Background: Interest in alternative and complementary medical practices has grown considerably in recent years. Previous surveys have examined attitudes of the general public and practicing physicians. This study examined the training, experience, and attitudes of medical school faculty, who have the primary responsibility for the education of future family physicians.Methods: A 24-item, self-administered questionnaire was distributed to all 200 faculty at a medical school with a mission of training primary care physicians.Results: Of 30 therapies listed, 5 were considered legitimate medical practices by more than 70% of the faculty. Eighty-five percent of the respondents reported some training in alternative medical therapies, and 62% were interested in additional training. Eighty-three percent of the faculty reported personal experience with alternative therapies and most rated these as effective. Eighty-five percent of the respondents indicated that their general attitude toward alternative medicine is positive.Conclusions

We describe a cross-correlation procedure for removing contaminating electrocardiogram (ECG) complexes from the diaphragmatic electromyogram (EMGdi). First, the operator selects ECG templates from the EMGdi signal during expiratory intervals. Second, these templates are used to locate ECG complexes occurring during inspiratory EMGdi activity. Third, at the point of maximum correlation between the template and these ECG complexes, the template is adjusted in size and offset to "match" the ECG complex, and adjustments are determined by the linear regression coefficients. Finally, the modified template is subtracted from the EMGdi signal. To evaluate our method, we compared the power spectral density (PSD) obtained from processing EMGdi signals by our method with those obtained from the EMGdi signal in which ECG complexes had been removed by gating. Our results indicate that PSD obtained by these two different methods shows no statistically significant differences with respect to the following features: centroid frequency, median frequency, total power, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis.

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Bioavailability of medication after laparoscopic cholecystectomy has not been studied previously. There is concern about the ability of patients to tolerate oral medication postoperatively and the optimal timing of hospital discharge. In this study, each subject received 20 mg/kg acetaminophen (po) preoperatively, with a repeat dose at 6 (group 1), 12 (group 2), or 24 h (group 3) postoperatively. Serum levels were obtained 40 and 90 min after each ingestion. Bioavailability of medication was significantly decreased (p < 0.01) 6 h (group 1) and 12 h (group 2) postoperatively. Bioavailability returned to baseline by 24 h after laparoscopic cholecystectomy (group 3). This study indicates that oral medication should be used judiciously during the first 12 h after laparoscopic surgery.