Physician scores on a national clinical skills examination as predictors of complaints to medical regulatory authorities.

Context: Poor patient-physician communication increases the risk of patient complaints and malpractice claims. To address this problem, licensure assessment has been reformed in Canada and the United States, including a national standardized assessment of patient-physician communication and clinical history taking and examination skills.

Objective: To assess whether patient-physician communication examination scores in the clinical skills examination predicted future complaints in medical practice.

Bronchial artery embolization in adults with cystic fibrosis: impact on the clinical course and survival.

Purpose: Although bronchial artery embolization (BAE) is effective in the acute control of recurrent or major hemoptysis in adults with cystic fibrosis, outcomes after embolization are not well known. The objective of this retrospective study was to evaluate respiratory function, survival, and hemoptysis-free survival in adult patients with cystic fibrosis treated for hemoptysis with BAE.

Materials And Methods: Of 297 patients with cystic fibrosis hospitalized from 1990 to 2004, 30 patients (mean age, 26.

Modeling cumulative dose and exposure duration provided insights regarding the associations between benzodiazepines and injuries.

Background And Objectives: Accurate assessment of medication impact requires modeling cumulative effects of exposure duration and dose; however, postmarketing studies usually represent medication exposure by baseline or current use only. We propose new methods for modeling various aspects of medication use history and employment of them to assess the adverse effects of selected benzodiazepines.

Study Design And Setting: Time-dependent measures of cumulative dose or duration of use, with weighting of past exposures by recency, were proposed.

Adherence during an individualized home based 12-week exercise program in women with fibromyalgia.

Objective: Treatment recommendations for fibromyalgia (FM) include regular physical exercise. In this prospective study we examined predictors for adherence to stretching and aerobic exercises in women provided with an individualized home based program.

Methods: Thirty-nine women kept exercise diaries for 12 weeks.

Modifiable risk factors associated with clearance of type-specific cervical human papillomavirus infections in a cohort of university students.

Background: Previous findings regarding risk factors for human papillomavirus (HPV) persistence, other than viral determinants, identified from prospective cohort studies have been inconsistent in part because study designs have differed with respect to differing HPV detection methods and varying lengths of follow-up time. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to continue the search for epidemiologic risk factors of persistent cervical HPV infections and determine what behaviors differed between those women with transient HPV infections and those women who cannot clear their type-specific HPV infections.

Methods: Female university students (n = 621) in Montreal were followed for 24 months at 6-month intervals.

A 5-year prospective assessment of the risk associated with individual benzodiazepines and doses in new elderly users.

Objectives: To determine the risk of injury associated with the new use of individual benzodiazepines and dosage regimens in the elderly.

Design: Prospective database cohort study with 5 years of follow-up.

Setting: Quebec, Canada.

Longitudinal patterns of new Benzodiazepine use in the elderly.

Purpose: To characterize longitudinal patterns of Benzodiazepine use in the elderly.

Methods: Prospective cohort of 78 367 community-dwelling Quebec residents aged 66 years or more who were new Benzodiazepine users, was followed for 5 years, 1989-1994. Data acquired from four population-based, provincial administrative databases were used to create time-dependent measures of change in dosage, switching or adding Benzodiazepines for 11 drugs listed in the provincial formulary.

Bias due to aggregation of individual covariates in the Cox regression model.

The impact of covariate aggregation, well studied in relation to linear regression, is less clear in the Cox model. In this paper, the authors use real-life epidemiologic data to illustrate how aggregating individual covariate values may lead to important underestimation of the exposure effect. The issue is then systematically assessed through simulations, with six alternative covariate representations.

Flexible modeling of exposure-response relationship between long-term average levels of particulate air pollution and mortality in the American Cancer Society study.

Accurate estimation of the exposure-response relationship between environmental particulate air pollution and mortality is important from both an etiologic and regulatory perspective. However, little is known about the actual shapes of these exposure-response curves. The objective of this study was to estimate the exposure-response relationships between mortality and long-term average city-specific levels of sulfates and fine particulate matter (PM(2.