large lists of differentials are encyclopedic. There are 744 causes of abdo pain [5] 1089 causes for fever [6]. This IMO is not what we should be doing. Others do it so much better and we should just link to them than do what we are here for WP:ENC. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Completely agree wrt encyclopaedic purpose. It would be encyclopaedic to indicate common causes in the parent articles. Listing all possible causes dilutes the value of the list so it becomes a pointless exercise. Colin°Talk 09:16, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree completely: much better to add a external link.--Garrondo (talk) 11:05, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I completely disagree. As WhatamIdoing (talk · contribs) said, these lists are notable, and most of the lists are well sourced (for instance, in my list of causes of fever, each disease listed has a reference that certifies that it can cause fever, so they are well sourced and meet WP:NOTABLE guidelines. Best wishes. Immunize (talk) 14:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

We have no notability guideline for lists; WP:NOTABLE is irrelevant to this discussion. The consensus here is that these lists in their present form (a bare list that mixes the exotic with the commonplace) are pointless. I see from your talk page that you have assumed that since other such lists haven't been deleted that they are therefore useful. Our Deletion policy wouldn't delete such a list but don't confuse that with whether the list has merit. Colin°Talk 21:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
No, I said that the lists are probably WP:Notable; I make no definitive or authoritative statement, because, as Colin indicates, there are no simple rules for determining notability for lists. Even if the subject of the list is accepted, notable subjects are not required to be kept as separate articles.
Additionally, a laundry list may be less useful for our readers than an explanation. Take fever as an example: nearly all fevers are caused by infectious diseases. Isn't it more useful and more readable to learn "probably caused by an infectious disease" than to hear "probably caused by an infectious disease, and here are the names of nine hundred infectious diseases in alphabetical order"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with this emerging consensus that a giant list of causes is useless. It makes more sense to list in the parent article several of the major causes of (insert symptom here), and then supply external links that go into more detail. PDCook (talk) 21:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

So, my lists are in no danger of deletion? Immunize (talk) 21:52, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

No, the consensus seems to be that these lists are not encyclopedic. I agree with that consensus. The useful parts of these lists should be merged into the parent articles. Eubulides (talk) 21:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
I would like to add to PdCooks comment that a brief summary of each condition listed in the differential would put the condition into context and add greatly to the article.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be consensus that these lists are not useful. What should we do with them? Can we identify them here? I can merge some of the smaller ones, but some of the list articles are quite large and I wouldn't know where to start. I should mention that User:Immunize is still generating these lists, such as List of causes of fatigue and List of causes of emesis. PDCook (talk) 23:48, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It is very difficult to compile thorough differential diagnosis lists. The best ones tend to be found in review articles and texts written by expert practitioners. I just did a quick review of DiagnosisPro and tested several problems with which i have some expertise: growth failure, hypoglycemia in infancy, adrenal failure, and ambiguous genitalia. It failed even to mention some major causes in a routine differential for each of the problems, leaving out whole categories of disease. I would not even recommend it as a starting point for a medical student. We should not be linking anything to it.

Despite the obvious effort put into them, User:Immunize's lists are similarly challenged. The two I checked are so incomplete as to be fairly useless. The two I just looked at (fatigue and emesis) feature exotic problems rarely seen for the last 25 years (e.g. Reye syndrome) while missing common ones (e.g. eating disorders). Anyone with expertise can look at those lists and immediately think of several important conditions omitted, while anyone without expertise has no way to guess how incomplete the lists are. Without some system for trying to achieve at least completeness of the major causes, it's hard to imagine who might benefit from partial lists. There is no way to say this without seeming to deprecate user:Immunize's efforts, but I agree with JFW that without article context and interpretive guidance, the lists themselves have little value here. alteripse (talk) 21:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Many of diagnosis pro's differentials have over 1000 items listed as differentials. I think this only just emphasis the difficult of generating such lists. The people who started diagnosis pro are not pediatricians so some of the missed content is understandable. Does anyone have a better source of differentials? I think we should link to something and not attempt to generate them here.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:55, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
The DiagnosisPro lists for ambiguous genitalia, hypoglycemia in infancy, and growth failure are not adult problems are they? They are so bad I would reject them from an intern: they look left over from 1975, and I promise all three differential diagnosis lists have changed immensely from that decade. I only looked at 4 topics but all were poor-- can you point me to any of their lists that actually include all major (not rare) diagnoses? alteripse (talk) 02:52, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Limp [7] list all the major causes. As does testicular pain [8]. Abdominal pain is also fairly complete. [9] If you have in mind a better site I would be for it. I have no specific attachment to this one.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:24, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
That's exactly the point, James. If Alteripse can find pages that are rubbish, and you can find pages that "ain't bad" there is a serious inconsistency in the quality of DiagnosisPro which badly affects its reliability. The "about" page states that physicians update it from high-quality sources, but the process is vague, the criteria are undefined, the physicians are anonymous (another page lists three)... Why should we rely on this if we can use textbooks (Harrison's, for instance), peer-reviewed secondary sources, and such? JFW | T@lk 09:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I am only suggested that sometimes we add a link within the template:infobox symptom when the differential provided is good. I am not suggesting we use this as a reference to generate lists of differentials. I do not think such lists are a good idea here on Wikipedia. BTW if you email them they will update the list with suggestion / sources provided.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
The problem with linking to Harrison's is that most people do not have easy access.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:04, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps if we believe a given page at this website to be reasonably complete, then it could be listed as a plain old External link in an appropriate article. This avoids institutionalizing any single website as "the" source in a template; it would be simple to exclude specific pages identified as inadequate; it would be easy to switch to a different website if a better one were found. Furthermore, it's a well-understood, low-overhead and anti-bureaucratic process. Perhaps if we do this for a while, we'll be able to figure out what might be best in the long-term. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:35, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Update

