Medicine: Dangerous Doctors

Most doctors know that visitors often do more to stir up hospital patients than to soothe them. But the doctors' own ward rounds can have the same effect, sometimes with fatal results, reported Finnish Doctor Klaus A. J. Jarvinen in the British Medical Journal.

Studying the histories of 39 Helsinki hospital patients who died of coronary occlusion after stays of seven to 42 days, Dr. Jarvinen discovered that six of them, subject to severe emotional stress, had died during or after a physician's visit. Among the cases:

ΒΆ An accountant, 58, came to the hospital 21 days after an attack of angina pectoris....

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