Risk versus benefit: this is what good doctors help patients weigh, and it could be done better without direct drug marketing or punitive second-guessing by lawyers.

Doctors refer to the process as constructing a "decision tree" or "clinical pathway," as patients weigh each pro and con.

This is a weight that the care staff believes represents what the patient should weigh without fluid built up because of kidney failure.

Let us patients weigh the risks.

The patient swallowed it as a pill which was collected at the other end and weighed, the patient being charged for the difference.

He advises patients to weigh the decision carefully.

And how can patients and doctors properly weigh competing values in emergencies?

Depends on how the patient weighs it, and whether it is worth it.

A woman age 20 in year 1913: The patient is 135 cm tall and weighs 34 kilograms.

The biggest patients in the unit weigh but seven or eight pounds - full-term newborns.