Excerpt from Manual of Vital Function, Testing Methods and Their Interpretation There should always be some valid reason for writing a new book, especially a medical book. My reason for writing, or perhaps to express it more accurately, for compiling this work, is, that the information that it contains is scattered quite broadly thro a wide and extensive medical literature, that may not be readily accessible to all, and which has never, so far as I know, been collected together in book form. Inasmuch as every progressive physician and surgeon at the present day is making more or less frequent use of the different functional tests, to determine the efficiency of vital organs, it occurred to me that to collect them all in one volume, together with the necessary data whereby they might be intelligibly interpreted, might prove to be useful, particularly to the busy practitioner. The following work, which is an effort to carry out that idea, includes only the tests for so called vital functions, namely those applied to the liver, kidneys, heart, pancreas, and ductless glands. To go beyond this and take up functional tests of all the organs, such as the eye, ear, nervous system, etc., would be to exceed the legitimate field of true function testing and to encroach upon the well-trodden fields of general semiology and diagnosis. I hope the book may prove to be useful and convenient to all who are interested in this fascinating and ever-developing field of clinical pathology. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Health systems should function in such a way that the amount of inappropriate care is minimized, while at the same time stinting as little as possible on appropriate and necessary care. The ability to determine and identify which care is overused and which is underused is essential to this functioning. To this end, the "RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method" was developed in the 1980s. It has been further developed and refined in North America and, increasingly, in Europe. The rationale behind the method is that randomized clinical trials--the "gold standard" for evidence-based medicine--are generally either not available or cannot provide evidence at a level of detail sufficient to apply to the wide range of patients seen in everyday clinical practice. Although robust scientific evidence about the benefits of many procedures is lacking, physicians must nonetheless make decisions every day about when to use them. Consequently, a method was developed that combined the best available scientific evidence with the collective judgment of experts to yield a statement regarding the appropriateness of performing a procedure at the level of patient-specific symptoms, medical history, and test results. This manual presents step-by-step guidelines for conceptualising, designing, and carrying out a study of the appropriateness of medical or surgical procedures (for either diagnosis or treatment) using the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method. The manual distills the experience of many researchers in North America and Europe and presents current (as of the year 2000) thinking on the subject. Although the manual is self-contained and complete, the authors do not recommend that those unfamiliar with the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method independently conduct an appropriateness study; instead, they suggest "seeing one" before "doing one." To this end, contact information is provided to assist potential users of the method.

The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers is unique in providing, in one volume, an in-depth guide to each of the multiple approaches available for coding qualitative data. In total, 29 different approaches to coding are covered, ranging in complexity from beginner to advanced level and covering the full range of types of qualitative data from interview transcripts to field notes. For each approach profiled, Johnny Saldaña discusses the method’s origins in the professional literature, a description of the method, recommendations for practical applications, and a clearly illustrated example.