Update in General Internal Medicine

The advances in general internal medicine that occurred in 1997 are too numerous to describe in a single article; selecting the advances considered here required a careful assessment of both the clin-ical relevance and the strength of the evidence. This assessment was done by members of the Section of General Internal Medicine at the University of Chi-cago, who met biweekly during 1997 to review ma-jor medical journals for articles that might affect a general internist's practice. Priority was given to articles that addressed problems that general inter-nists manage frequently. After completing this ini-tial screening, we solicited advice from generalist and subspecialty colleagues and from the editors of ACP Journal Club. The results of this process are summarized i