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Please have a look at the nascent Medical classification scheme here, add to it, correct it, modify it, whatever seems fit. It would be good to have a sound logical scheme worked out before trying to implement it.

WikiProject Clinical medicine

This WikiProject aims primarily to replace the more-or-less defunct "WikiProject Medical Conditions":

"... to provide information and a consistent format for medical diseases, disorders, and other conditions (e.g. Diabetes & Cerebral Palsy). Many of these are listed on Health science which is an article linked from the Main Page."

The scope of this project is somewhat wider: it aims to address diseases in the context of diagnostic methods, therapeutic interventions and other related articles.

Most material on this page was originally discussed on the "WikiDoc" page (now redirects here).

Wikipedia has a wealth of pages related to medicine, but:

• Many articles are stubby
• A large number are phrased in layman's terms, often employing doubtful metaphors, inappropriate sarcasm and factual misinterpretations
• Some contain outdated concepts and material
• Some blur the lines between mainstream medicine and CAM.

The "Clinical medicine" project is aimed at:

• Composing pages from an informed point-of-view
• Updating old pages
• Linking pages of every medical specialty with "blue boxes" or sidebars (e.g. all forms of gastrointestinal bleed under gastroenterology, see below)
• Finding a way to integrate references to journals, PubMed, and other sources into the text; some pages employ superscript numbers (see diabetes mellitus)
• Providing images; practicing doctors have copyright over the images they produce, with patients' consent when necessary
• Determining our audience (see below)
• Establishing a hierarchical structure for relevant topics (specialties of medicine, drugs, procedures, anatomical features, etc.) so that useful lists can be made
• Establishing a consistent style and terminology for medical articles

In order to strike a balance between heavy scientifically focused text and information accessible to the public, the consensus is now:

• Keep the beginning of the page simple
• Explain the basic concepts first
• Escalate difficulty in the course of the article to address technical issues

The following boxes are in operation (please add when one's complete):

A Wikipedia-wide policy on these boxes has been proposed: Wikipedia:Article series boxes policy (proposed).

The article series boxes will probably become less of an issue now the category system is in place. The originator of the above boxes (me) is not planning to design other boxes in the near future. JFW | T@lk

Some rather central medical articles are very stubbly, and require cleanup to measure up to some form of standard. The hepatitis page was listed for cleanup because it was a tremendous mess. You may also consider nominating any of these for the Medicine Collaboration of the Fortnight.

Medical pages needing cleanup:

• Respiratory distress syndrome - very brief (presently receiving attention from User:Aside).
• Disseminated intravascular coagulation - structure and more on pathogenesis (sorry Tristanb)
• Angiopathy, Microvascular disease, Macrovascular disease - original submitter admitted to copying from a dictionary (copyright violation ?)
• Angiogenesis - this page needs more than just tumour angiogenesis
• Phosphodiesterase inhibitor -- very brief (but getting better ...)
• Rhabdomyosarcoma - in need of wikifying (and re-organization by an oncologist ???)
• Glioma - currently a useless one-liner with a 'red' wikilink -- a lot better now
• pain needs more work, but now less abrasive than previously
• health science and health professional are still a mess. Possibly explaining the relative absence of our allied health colleagues
• medical ethics etc could do with a buff (check out Beneficence and other related pages)
• The Alternate Asphygmo-Pyramidal Syndrome -- from Wikipedia:Cleanup: "this was listed once before, the author insists on deleting the cleanup header from the article without doing any cleanup, and insists that the article is perfect...."
• From Wikipedia:Deadend pages:
  • CDG syndrome, Carbohydrate-Deficient Glycoprotein syndrome, or Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation
  • Cervical spine disorders, probably should redirect to, instead of from, Cervical spine disorder
  • Charles Bonnet Syndrome
  • Diabetic neuropathy
  • Hypertensive retinopathy
• Pulmonolgy should be deleted. / Pulmonology is properly spelt and is a much better page. (done JFW | T@lk)
• Macular degeneration -- the author has put up a {{cleanup}} tag
• Craniopagus parasiticus
• Immunosuppressive drug - needs links to other articles and removal of duplicates
• please list any pages here that might require cleanup

Go to Category:Medicine stubs, and if you see an article you can help out, expand it. Also, add {{Med-stub}} to the bottom of any medically-related stub articles that you come across so that others in this community can easily find them. In addition to Medicine stubs, there are also Treatment stubs, Pharmacology stubs and Sign stubs; these categories are associated with templates {{treatment-stub}}, {{pharma-stub}} and {{medsign-stub}}, respectively.

List of eponymous diseases - there are thousands of them (see the website http://www.whonamedit.com). When you come across an eponymic disease, please add it to the list (and add Category:Eponymous diseases to the article). The page Sign (medicine) contains a smaller list of signs during physical examination, such as the famed Babinksky...

