Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

Discussion of the WikiProject Medicine
Older discussions are archived:

• Archive 1: Discussion completed by the end of June 2006.
• Archive 2: Discussion completed by the 10th of November 2006.

Papilledema in need of cleanup

The papilledema article could use and addition. Papilledema is also found in Addison's Disease. This is significant because a positive diagnosis of Addison's would rule out a brain tumor (or at least make it unlikely). (Cited: "Ocular Manifestations of Systemic Disease" by Blaustein. ISBN 0-443-08883-7) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.89.16.66 (talk) 08:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

Peer review request - Gun violence in the United States

Lately, I have been working on criminology topics which is an area that Wikipedia sorely lacks. Often this topic is interdisciplinary and involves public health and medicine, as is the case here. Last weekend, I discovered there was no article on "Gun violence", so started one. Most of the research literature pertains to the United States, so the article has become Gun violence in the United States. Obviously, people have strong POV on this topic. To try and rise above politics, I have only included the highest quality reliable sources (mainly peer reviewed, scholarly journals, many from public health). Personally, I really don't have a POV on this topic, and am staying out of the Gun politics in the United States article. With the gun violence article, I have stayed with presenting the current state of research on this topic. I think is close to featured status, though some "gun rights" folks have already come along and place a neutrality tag on the article. I could really use some peer review on the article, at this point. Do you at all agree with the person who placed the neutrality tag? Any suggestions on making in more NPOV. In reality, I feel that the article deals fairly with both POVs, citing strategies advocated by gun-control folks as ineffective, while citing some strategies advocated by the Bush administration as effective. Do you have any suggestions on improving the article? are there aspects of the topic that are missing? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have filed a formal peer request here, though feel free to leave comments on the article talk page if you prefer. Thanks. --Aude (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Elsevier in need of cleanup

The biggest medical publisher, could really use a good overhaul. Just a head sup for the interested. Circeus 18:14, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Histopathology-india.net

I went on a campaign yesterday to remove all links to histopathology.net yesterday. As a layman, I find this site very suspect - it claims to be written by just one medical doctor (there are hundreds, if not thousands, of detailed pages) and it doesn't seem to be aligned with any university or medical institution like other external links used in medical articles on wikipedia. Also see user talk:Graham87 #Mass-removal of histopathology-india.net links and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam # histopathology-india.net. When I checked special:linksearch this morning, I found that links to the offending site had been added by 124.7.98.26, 221.135.212.9 and 61.0.138.194, all of which come from India. Should I continue removing these links - seeing as they've been added for the last 7 months or so - or just let them be? Graham87 00:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I say delete and it seems JFW also had problems with them.--Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 15:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

See this. I think it's resolved now. Graham87 01:05, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Article rating

Please help rating the articles as we have about 1100 untagged articles. You can help here. NCurse _work 20:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Please review merge proposal for Rickets and Osteomalacia

Hi there. I've proposed a merge of Rickets and Osteomalacia. I do not have a medical background, so this merge may be incorrect, but I was prompted to propose it because the Rickets article currently starts "Osteomalacia, also known as rickets" and I was surprised that Osteomalacia has its own article. I actually bolded Osteomalacia in the lead of the Rickets article before realizing this; it was previously normal text. Mike Dillon 03:48, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

After reviewing the history more thoroughly, it looks like the change from Rickets to Osteomalacia was a copy-and-paste move done by JSpudeman (talk · contribs) on January 5, 2006. Rickets then seems to have been recreated out of thin air on September 12, 2006 by 59.93.2.156 (talk · contribs) (with all sorts of spelling and character encoding issues)... I'm guessing this anonymous user is also Drsibi (talk · contribs) who was editing Osteomalacia around the same time. What a mess. Mike Dillon 04:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Here are some relevant diffs: [1], [2] Mike Dillon 04:02, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Medical equipment articles guidelines

