Future work is required to understand more precisely the factors contributing to severity and to develop a valid patient-reported instrument to measure severity in IBS.

1 The natural history of acute gouty arthritis was studied in 11 volunteers with podagra. 2 Two patients withdrew from the study on day 4 because of severe persistent pain. Of the remaining patients all showed some improvement in pain by day 5 and in swelling by day 7. Tenderness improved in seven patients by day 7 but two continued to experience the same amount of discomfort as at trial entry. In spite of these improvements only three patients noted resolution of their pain during the study period. 3 These data indicate that while the majority of patients show spontaneous improvement, resolution is unlikely over a period of 7 days without the use of effective non-steroidal antiinflammatory medication. 4 Documentation of the natural history of the acute gouty attack may assist clinical investigators in interpreting the results of uncontrolled evaluations of non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs.

In this large series of patients with stage II/III resected gastric/GEJ adenocarcinomas from >1500 American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer-accredited facilities, patients receiving PECT were shown to survive longer than those receiving POCRT. Cancer 2017;123:2909-17. © 2017 American Cancer Society.

The ability to recall details of current and prior drug therapy was evaluated in two studies employing a total of 94 patients with inflammatory polyarthritis. Ten per cent of patients were unable to completely recall the names of their current anti‐inflammatory drugs and eighty‐three per cent of patients to completely recall the details of prior anti‐inflammatory drug therapy. Prompting firstly with the proprietary names of drugs and thereafter with a pill board substantially enhanced recall particularly for prior NSAID therapy. Nineteen per cent of responses obtained with verbal prompting were inaccurate. No such problems were encountered in responses obtained using the pill board. These findings indicate that a complete and accurate drug history can only be obtained in the majority of patients using recall enhancement strategies.

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