We all make edits in medical articles, but sometimes it can be tremendously useful to have stuff reviewed by someone else. This is especially true when one's working slightly outside his/her field of expertise. Most WikiDoc members have a field of interest; they might be willing to peer-review work by others. See the talk page for the review process.

Despite a lot of work already having been done, the medicine still needs a good intro. Same goes for many articles linked from there. Perhaps we should look into Encarta's or Britannica's similar articles, not to copy them, but to get an idea what such articles might be like. Kosebamse.

Some main "specialism" and "basic topics" pages, such as oncology, nephrology and pulmology have been written. The surgical pages await exploration. Most other relevant stuff is in medical history, physical examination, sign (medicine), symptom, syndrome...

Most members of the project appear to be in favour of "scientific labeling" of medical articles, with redirects from layman terms (heart attack redirects to myocardial infarction, with appropriate explanations of the latter). As this seems to contradict Wikipedia's present policy, the issue has been raised in different fora, each time eliciting remarkably little response. It has now been mentioned on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Medicine, and a message on the Wikipedia:Village pump will follow (see Wikipedia:Village pump#The names of diseases: policy?).

General policy appears to be, after the village pump discussion, that medical articles ought to be named scientifically, with good redirects in place.

• List of medical topics (a bit backdated?)
• List of common diseases
• List of diseases (a good resource on the correct spelling of some rare disease names)
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia medicine standards (could do with improving)
• List of medical symptoms (patchy)
• List of anatomical topics
• List of biological viruses
• List of clinically important bacteria

A wikiportal Medicine has been created specifically for medicine linked from the article Medicine. Work on it had begun, but to complete it your help will be needed.

The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Health Science.

1. Wikipedia:WikiProject Drugs
2. Wikipedia:Wikiproject Alternative Medicine

• See Featured_article#Biology_and_medicine
  • Chagas disease nominated 2 July 2005, promoted 7 July
• Featured article candidates
  • Failed candidates - see why and help to improve
    • Multiple sclerosis nominated 15 June 2005, failed 21 June
    • Suicide nominated 22 May 2005, failed 27 May

¹ While primarily involved in Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychopathology there is some overlap here --CloudSurfer 08:26, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Physicians and medically interested on Wikipedia who might be able to contribute:User:Astaines, User:Deist, User:Erdem Tüzün, User:Evanherk, User:GC (Ideal for the ID-STD section), User:Scot stevenson, User:Statkit1, User:Tnewell (software engineer and MD Anderson, Hmm). (Invites put on talk pages for each one just now Kd4ttc 03:32, 22 May 2004 (UTC) )[reply]

See the talk page.

General pointers on writing medical articles include:

1. Remember to cover the major points in user-friedly language.
2. Avoid medical slang. Explain all unavoidable medical terms.
3. If the latest research findings arrived in your post-box today, great. But as you add them to an article makes sure they are supported background content.

An extremely draft template for medical conditions includes:

Make this short, snappy and interesting. Explain and define the condition in plain English. This is your brief chance to lure a reader into reading further. Include the most interesting bits from all the below sections, such as the main symptoms, main cause, treatment and impact on patient's health and prognosis.

Symptoms, signs, disease associations

Tests commonly performed when patients present with given symptoms (e.g. C-reactive protein, X-rays...) Also mention characteristic biopsy findings here.

The hard bit: discuss the main abnormalities (e.g. decreased FEV₁ in COPD due to bronchial obstruction and/or decreased elasticity). This section can justifiably escalate into technical terms.

Discuss and link to the key drugs and drug categories, surgical treatments and other therapies. Emphasise things that patients can do for themselves and indicators that professional help should not be delayed.

Follow-up sometimes warrants its own paragraph, but can equally belong in the treatment section (e.g. ESR in patients with known GCA).

What is the median survival, what complications can be expected?

Most of us forget to talk about this enough.

Mention incidence or prevalence, economic and societal impact. Sex differences, age groups and other predisposing factors (if not discussed above) belong here.

Often this is fascinating. Good resources are WhoNamedit.com for eponymous diseases, and good review articles (e.g. NEJM or the clinical reviews in J Clin Invest). Did you know that Hippocrates was aware of the significance of clubbing?

Ideally every medical article should have a few historical references (e.g. first reported case, discovery of pathogenesis) and one or two recent systematic reviews in core journals. Textbooks are equally valid sources. In particularly hot topics, it may be tempting to add very recent studies on the latest developments; this may not always be the best idea - it may be enough to broadly signify a trend without endeavouring to keep the reference list completely up-to-date with the very latest studies.

Place the article in all the categories it belongs in.

{{Medicine}} only belongs on the pages that cover medical specialties.