The Cleveland Clinic Disease Management Project was conceived as a way of providing the practitioner the most up-to-date expert information needed to conduct a busy clinical practice. Authored by specialists at The Cleveland Clinic, each chapter is designed to incorporate national clinical practice guidelines in a fashion which is simple, straightforward, and of maximum clinical utility. If an author disagrees with these guidelines, it is clearly indicated, as is the reason. Thus, the reader has the best of both possible worlds: knowing what the guideline recommends, and also knowing how an expert interprets and updates these guidelines in the real world.

The Disease Management Project is designed specifically for web use; each section and chapter was conceived and executed to conform to the specific opportunities provided by this new and exciting medium. References are linked to the National Library of Medicine's URL, which contains the citation and abstract. Links to the practice guideline are provided whenever possible. For the present, the use of images has been minimized because of the slow transmission speeds imposed by currently available bandwidth. As these technical problems are solved, the Disease Management Project will make greater use of images.

The Disease Management Project is offered free as a service of The Cleveland Clinic Center for Continuing Education. Of course, production and maintenance is costly. In order to keep this service free, solicitation of unrestricted educational grants from commercial sources is planned. Editorial decisions are not influenced by these sponsorships. The Cleveland Clinic affirms the absolute requirement that a firewall be maintained between editorial content and sponsors.

The Editorial Board, comprised of experienced Cleveland Clinic specialists, is responsible for the selection of topics and authors, and for review of medical content. All opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the author. They do not represent a specific endorsement by The Cleveland Clinic. Information is intended to provide general guidance for health care providers, but cannot be construed as providing specific recommendations for a particular patient. Care has been taken to check drug dosages. Health care providers should re-check dosages of all medications before prescribing for their patients.