In the October 2005 Issue of Clinics

Abstract

EDITORIALIn this fifth issue of CLINICS, we highlight a study by Tomic et al. on progress testing, a longitudinal tool which evaluates the learning curve of medical students through their medical school years. Identical tests were administered twice a year from 2001 to 2004 to 1 st to 6 th year students at the School of Medicine, University of São Paulo and show cognitive gains to be a continuous variable throughout the course (highly significant for trend) for basic sciences, clinical sciences, and clerkship rotation. There was no difference between the performance of men and women. Overall averages hint at early gains in basic sciences, with no loss throughout the course and at a strong terminal increment for clerkship rotation knowledge. Progress testing has now become a routine procedure, applied twice a year, as a tool for internal control of quality.Benvenutti et al. investigated different patterns of atherosclerotic remodeling in the thoracic and abdominal aorta through the relationship between the vascular diameter and the extent and histological characteristics of the aortas of 19 patients who died of atherosclerotic disease. The extent of plaques, calcification, ulceration, thrombosis, and the amount of fat in the plaques were evaluated semiquantitatively. Atherosclerosis was more severe in the abdominal than the thoracic aorta; thoracic aorta atherosclerosis was associated with fat deposition in the plaques, inducing arterial dilation, while in the abdominal aorta, atherosclerosis can either have a similar evolution or be associated with less fat deposition, which would result in more rigidity, hindering compensatory arterial enlargement.