This month, Virtual Mentor's theme issue editor for March 2012, Alon Neidich, interviewed Dr. Al Roth about the growing importance of paired kidney exchanges for incompatible patient-donor pairs.
Patients who use drugs intravenously may be at high risk for relapse, but their situation is no more futile than that of persons with diabetes and coronary artery disease who smoke and frequent all-you-can-eat buffets.
A consensus has emerged that the paternalism behind use of the provocative saline infusion test for nonepileptic seizures cannot be justified because the harms to the patient, the physician, and their relationship exceed the benefits.
Physicians should use evidence-based guidelines as a starting point to make sound clinical treatment decisions for a patient's individual medical needs.