Clinical pharmacology (CP) as a discipline comes in many guises. The perception for a medical student, and for many doctors, may be that of a painful series of lists of drugs to learn, the drugs being traditionally classified by functionality and effects. This article is available only as a PDF....

It was Charcot (1868) who first made the formal pathological correlation between lesions in the central nervous system (CNS) and a disorder termed, ‘la sclérose en plaques’. Today, a number of other immune-mediated, demyelinating CNS diseases have been recognised and hence, classical multiple sclerosis (MS) is now specified as...

The prevalence of nosocomial infections due to Gram-positive bacteria has increased dramatically over the last two decades. In North America, Gram-positive cocci now are responsible for nearly two thirds of all bloodstream and skin and soft tissue infections. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download...

In 1898, Bastian first reported on the case of a man who had been admitted to hospital with hemiplegia and aphasia, but who had transient difficulty in deglutition. Necropsy revealed that apart from two limited lesions in the left hemisphere, the patient’s brain was normal. This article is available only...

Pre-eclampsia is a major cause of adverse obstetric outcome. It remains one of the leading causes of maternal mortality1 and continues to contribute significantly to perinatal morbidity and mortality. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF” on top to view the full article.

Urinary incontinence is the involuntary loss of urine which is objectively demonstrable and is a social or hygienic problem. Trivial as it may sound, it is in fact a major geriatric syndrome which may pose as major public health threat with increasing magnitude in this ageing society, due to...

The age-old adage of “Prevention is Better than Cure” is still very relevant in today’s practice of medicine. Many randomised population trials have already shown that colorectal cancer mortality is reducible through early detection and screening. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download PDF” on...

“A properly planned and executed clinical trial is a powerful technique for assessing the effectiveness of an intervention”. While each new clinical trial involves unique issues relevant to a particular condition or disease, overarching common guidelines for all studies provide the framework for obtaining meaningful results. This article is available...

Thank you Madam Chairman. First, I would like to thank the Singapore Radiological Society and the College of Radiologists, Academy of Medicine Singapore for giving me the honor of delivering this the 4th FY Khoo Memorial Lecture, 2008. This article is available only as a PDF. Please click on “Download...

The past decades have witnessed many research endeavours to understand neurological soft signs (NSS) in schizophrenia and its related disorders. These efforts mainly focused on the relationship between NSS and patients’ clinical and cognitive features, demographic characteristics, and intelligence, as reviewed by Chen et al in 2003.1 Recent discussions...

There has been growing interest in the use of dietary supplementation to treat psychiatric disorders. In particular, supplementation of omega-3 fatty acids has been researched as a potential means of preventing and managing psychopathology. These fatty acids are ingested through dietary sources (e.g. fish), with inadequate concentrations implicated in...