Quality of care a factor in heart health

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 56, No. 8, October 2014, Page 383 News

The quality of health care that people receive may be as important as controlling the risk factors--smoking, bad diet, and low exercise--that could lead to cardiovascular disease. These findings were revealed in a recent study conducted by an international team of scientists, including Simon Fraser University health sciences professor Dr Scott Lear.

The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiologic (PURE) study tracked more than 156 000 people in 17 countries and revealed that low-income countries, where people have the lowest risk factors for cardiovascular problems, have the highest rates of cardiovascular events and death. High-income countries, on the other hand, where people have the highest risk factors for heart conditions, have a lower rate of severe heart problems and deaths.

Study participants were from both urban and rural areas of four low-income countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe; 10 middle-income countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Iran, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey; and three high-income countries: Canada, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates.

Dr Lear co-authored the article and is also the Pfizer/Heart and Stroke Foundation chair in cardiovascular prevention research at St. Paul's Hospital.

The article, "Cardiovascular Risk and Events in 17 Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Countries," is published in the 28 August 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and is available online at www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1311890.

. Quality of care a factor in heart health. BCMJ, Vol. 56, No. 8, October, 2014, Page(s) 383 - News.



Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply