Deutsches Ärzteblatt International—the German Medical Association’s official international science journal—is a weekly, peer-reviewed, open-access online journal of clinical medicine and public health.

Deutsches Ärzteblatt International is indexed in

MEDLINE, PubMed Central, Science Citation Index, EMBASE, Scopus, and PsycINFO. In addition, the journal is listed in Carelit, CINAHL, Compendex, DOAJ, EMNursing, GEOBASE, HINARI, Index Copernicus, and Medpilot.

Telemonitoring may reduce the mortality of patients with heart failure by 20%. Focusing on this patient group, Silke Schmidt et al. summarize the current status of health services research on telemonitoring—a term that encompasses a wide variety of clinical applications of electronic transfer of patient data to the physician. [Fulltext]

Sexual problems are frequent after operations for carcinoma of the rectum. Christian Schmidt and his coauthors evaluate data from 368 patients on the consequences of rectal surgery for sexuality and quality of life, shedding light on an issue that has been little studied to date. [Fulltext]

Recently published case series have shown encouraging results of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder, depressive disorders, and Tourette syndrome. Jens Kuhn (University of Cologne) and Theo P J Gründer (Max Planck Institute, Cologne) and their co-authors provide an introduction to the method. [Fulltext]

Current health care is not as safe as it should be. In Germany alone, about 17,000 deaths per year are estimated to be due to preventable adverse events. Barbara Hoffmann and Julia Rohe explain the reasons for adverse events, as well as measures to ensure better patient safety. [Fulltext]

A weekly online journal of clinical medicine and public health.