Wikipedia:Peer review/Asthma/archive1

Asthma

This article just underwent some major rewrites as part of the new Medicine Collaboration of the Week. Ultimately, I think our collaboration would like to help articles reached featured status. I have no experience with this process, and would appreciate any advice the reviewers could offer for what steps we can take to further improve this article. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:54, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

I'm no medical buff but this looks really good. A few things that might be issues are the fair use image that probably should be replaced (fair use is usually a no-no for featured articles, and this one is especially questionable) and the very large graph (some people only use 800x600 screen resolution), so a 600px wide image might be a problem. Also, the sections "Prognosis" and "Epidemiology" are very short, and should probably be expanded or integrated somewhere else. More inline citations would be very welcome as well. --Spangineer (háblame) 13:36, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Spangineer - I appreciate the comments. I've changed the images as per your suggestions. Also, I agree that the Prognosis and Epidemiology sections are short. I think the prognosis section, by its nature, doesn't need to be much longer, but Epidemiology could be much more detailed. Also, I would like to see a brief "history of asthma" and "list of notable asthma sufferers" added to the article before we go for FAC. (P.S. I did a lot of work on this article, so I'm not a very good unbiased reviewer) Mr.Bip 20:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest merging the prognosis section with the diagnosis section at the top -- the two are similar, and that's good introductory information. Personally, I'd rather see notable asthma sufferers included into the "history of asthma" section, not as a list, but by referring to only the most important ones who had an impact on how Asthma is viewed in society, etc. Otherwise, it could turn into a mad house of who is a "notable" asthma sufferer. Most of the time, such lists grow too quickly and end up getting removed from their article and end up being largely useless. --Spangineer (háblame) 15:13, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Spangineer—I really appreciate the feedback. I will definitely try to get some more inline references in there. I'll work, too, on expanding the prognosis and epidemiology sections if I can. I would rather not put the prognosis information with the diagnosis information as I feel they are dissimilar: one deals with the methods to decide a given person has the condition, the other with the likely long-term effects of having the condition. However, I agree with placing a short mention of prognosis in the intro. I'll try to get to these tomorrow or the next day, perhaps. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:15, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

Very good information. The mechanism and pathogenesis sections look great, though I can't personally vouch for that material. I'll try to help with this article as time allows, but first I'll offer suggestions. 1) prevalence is mentioned a couple times. 1 in 4 is given in the intro (needs a citation) but only more general discussion is given in the Epidemiology section. More is needed there. What about deaths from asthma? It does happen, a bit about how many in a year in developed/non devel. countries would be helpful. I disagree with merging diagnosis and prognosis, but prognosis should be expanded. What is there is such a summary that misses things like what about the people that don't respond to treatment or don't grow out of it. What about athletes with asthma? 2) The beginning of the pathology section is hard to understand. The paragraph starting with "Clues to the understanding of..." needs to be rewritten. How about these are the known risk factors, then discuss how they affect/manifest, and what that tells us about understanding asthma. 3) The pathology section also misses the lung reforming (basically scarring I think) that goes on in asthmatics as they try to breath through constricted airways. 4) The treatment section should probably be reorganized a bit. The advanced section should probably be renamed since some of those treatements are not very advanced. Maybe just call them acute care or last resort treatments or something to that effect. The paragraph in the preventative section talks mostly about corticosteroids, but that is only one of the methods, so if correct, the section should be more explicit and say the first line of treatments is a corticosteroid and then other compatible treatments may be layered. I know corticosteroids and leukotriene inhibitors can be combined, but I'm not sure about some of the others. 5) It needs some more general references, and I'll try to see what I have in the medical textbooks I have available. - Taxman ^Talk 13:38, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Taxman. I've begun work on your recommendations. I'm working on the pathology section now. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:07, August 18, 2005 (UTC)