Editor's note
The Malaysian Family Physician usually publishes three issues a year. Unfortunately, we have to combine the issue 2 and 3 together as the final issue for 2009. In the past, we have often printed the final issue of a year in the subsequent year. This practice will be stopped. In the future, we will endeavour to publish all three issues in a year within the same year, this include both the print and electronic versions.
In this issue, we have included more original articles than before. The study “Is it necessary to excise all breast lesions? Experience from a university-based breast unit.” may not fit the bill as “primary care research” but the findings are of relevance to family physicians. The authors found that 8.2% of breast lumps studied turned out to be malignant. The proportion of breast malignancy increased markedly if the women were aged 40 or above. They recommended that all women above the age of 40 presenting with a palpable breast lump to have their lump excised even though the lump is benign on biopsy.
The two articles on Evidence-based Medicine in this issue by Dr Lai Nai Ming complete the EBM series written by him.
Volume 4 Supplement 2 is included as a WebExtra in this issue. This supplement contained the abstracts of oral and poster presentations in the recently concluded Asia-Pacific Primary Care Research Conference (5-6 December 2009 in Melaka). This conference was co-organised by Academy of Family Physicians, WONCA Asia-Pacific Region, Family Medicine Specialist Association of Malaysia and College of Family Physicians of Singapore. The slides of the oral and poster presentations are available for download from the conference websites (http://www.afpm.org.my/appcrc/download.html). The electronic version appeared as WebExtra in the Volume 4 Number 2&3.CL Teng
tengcl@gmail.com