ObjectivesTo identify and prioritise important research questions for miscarriage.DesignA priority setting partnership using prospective surveys and consensus meetings following methods advocated by the James Lind Alliance.SettingUK.ParticipantsWomen and those affected by miscarriage working alongside healthcare professionals.ResultsIn the initial survey, 1093 participants (932 women who have experienced miscarriage, 8 partners, 17 family members, friends or colleagues, 104 healthcare professionals and eight charitable organisations) submitted 3279 questions. A review of existing literature identified a further 64. Non-questions were removed, and the remaining questions were categorised and summarised into 58 questions. In an interim electronic survey, 2122 respondents chose their top 10 priorities from the 58 summary questions. The 25 highest ranked in the survey were prioritised at a final face-to-face workshop. In summary, the top 10 priorities were ranked as follows: research into preventative treatment, emotional aspects in general, investigation, relevance of pre-existing medical conditions, emotional support as a treatment, importance of lifestyle factors, importance of genetic and chromosomal causes, preconception tests, investigation after different numbers of miscarriage and male causal factors.ConclusionsThese results should be the focus of future miscarriage research. Presently, studies are being conducted to address the top priority; however, many other priorities, especially psychological and emotional support, are less well researched areas. We hope our results will encourage both researchers and funders to focus on these priorities.

Objectives

Rates for juveniles before the courts have nearly doubled in a decade in England and Wales. Data from an epidemiological study of all the children in one community who make court appearances have been collected over nine years. Enumeration district delinquency rates for first court appearances by boys show wide and consistent differences over seven years. Similarly, such first appearance rates for schools show wide and consistent differences. No comparable data on the distribution of family disruption in the population of the study area are yet available, but an assessment of first offenders showed the majority of children to come from normal family circumstances, as defined.Turning to second and later court appearances-boys repeatedly before the courts present a serious and intractable problem-showed that enumeration district delinquency rates were not specially related to reappearance; that school rates for second and later court appearances were possibly related to reappearance; and that family factors were definitely related. The interrelationship of the three influences-neighbourhood, school, and family-on first and later court appearances has theoretical and practical implications that were discussed. This study forms part of a more extensive survey of multiple primary tumours currently under investigation in the B irng Regional Cancer Registry. A method was outlined for computing expected numbers of second primary tumours, using morbidity figures from the Registry applied to the sanple population expressed in terms of patient-years at risk. The significance of the difference between observed and expected numbers of tumours was assessed by means of the Poisson distribution.A significantly increased number of breast tumours was demonstrated in women who had had salivary gland tumours. Certain other sites, skin in particular, also showed increases sufficient to merit further examination. The mortality of Cumberland iron-ore miners was studied by examining the death certificates of 5,811 men who died between 1948 and 1967 and had been resident in two local authority areas in which the great majority of the iron-ore miners lived. Comparisons of the iron-ore miners' experience with (1) that of other local men and 2) the relevant national experience provided an assessment of the suspected occupational risk of lung cancer associated with haematite mining. During the 20-year period there were 42 deaths attributed to lung cancer among iron mine employees resident in the study area; 36 of these occurred in miners working underground, which was significantly greater than the number expected from local non-mining experience (20-6 deaths) or from national experience (21P5 deaths). In contrast to these findings, there was no evidence of any excess mortality from lung cancer among surface workers and, for iron miners as a whole, mortality from other cancers was close to normal. A parallel analysis of mortality among coal miners showed a deficit of deaths from lung cancer in line with other studies. The patterns of other ...