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Prescrire International (a new quarterly journal)
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Association Mieux Prescrire; 83, boulevard Voltaire; 75011 Paris, France. Subscription rates: Individual, 440 FF (approximately $90.00); institutional, 900 FF (approximately $187.00); payment can be made by Visa card, Eurocard, MasterCard, or international money order.
Most nonacademic physicians are usually much too pressed for time to use journal reports of drug trials for helpful judgments on effective use of new drugs. The time needed to search indexes like MEDLINE, to receive the papers ordered, to read them critically, and to draw comfortable conclusions is beyond what they can invest to be well informed. This is why physicians welcome expert synoptic information and why review articles are often judged to be far more valuable than individual reports. This is why ACP Journal Club has been enthusiastically welcomed for its analyses of carefully selected articles of clinical importance. For many years in the United States The Medical Letter, with its concise and clear summary articles, served the need for practical and critical synoptic information on drugs.
In 1981 La revue Prescrire was launched to offer French-reading physicians expert, objective, and documented synoptic information on diagnostic and therapeutic options. Opened with a grant from the French Ministry of Health that lasted until 1992, it has otherwise been supported entirely by subscriptions. It has not carried advertising in order to maintain the needed independence.
Now an English-language quarterly version is available that carries selected articles from the French version. The articles may cover individual drugs, drug classes, adverse effects, and other practical topics. The documentary basis for judgments is included as references; the range of journals surveyed is international. An amusing set of cartoon figures representing the ratings "Bravo," "A real advance," "Offers an advantage," "Possibly helpful," "Nothing new," "Not acceptable," and "Judgement reserved" serve as symbolic summations accompanying capsule conclusions on reviewed drugs. The tilt, understandably, is toward drugs available in France, but the content of the two issues submitted for review amply justify attention by non-French physicians. Each issue carries the names of the external reviewers for its articles, although their names are grouped on an opening page and are not attached to individual articles. Some other material includes: book reviews, news notes, and occasional short essays. A notably amusing example of the essays is "Medicine and national culture," a pithy summary of national differences in medical practice: "The stress placed on heart disease in Germany may be a vestige of the romanticism which held the heart as ‘the source of all things, all strength, all happiness and all distress’ (Goethe)"; "As for the French. the accent is on ‘the terrain’"; "The most apt word to describe American medicine is ‘aggressiveness’"; and "British doctors are known for their parsimony".
This new English version periodical clearly merits the attention of the medical world outside of France.
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