Currently, Project Medicine has some guidelines on the writing of articles on drugs and diseases: what infoboxes to use, what sections to have, etc. I was wondering whether it would be helpful to develop similar guidelines for medical equipment articles. I tried looking into the list of featured articles, as well as A-class ones, and saw none on medical equipment, so I couldn't infer it from there. If this idea is supported, I would be happy to collaborate with someone on this and come up with certain guidelines. Gimlei 16:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Censorship of peer-reviewed depleted uranium facts

Talk:Depleted uranium#Comparison of the two versions contains a comparison of the current version of Depleted uranium with a recent major revision which replaced a lot of what some people had been taking out of it over the past several months. Please have a look and say which version you think should stand. If you want to make some or all of the revisions involved, please be WP:BOLD. LossIsNotMore 10:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Veterinary medicine

I'm not sure if I should post this here or at the clinical medicine wikiproject. Following a discussion at Talk:List of dog diseases, it's become clear that we need to decide whether to always have a separate article for the veterinary aspects of a disease, or if this can be tacked on to the main article (compare lymphoma in animals or cerebellar hypoplasia (non-human) to cryptorchidism or cleft). While there are a lot of diseases exclusive to vet med, such as pseudorabies or Collie eye anomaly, there are many more that affect both humans and animals. What's the best way to approach this? I suspect that there is not always going to be a definite way to do this, but a general guideline would be great. I know the ideal thing to do would be to set up a wikiproject for vet med, but that's more than I can do at this point. --Joelmills 02:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think maybe the best way to go would be to create a work group within the Medicine project dealing specifically with veterniary medicine. That way the new group could take advantage of the existing project's structure, and the lack of formal separation of the two groups would make cooperation between the two units easier. I could set up a work group, sub-project page for this purpose if there was agreement to the creation of it. Badbilltucker 17:48, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea, but I'm worried about how many people would participate. There are only three vets that I know of that regularly participate in editing, including myself, and two of those specialize in certain areas. However, if you feel it's worth trying, let's do it. What's your opinion on my original question? --Joelmills 03:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Two responses. (1) Right now I'm kinda busy updating the Project Directory, but I will try to add a proposed project on veterinary medicine on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals page and drop messages on the talk pages of many of the Tree of Life projects about the new project. (2) This I know a LOT less about. My personal opinion would be to maybe, to eliminate redundancy, make separate pages only for those diseases which manifest much differently, either in symptoms, frequency, treatment, or other factors, between the various species. For the other diseases which are kind of standard across genetic lines, maybe only one page with perhaps different sections of the page relating to the different manifestations. Corneal ulcer might (I stress, might) be an example of this sort of case in which one article for all the species might do. One of the things I think most all projects want to do is bring as many articles up to good- or featured-article status as possible. Consolidation of these articles might help make more of these articles eligible for a coveted status. Badbilltucker 21:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★TWO YEARS OF MESSEDROCKER★ 03:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Categorisation of medical (stub) articles

I notice a lot of medical stubs seem to have no "permanent" categories at all, just one or more stub types; the anatomy-stubs especially so. Is anyone here working (or keen to work) on categorisation of these? Would a list of the uncategorised articles, or a maintenance category populated with these be helpful to anyone? Alai 13:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hot flash / Hot flush needs work

Hot flash / Hot flush (menopause) is still basically just a stub. Obviously many people are interested in this topic. Anybody care to improve? -- 201.51.221.66 11:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Pharmacology

While looking for information on Pharmacology I found that Wikipedia was woefully lacking - just look at the article - with lots of stub articles lacking essential information in the Pharmacology Catergory. As I am sure the member of this project know the understanding of human pharmacology is the basis for most of modern medicine, as well as to some extent surgery and of course herbal medicine. Without understanding pharmacology - non-infective pathophysiology makes little sense.

So what I propose is to make a Wikiproject Pharmacology as a sub if this main project.