Update - I have listed the "diarrhoea" and "fever" lists for AFD. If these both lead to deletion decisions then we have a precedent for eliminating the others. Can I remind Immunize to stick carefully to WP:MEDMOS and WP:MEDRS? You are free to observe the process by which experienced editors produce reliable medical content, and emulate their approaches. JFW | T@lk 08:46, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Would a move of my lists to the article incubator for improvement be reasonable? Immunize (talk) 20:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that would be fair. If each of the different conditions were expanded into a short summary discussing how frequently it causes said symptom / sign and than listed in most common to least common I would support its integration into the main article / continued existence of the list.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Update Per AfD discussion, List of causes of fever and List of causes of diarrhea have been deleted. However, several other list articles remain. Personally, I favor improving the articles rather than nominating them for deletion. Immunize (talk) 16:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, I could move the remaining lists to my userspace for improvement, and then move them back into the article space. Immunize (talk) 16:16, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You can always copy and paste articles into your own userspace to work on them if they are not deleted. Articles which have been deleted can be restored to user space by an admin willing to do that - there's a list here: Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles and we have an article giving tips on using your user space here: Wikipedia:Userfication. Hope that helps --RexxS (talk) 17:26, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes drop me a note when you have improved these lists and will be happy toke a look at them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

In what way should the pages be improved-do you think it would be appropriate to add an "other symptoms" section to put the illness into context-for instance, in the case of meningococcemia, saying:Other symptoms of meningococcal meningitis include petechiae and purpura, emesis, severe headache, and meningismus. P.S. You suggested a copy and pastemove of the remaining lists into my userspace, but as far as I know copy and paste moves are not advised. Immunize (talk) 20:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that you carefully consider the results of the AfD discussions. Even hundreds of hours' efforts might not be capable of sufficiently improving some articles. For one thing, you've got to start with a notable topic, no matter what. For another, the list has to make sense for an encyclopedia. Most lists of non-specific symptoms won't do that.
In terms of providing context, I think that the most useful thing would be a set of sources that would allow you to indicate relative prevalence of associated conditions. If a symptom's cause is 99% infectious disease, and 1% genetic, then you don't want readers to leave the list thinking that infection and genetic causes are equally likely. Doing this will cut down on the incidence of medical student syndrome and accidental zebra-chasing among our readers.
Jmh649 is probably not suggesting that you use copy-and-paste to move the page out of the mainspace to work on it; I think he's suggesting that you leave the mainspace copy where it is, and put an entirely separate copy in your userspace to work on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes thanks for clarifying that. Please look at the differential diagnosis section of testicular pain [10] for what I am suggesting.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:26, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I would think that, if the articles are changed to something more similar to what you showed me at Testicular pain, they would need to be moved to a title such as Causes of fever, as they would no longer be in list format. Immunize (talk) 14:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes agree. I do not feel that a list is useful for this type of information. And yes if these are expanded they should be moved to Differential diagnosis for a fever. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that this would be the title for the articles in question. Immunize (talk) 14:39, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

 Done I have moved my userspace copy of List of causes of fever to the title you suggested. Should I move the lists still in the article space to this title as well? Immunize (talk) 15:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't bother -- at this time. The others are still lists at the moment, after all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Working in userspace

Would you recommend me moving the remainder of the lists to my userspace? Immunize (talk) 18:33, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes would think that would be a good idea.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:47, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

 Done I have moved all of the lists to my userspace for improvement. Also, I added Ewing's sarcoma to User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever, and have included a short description of the disease itself. Immunize (talk) 21:02, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Would it be acceptable to copy and paste information from another Wikipedia article (for instance, in the case of Ewings sarcoma) and use that to create a short summary? Immunize (talk) 13:57, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by "another Wikipedia"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I mean another Wikipedia article. Immunize (talk) 14:15, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

If another wiki releases its content under a compatible licence, then we are free to use that content here, as long as it is correctly attributed (a detailed note in the edit summary is generally considered sufficient). However, we must still comply with our sourcing policies. A wiki is not a reliable source (other than for its opinions about itself), so any content imported would still have to have external sources that meet WP:MEDRS in the case of medical articles. --RexxS (talk) 04:32, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

