Medical webwatch.

COPD-X at http://www.copdx.org.au/guidelines/index.asp is an acronym derived from the guidelines of the Australian Lung Foundation and the Thoracic Society of Australia and New Zealand. The guidelines have been developed for the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as part of a national COPD program, and have been verified by their "Editorial," "Steering," and "Evaluation" committees. The "Contents" section is enormous and a virtual text book. A summary of guidelines is also available with related National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) defined categories. The text is referenced throughout.

The DrugBank http://redpoll.pharmacy.ualberta.ca/drugbank/index.html database is a unique bioinformatics and cheminformatics resource that combines detailed drug data (chemical, pharmacological, and pharmaceutical) with comprehensive drug target information (sequence, structure, pathway) for the 4,300 drug entries. Users may interrogate Drug-Bank in a number of ways: a simple text query using "Browse" will generate a tabular synopsis of DrugBank's content, and clicking on a given "DrugCard" button will bring up the full data content. The "Cards" contain the usual drug information, such as indication, pharmacology, mechanism of action, toxicity, interactions, and counter-indications but also offer more esoteric data, such as protein structure and target gene sequence. The "PharmBrowse" button allows users to browse through drugs as grouped by their indication, while the "Data Extractor" is an easy-to-use, high-level data search engine which allows users to construct complex or constrained queries and to select or display search results from the DrugBank databases. DrugBank is an exhaustive (exhausting even) database project supported by Dr. Wishart, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Alberta, and the not-for-profit organization Genome Alberta & Genome Canada.

Muscle Atlases http://www.rad.washington.edu/atlas/ is authored by Michael L. Richardson, Carol C. Teitz, and Daniel O. Graney at the University of Washington. It is split into "Upper Extremity" and "Lower Extremity," where cartoons illustrate the musculoskeletal concatenations for targets selected by the reader from an alphabetical listing. Each muscle is highlighted in red for unambiguous identification, and this is augmented by brief descriptive text boxed as "Origin," "Insertion," "Action," "Innervation," and "Arterial Supply." This is a simple teaching aid for musculoskeletal anatomy. The website has a link offering a license to use these images for academic and scholarly purposes.

Spirituality in Cancer Care http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/supportivecare/spirituality/HealthProfessional/pagel is from National Cancer Institute, US. The large menu to the left of the page offers "Definitions," "Relation of Religion and Spirituality to Adjustment, Quality of Life, and Health Indices," "Screening" (which contains the core of this resource, including "Interviewing Tools" and associated references that formalize the initial approach to the patient), "Methods of Intervention," and "Increasing Awareness in Health Care Providers." The website is a brief introduction to a topic that is demanding increasing clinical attention and is of fundamental importance to the believer in a stressful situation. The limited number of references predominantly direct to PubMed.

From the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services) comes Case Studies in Environmental Medicine (CSEM) http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HEC/CSEM/csem.html, a series of self-instructional publications designed to increase the primary care provider's knowledge of hazardous substances in the environment and to aid in the evaluation of potentially exposed patients via case studies. Pick any of the 16 environmental chemical toxins to open the "Case Study" complete with a large menu, including "Exposure Pathways," "Physiologic Effects," "Clinical Evaluation," Therapy," and "Suggested Reading." Dotted throughout the sections are "Challenges" for the reader with answers available on the side-menu. Also available and under "Related Documents" are "Medical Management Guidelines" and "Toxicological Profiles" both with A to Z access. The website rounds off with a welcome FAQs section.

Video streaming Psychiatry Grand Rounds http://video.biocom.arizona.edu/video/videolibrary/PsychGR/default.htm is feature of the University of Arizona, Health Sciences Center, and is a large collection of audiovisual presentations dating from 2006 back to 2004. There is an eclectic range of interesting titles, and on Wednesday afternoons there are live broadcasts.

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