Is this a good idea? Are people willing to help? Your thoughts please. Cheers Lethaniol 15:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I should add, that when talking about pharmacology I am not so interesting in drugs or proteins which are covered elsewhere, but in the science of pharmacology - how we discovery/assess new drugs using pharmacological assays or discover the function of proteins and their place in molecular biology. Lethaniol 15:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

There already exists Wikipedia:WikiProject Drugs (shortcut WP:DRUGS) - would not this be the place to use for this particular improvement drive request, although I accept a slightly tangential view on drugs/medical overall ? The list of existing "science of pharmacology" topics should, presumeably, be found at Category:Pharmacology. David Ruben ^Talk 16:33, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes and that is strange is it not - that there is a category for Pharmacology (am already working on sorting it out) but it is not associated with any Wikiproject. The problem with being part of Wikiproject:Drugs is that really drugs should be part of a Pharmacology Project not the other way round - not that am adverse to the suggestion I just thought Pharmacology would fit better as a subproject under Medicine. Pharmacology incorporates more of a meta view of drugs and systems - explaining how they work. Lethaniol 13:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Main page

I'm surprised no one from here has watched what has happened to Down syndrome during its stint on the main page, or discussed some of the changes proposed on the talk page. A lot of work and review went into the article; I'm surprised no one is tending to it while on the main page, and responding to some of the discussion and proposed changes. Sandy (Talk) 10:30, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the diff since TedE's last edit: [3] Sandy (Talk) 10:50, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Veterinary medicine project

There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:17, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

If the project should above is ever formalized, I would, as the putative founder, welcome the possibility of establishing it as a subproject of this project. Veterniary medicine is logically a subdivision of medicine, so it would to me make sense to have the project be a subdivision as well. Also, by doing so, we could help reduce the clutter of banners on talk pages. I would be very grateful for your response, positive or negative. Badbilltucker 14:37, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

New OMIM3 template for concise Medelian Inheritance cites

The existing {{OMIM}} template for citing refs to the Mendelian Inheritance in Man database was far too long-winded for any but the first usage on a page, while the {{OMIM2}} alternative was too short for ANY usage in my opinion. I've split the difference, and now present for your editing pleasure: {{OMIM3}}. Please feel free to copy this talk post wholesale and put it anywhere else it needs to be seen, e.g. WikiProject:Medicine subprojects' talk pages, etc. I don't spend much time in this dept. so I really don't know where the right places to post this might be. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 07:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Tilt Test may need review by Cardiologist

I just happened across the Tilt table test [sic] page, and noticed no reference to Atrial Fibrillation. As a recipient of this test in the diagnosis phase of my own AF, I was curious to know more about it. I hesitate to add to the page myself, as a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Maybe a cardiologist should give it a look?MArcane 04:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

What is a good article?

FYI, you may be interested in reviewing the subtle debates about "inline citations" over at Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?. And, if you have not already done so, you may want to review Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, and indicate consensus agreement (or not) on the talk pages there. linas 05:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

List of subjects in Gray's Anatomy: Alphabetical: W

I stumbled across this page, and I just wondered: what is the use, the purpose, the value of a group of articles that are basically just the index pages from a (probably important) book? Either you have the book, and then you have the index: or you don't have the book, and then the index is of no value either. Am I missing something or can these be safely put up for WP:Prod? Fram 20:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

FA candidacy of a related article

Hippocrates, an article related to this project, is a current Featured article candidate. Comment on the discussion are appreciated. Circeus 19:33, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Dwaipayanc has tried to help: I gave up, and struck my oppose (the nom was restarted in spite of several opposes on prose, comprehensiveness, and references). Sandy (Talk) 02:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

New article that needs help

I recently set up the article List of notable organ transplant donors and recipients, but it still needs a lot of help. I thought people involved in this project might be interested in making this page better. Remember 13:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I did a bit of cleanup - some things to be aware of:

• MEDMOS on notable cases
• WP:DATE on correct wikilinking of dates
• WP:MOS and WP:GTL
• I expanded your refs to full bibliographic entries, and put the list in alphabetical order
• There is inconsistency in use of dashes - some are entered as dashes, some as ndashes.
• Many of the entries aren't yet referenced
• The table at the top shouldn't be in the lead, rather incorporated into the body of the article - see WP:LEAD.

