The ritual of routine visits for most chronic diseases usually includes monitoring to check on
the progress or regress of the disease and the development of complications. Such checks …

This is the third in the BMJ's series of theme issues on managing chronic diseases. This
focus reflects the increasing demands on practitioners and health systems around the globe …

Editor—Partnership with patients in sharing medical decisions is an idea of paramount civil
importance for modern health systems, as raised in correspondence in the eBMJ. 1 …

The prevalence of asthma has increased in most countries since the 1970s. Levels may
have plateaued in developed countries but as prevalence is associated with urbanisation …

Chronic diseases have been around as long as humans. But now, in most industrialised
nations and in many developing countries, they predominate among the leading causes of …

Questionnaires offer an objective means of collecting information about people's knowledge,
beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour. 2 3 Do our patients like our opening hours? What do …

Only about 50% of patients with chronic diseases take their medicines in therapeutically
effective doses. 1 Although the cost of non-compliance in illness and premature death is …

Most doctors believe medicine to be a force for good. Why else would they have become
doctors? Yet while all know medicine's power to harm individual patients and whole …

When the medicines that doctors prescribe fail to produce the benefit they expect, they often
respond by varying the dose or selecting an alternative medicine. Thus doctors seem to …

The drug industry does many good things. It produces medicines that can improve health
and save lives. It creates jobs and stimulates economic growth. Sadly it does bad things too …