Dear Editor, The Academy of Medicine, Singapore (AMS) guideline on the use of sedation by non-anaesthesiologists during gastrointestinal endoscopy in the hospital setting and an...

Dear Editor, I refer to the editorial “Ensuring safe sedation during gastroendoscopy”1 and the original article “Academy of Medicine, Singapore clinical guideline on the use...

Dear Editor, Propofol is a potent intravenous sedative-hypnotic agent. Its popularity for sedation has increased in the last 3 decades because of its smooth, rapid...

Dear Editor, We read with interest the paper by Ang et al.1 on Singapore guidelines in the use of sedation by non-anaesthesiologists during gastrointestinal endoscopy...

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is widely practised for cardiopulmonary arrests with variable success. The initial intention was to defibrillate patients with ventricular fibrillation after acute...

Penicillium marneffei is a dimorphic fungus that can cause infection in immunocompromised hosts. Reports on infection with this organism were initially uncommon, but after...

There has been a rapid increase in clinical trial activity in Singapore and other parts of Asia. Randomised clinical trials are the “gold standard”...

Western literature reports a very high incidence of deep vein thrombosis in its population especially after orthopaedic surgery. In total knee replacement without prophylaxis,...

The National University of Singapore was started in 1905. Since then, it has trained many generations of medical practitioners. This article is available only as...

Melanocytic naevi are benign proliferation of melanocytes of congenital and acquired types which usually appear during adolescence or early adult life. Naevi are of...

Advances in diagnosis and therapy in the second half of the 20th century have lead to impressive improvements in survival for patients with many...

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) refers to patients’ perceptions of their own functioning and well-being. HRQoL is increasingly being used as a primary or...

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has been identified as a new clinical entity in the year 2003. It was on 12 March 2003...

Anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge-eating disorder are the three best described ‘eating disorders’. All three are predominantly disorders of women with the core symptoms...

The World Health Organization defines suicide as an act with a fatal outcome that is deliberately initiated and performed by the person himself or...

The only published study on Behcet’s disease in Singapore by Tan E et al (34 patients at the National Skin Centre) found that only...

The Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is an acute, frequently severe evolution of a demyelinating inflammatory polyradiculopathy with an autoimmune pathogenesis. In developed countries, GBS is...

Family history has been shown to be a risk factor for the development of allergic rhinitis (AR) and atopic dermatitis (AD). However, the increase...

Dengue fever/dengue haemorrhagic fever (DF/DHF) is a re-emerging disease that is endemic in the tropical world. It is caused by 4 closely-related dengue viruses...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a recently defined illness caused by a novel coronavirus. The outbreak in Singapore originated from Hong Kong via...

Sleep physicians have only recently began to learn much about the epidemiology of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) from large, well conducted prospective community-based studies. These...

The Singapore Medical School was established by the British colonial government in 1905, and formally celebrates its centenary in 2005. The School was the...

This is a proud year for the medical profession in Singapore, as we celebrate 100 years of medical education. As the oldest faculty in...

For a very long time, King Edward VII (endearingly abbreviated “KE”) was synonymous with the medical school and its associated hall of residence. The...

A record of Diagnostic Radiology would be incomplete without reference to Wilheim Roentgen, who discovered the rays that he could not comprehend; hence, X-rays....

Fungaemia carries with it high mortality rates and appropriate as well as timely antifungal therapy has been shown to be life saving. Amphotericin B...

In this issue, the articles (historical, original and review papers) highlight the extent and problem of antimicrobial resistance in Singapore. The authors should be...

Suicide worldwide is estimated to represent 1.8% of the total global burden of disease in 1998, and 2.4% in countries with market and former...

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a leading cause of vision loss in Asia. Singapore has one of the highest prevalence rates of diabetes mellitus (DM)...

Mahathir Mohamad was born in 1925 in Alor Setar, Kedah. In 1947, after living through the turbulent times of the Second World War, he...

Carcinoma of the oesophagus is a relatively uncommon malignancy in Singapore and incidence rates have been declining since 1968. A total of 506 cases...

The Singapore healthcare philosophy aims to establish a healthy population through preventive healthcare programmes and public health education. Public education usually emphasises the adverse...