Sandy (Talk) 15:42, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 18:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Alert

Please help support and protect this List of articles related to quackery from the current attacks by those who are attempting to suppress development of this resource. By avoiding any labelling of the items listed, we can avoid NPOV problems. Please read the embedded cautionary notes when editing. They are only visible in the editing mode. -- Fyslee 23:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've left some comments on the talk page. I'm afraid the only "alert" I see is of an unsourced list heading rapidly towards AfD. Colin°^Talk 12:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm no fan of quackery, but I believe this list is fundamentally misguided. I don't believe it successfully avoids POV problems and the attempts to do so are leading to violations of other policies, principally verification. Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of articles related to quackery. -- Colin°^Talk 17:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hysterectomy

Hysterectomy, and (to a lesser extent) Oophorectomy could really use some expert attention and cleanup, in the wake of some biased editing. In particular:

• The references added need to be checked to see if they are good.
• The literature needs to be searched to see if there are any responses to the studies cited, or other (preferably more recent) studies coming to different conclusions.
• Benefits of hysterectomy need to be described with references.
• Make the article less biased without removing good information. Dfeuer 09:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention: It would probably be wise to read this article's talk page before editing it. Dfeuer 09:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Separate orchiectomy from castration?

Castration seems to be more a social, psychological, and cultural phenomenon than a medical procedure. It would be nice to have a proper Orchiectomy article (not a redirect) to discuss the procedure in a medical context, leaving Castration to deal with other contexts, and other notions of castration. Dfeuer 09:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Nanomedicine

The Nanomedicine page is full of facts that are not true. Most of the false information has been caused by vandals. please fix. Thank you. - Tiplickhahaha

Stillbirth

An expert opinion could be used at Stillbirth and Miscarriage to help resolve uncertainty over whether the medical definition of "stillbirth" includes miscarriages prior to 20 weeks. Thank you. -Severa (!!!) 00:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

A Problem

I have just determined to become active in the project, having been a practising physician for some 39 years, and having been nearly one year on wikipedia.

A problem. A very high percentage of medicine-stubs, which I am wholly competent to expand, carry a {{references}} tag. When I want to write something which I have known for 20-30-40 years, I can't quote references. I would like to write "personal experience", but that sounds very like a breach of WP:OR. How do I make a reference for something that i have always known?--Anthony.bradbury 22:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed a problem on many levels:

1. It is essential to WP:Cite in order that others may WP:Verify. Whether what is claimed in the citation is true or not is not up to wikipedia to decide (nor indeed as you correctly point out one persons WP:OR), that is the point of citing from WP:Reliable sources - it is the peer-reviewed journals' job to vet the information printed, wikipedia is merely reporting and summarising on this material.
2. It is not possible within wikipedia's current structure to verify that you are whom you claim to be or to therefore have the experience and knowledge base either. Similarly I claim to be a UK based GP, but unless I were to meet up with another editor and show both my passport and GMC certificate, this can only be taken on trust (WP:Assume good faith). So experts are welcome, but they need to be able to cite material everyone else can access to confirm details.
3. Finally not all expert knowledge is correct. Medical science progresses and treatment approaches change. I recall well the dose of diazepam to give in impending eclamptic seizures and then the infusion rate of phenytoin, problem is that 6 months after I completed my Obs&Gynae SHO post, a better treatment of magnesium sulphate injection was introduced. Similarly epidural analgesia used to confine a pregnant women to bed with essentially paralysed legs, now low-dose combination drugs allows for "mobile epidurals" (they can remain mobile during 1st stage of labour). Final example from last year was the demotion in the UK hypertensive guidelines of beta-blockers as 1st line option (now about 4th in the list). So if one had retired 2 years ago, experience and editorial help would be invaluable to wikipedia, but one's knowledge for hypertension therapy would already be outdated - finding current sources in researching edits would though alert one to such changes.

Its not actually that bleak - as a doctor you will know what information is missing or needing improving. This then allows you to search specifically for that information (you are already at the top of the learning curve, unlike most non-medics).

