Objectives Nurses are generally present, and often influential, in supporting patient and family acceptance of medical futility and in assisting doctors in negotiating referral to palliative care. Yet ...

Objective People who spend a longer time walking have lower demands for medical care. However, in view of their longer life expectancy, it is unclear whether their lifetime medical expenditure ...

Objectives To (1) provide an up-to-date overview of shared decision making (SDM)-models, (2) give insight in the prominence of components present in SDM-models, (3) describe who is identified as ...

Objective Radiotherapy (RT) can cause a range of negative impacts in addition to the intended treatment impacts. Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) may improve the physical and psychological conditions of ...

Objective This study aims to assess the association between neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation and outcomes reflecting comprehensive diabetes care (CDC). Design Retrospective cohort study Setting ...

Objective To determine the diagnostic accuracy of tuning fork tests for detecting fractures. Design Systematic review of primary studies evaluating the diagnostic accuracy of tuning fork tests for the ...

Information on the best study designs for your research, from the BMJ Open editorial team.

Objective Recent clinical studies have shown that anticoagulant therapy might be effective only in specific at-risk subgroups of patients with sepsis and coagulation dysfunction. The definition of ...

Objective Pterygium is considered to be a proliferative overgrowth of bulbar conjunctiva that can induce significant astigmatism and cause visual impairment; this is the first meta-analysis to ...

Objectives Unrecognised malposition of the endotracheal tube can lead to severe complications in patients under general anaesthesia. The purpose of this study was to verify the feasibility of using ...

Background Studies from different Western countries have reported a rapid increase in spinal surgery rates, an increase that exceeds by far the growing incidence rates of spinal disorders in the ...

Objective To determine the incidence of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in South Korea. Design Nationwide, population-based retrospective study. Setting Census population of South Korea Participants This ...