The danger posed by emerging infectious diseases has become greater in the past few years with the World Health Organization (WHO) warning that the...

Benzodiazepines (BDZs) (commonly known as “sleeping pills”) are routinely and successfully used in the treatment of sleep and anxiety disorders. However, studies have indicated...

A history of the Chapter of Pathologists would be incomplete without a history of the specialty of Pathology in Singapore. Pathology is in fact...

The transformation of the previous Chapter of Physicians, Academy of Medicine, Singapore to the current College of Physicians, Singapore in 2004 was the outcome...

The arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 herald the birth of western medicine in Singapore. Doctors were then sent here from Britain. These...

The formation of the Singapore Academy of Medicine in the 1950s was the outcome of steady progress in medical education as well as a...

Medulloblastoma (MBL) is the most common type of malignant brain tumour in childhood. It belongs to the group of tumours known as primitive neuroectodermal...

Intravenous thrombolysis in acute cerebral infarction has been proven to be efficacious in improving functional outcome if given within 3 hours from stroke onset.1...

Pathological gambling has been defined as a persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behaviour that disrupts personal, family and work life. The diagnosis is not...

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a common disease in Asia.1 Radiotherapy is the mainstay of treatment. Following radiotherapy, complications like profound sensorineural hearing loss may...

Basic military training (BMT) is seen as a vital initiation phase into military service when new recruits are conditioned to the rigours of military...

The subject of place of death was brought to the forefront of the medical community in July 2004 when 2 important publications were released;...

Singapore is a city-state in Southeast Asia, with a total population in 2007 of 4,839,400, of which 3,642,700 (75.3%) are Singaporean residents. The remaining...

Information and communication technologies, such as internet portal and short message system (SMS), are increasingly used in healthcare delivery worldwide.1,2 Typically, these technologies are...

Intravenous tPA is a proven treatment for acute ischaemic stroke. However as it has to be given in a narrow time window from symptom...

Obesity or excess body fat is strongly associated with enhanced risks of morbidity and mortality, and its prevalence is rapidly escalating worldwide. Despite these...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a major chronic disease globally. With increasing life expectancy, long-term complications of diabetes mellitus leading to significant morbidity and...

Pathological gambling is categorized under the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV-TR) as an impulse control disorder not elsewhere classified....

The advent of the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) era has greatly reduced the mortality and incidence of new diagnoses of acquired immune deficiency...

Since the first case of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was diagnosed in Singapore in May 1985, a total of 4845 cases and 1389 HIV/acquired...

Cutaneous melanoma is the most common cause of mortality amongst skin cancer in Caucasian populations and incidence rates per 100,000 patient years vary between...

Breast cancer is the leading cancer among women in Singapore, accounting for 29% of all cancers occurring in women between 2006 and 2010. Evidence...

Hoarding is defined as the acquisition of, and inability to discard items even though they appear to others to have no value, leading to...

Acute appendicitis is one of the most common causes of acute abdominal pain requiring surgical intervention. The traditional operation of choice was the open...

Osteogenic sarcoma (OS) is a primary malignant tumour of the bone, derived from primitive bone-forming mesenchyme and characterised by the production of osteoid tissue...

The first reported case of liver biopsy was recorded in 1883 by Ehrlich. Since then, the technique of liver biopsy has been modified tremendously...

Similar to other developed countries in Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the population of Singapore is ageing rapidly. In 2011, 9.3% of...

Singapore is experiencing an unprecedented age shift as the post-war baby boomers turn 65 years in 2012. Currently there are 378,700 people aged 65...

Work-related low back disorders consist of both low back pain (LBP) and low back injuries. They are a significant and increasing problem all over...

In 2010, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) and Singapore Healthcare Services (SingHealth) launched an initiative to improve the lives of patients by combining their...

EQ-5D is a tool to measure and value health status. It is a standardised questionnaire that comprises 2 components: a Descriptive System (DS) on...

Transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) has markedly changed the way aortic valve stenosis is treated. It is 18 years since the first patient was...

Singapore confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on 23 January 2020 in a Chinese national from Wuhan, and its first paediatric case on February...