When I say "another wikipedia" I mean another Wikipedia article. Immunize (talk) 14:15, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you can copy information from an article, such as Ewings sarcoma, to use as a summary in another article, such as a list. This is a common behavior when WP:SPLITting articles, although WP:LEAD recommends some thoughtful copyediting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:18, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I have copied and pasted information from Wikipedia into the article User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever, and have also created subsections for each disease in the article. Immunize (talk) 15:05, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. Just remember to always indicate the source of your copy-paste in your edit summary. It means that anyone can trace back via the source article history who the original contributors were. That has normally been taken to satisfy the licence requirement that all contributions are attributed when re-used. --RexxS (talk) 17:45, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

So I should reference the copy-pasted information? Immunize (talk) 18:35, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. If you mean adding citations to material to meet WP:V, then yes, of course. But I was talking about our licence which requires wikipedia material to be attributed (not the same thing as a citation) to the original author when it is re-used. When you add material to an article, you are effectively claiming authorship of what you contribute, unless you make a disclaimer in the edit summary that you are copying someone else's work (which is released under a CC-BY-SA licence). If you summarise, then it's your work and requires nothing more than the usual citations. If you copy near-verbatim from another wikipedia article, then it's best practice to make a note in your edit summary where you took the text from. Hope that is clearer now. --RexxS (talk) 03:52, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

It is verbatim from Wikipedia, because it is a direct copy-paste from a Wikipedia article. So you are saying I should cite it as from wikipedia and note in the edit summary that it is copy-pasted from Wikipedia, right? Immunize (talk) 14:15, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

You just need to state in the edit summary that it is from [[so and so a page]] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:49, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I have improved the article User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever significantly over the past several days, and feel it may soon be time to move it back into the article space. Can an experienced medical wikipedian please look at it and give me their opinion? Immunize (talk) 19:54, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Why has there been no response? I have edited the User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever article significantly, and it is now ready for review and possible move back to the article space. Immunize (talk) 18:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Immunize, I respect the effort that you put in to improve the quality of this list. However Wikipedia is not intended to be a manual or textbook. Indeed apart from the referencing, I don't see that your new version of the list is any better than previous versions. I don't see how this list is useful and I don't think that it has a place in Wikipedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:23, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Are there any other measures I could take to improve the list? Immunize (talk) 22:08, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

As you know, the differential diagnosis for a fever is huge. I don't think that putting all of this information into one article is helpful. This is not the purpose of an encyclopedia. Axl ¤ [Talk] 07:48, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Would it be more appropriate to split the article into smaller articles such as "infectious causes for fever" or "neoplastic causes for fever"? Immunize (talk) 12:48, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I have posted comments here User_talk:Immunize/Differential_diagnosis_for_a_fever Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:50, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

So, as I understand it, you feel that this article is still a list despite the addition of large amounts of text in an attempt to put the list into context? Immunize (talk) 16:53, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I suppose I am starting to doubt that these lists will ever be improved beyond there current state, given that you do not feel that, even after at least a month of work the lists are still not ready for move to the article space. Immunize (talk) 19:03, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

In my opinion, the quality of this article is much improved. However I'm still not convinced that it should be in Wikipedia. I await the views of other WikiProject Medicine editors. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:44, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
I think the article needs much working and copy-editing before being ready to move to the main space, and the article have no standers, I mean there is some expansion on some diseases, and there is a little about other, it needs more working MaenK.A.Talk 21:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Before I would be happy to see this go back to the main space I wish to see the relative importance of the different causes conveyed. Otherwise this is little more than just a list of causes which is of questionable encyclopedic content as the potential list can reach to thousands.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:24, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
To user madhero88:Please specify what improvement you feel that the list needs prior to a move back to the article space. Immunize (talk) 20:26, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I am becoming somewhat exasperated with the lack of response after at least a week of waiting for a reply. I currently do not know what to do with these lists; however I am considering splitting them into several subarticles, as currently the list is so long (200+ kilobytes) that I am having technical difficulties editing it. Immunize (talk) 16:28, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
UpdateI have split the "infectious" section into the article User:Immunize/Infectious causes for a fever.
I am now splitting the User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever article into multiple smaller articles. My plan is that I will improve the smaller articles, and then copy-paste the improved text back into the main article ( User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever ). I will then (after consensus that these list is ready for the article space) move the main article ( User:Immunize/Differential diagnosis for a fever ) back into the article space. Best wishes. Immunize (talk) 18:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

De Sanctis-Cacchione syndrome

This page redirected to xeroderma pigmentosum, but it's not the same syndrome. I have thought opportune to cancel the redirect... I'm waiting for someone of you who can be engaged to write a more complete voice. --Ceccomaster (talk) 14:16, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I made a stub. ---kilbad (talk) 14:33, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
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