• A realy good place to search is at PubMed abstracts of 1000's of international biomedical journals, just go to this search page - see also PMID and Wikipedia:PMID for details. You should find identifying likely suitable papers easy with your medical experience. Details on the most recent citation system, cite.php, is at WP:Footnotes and User:Diberri has this tool to take a PubMed abstract number and generate the full Template:cite journal mark-up to copy & paste into an article.
• Also the Template:Infobox Disease that should appear at the top of most medical disorder articles has space for eMedicine links - so provided there is a suitable article there (go to http://www.eMedicine.com), any of your own knowledge that you find also mentioned in the eMedicine article, can be added without having to add specific further citations (good idea in the edit-summary to comment source eMedicine, and check that one is not then plagiarising that website).
• For information from UK sources: for therapeutics we can obviously cite from the BNF (NB on line access is not freely available to non-medics, so cite relevant version, e.g. <ref>{{cite book | title=[[British National Formulary|BNF]] | date=Sept 2006 | edition=52}}</ref> and the NICE website (http://www.nice.org.uk/) or the more accessible Scottish SIGN website (http://www.sign.ac.uk/) can give current guidelines.

Personally I find the need to review research and interact with other editors in writing clear articles has helped refresh and sometimes update my own clinical knowledge, so not just a process of giving to wikipedia :-) Hope this helps, and look forward to your further contributions, and experience shining through :-) Yours David Ruben ^Talk 02:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Tilt-table test

The article for the tilt-table test does not appear to provide any complete explanation of what a tilt-table test is, and only includes criteria for diagnosis and an incomplete list of diagnostic applications. This is kind of thing is rampant throughout wikipedia as many authors i fear will tend to flex their their eloquence rather than their articulation. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Smooerman (talk • contribs) 18:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Assistance needed on Dolorimeter

I have run across the article dolorimeter, about devices for measuring pain. Does anyone want to help? It is in sort of sad shape. And I need good reference materials/reviews to work from.--Filll 16:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

As you say, the article is in bad shape. Speaking as a Medical Practitioner of some 38 years experience, my inclination is to put the thing up for {{AfD}}; I have not yet decided. The essential point is that pain is wholly, totally subjective, and is therefore intrinsically unmeasurable. Not only will different people experience pain to varying degrees, but also an individual will experience pain in wildly differing degrees in different circumstances. Trying to measure pain is like trying to measure joy, or sadness, or any other sensation. Good luck with the article, but I would suggest forget it.--Anthony.bradbury 17:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Category: Diabetics

Members of this project may be interested in Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_27#Category:Diabetics. Note: this does not concern deletion; it is a question of style. Our proposed guidelines at WP:MEDMOS have been cited, which of course, are always subject to further discussion. Colin°^Talk 16:34, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

67.123.250.229 promoting Phage therapy

The IP 67.123.250.229 has made no edits other than promoting phage therapy as an alternative treatment to antibiotics on every article he/she encounters. I've gone through and removed claims that it is "highily effective", but I think someone with more experience than me might want to examine whether or not it should be included in articles at all. --Wafulz 01:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Certainly phage therapy is not part of accepted treatment modalities currently used. As such it is not a notable treatment in such infectious diseases and therefore doe not belong in encyclopaedic entries under treatment. That is not of course to say that the treatment of surface bacterial infections by viruses is not intriguing, and certainly some researches in Russia have researched into this. This though is speculative research or speculation as to what might be novel treatment approaches - for now counts as trivial minority opinion or personal opinion (original research). Discussion of the topic at all perhaps would be best as a "Research" section of bacteria, or pharmacology etc, rather than in individual disease articles. David Ruben ^Talk 01:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the quick reply. Also, add Glenalpine as a promoter of the treatment. --Wafulz 01:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

FDA has recently approved use of bacteriophages on food; there is significant literature on the topic. You can go here for medical/scientific references: http://www.phageinternational.com/phagetherapy/humantests.htm. The Western literature is old but still relevant -- unless of course only the subset of recent and Western scientific literature is considered relevant by this group. Glenalpine 29 January 2007