Dear Colleague,

The electronic version of the Magazine @rquivos Internacionais de Otorinolaringologia [International Files of Otorhinolaryngology] has been presenting a growing number of searches in the first four months of 2009. To get the picture, the files of the Magazine were visited 15926 times in January 2009, and in April 2009 the number of accesses achieved 22833, in which they were exhibited successfully. As for the answers supplied by our server to requests made by the browser, they sum up 20654 in the January 2009 and 33705 in April 2009. Such statistics was supplied by the company Locaweb, where our website is hosted.

This edition of the Magazine @rquivos is back to comprise the theme Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, since the classical publication by James Koufman, of 1991, edited in the renowned magazine Laryngoscope (101 - Suppl 53) about the Otorhinolaryngological Aspects of the Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. After this publication, in the last two decades we've been observing several National and International articles about the theme, with the most various approaches. The article "Relationship between Nasolaryngoscopic Findings and Esophageal pH Monitoring in Children with Clinical Manifestations of Extra-Esophageal Reflux" confirms that 66% of the children present with altered pH monitoring results, and attempts to warn the reader about a considerable prevalence of the Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease in children with recurrent respiratory and/or otorhinolaryngological affections.

The research in human beings forms one of the most important chapters of medical ethics. In the last decade, the research began to be managed by companies that, by working for profit, have to guarantee the application and sale of the results. This new model of research have been generating interest conflicts in the medical-patient and researcher-researched relationships. The inevitable crisis and the media reaction, and that of governmental agencies, have been leading to a deviation of these essays of polemic drawing for regions of the planet where the population vulnerability keeps on allowing for its accomplishment.

The experiment in human beings and the conditions that led to its regulation, since the Nuremberg Code, followed by the Declaration of Helsinki in its different versions, defend the researched in accordance with the effective ethics in the Western medicine.

Amongst the challenges we will have to face, we will certainly produce an even more regulated research with international parameters, in which the biotechnical education must be inserted and captured by all stakeholders: sponsors, researchers, patients, educational institutions and the general public.

We wish you a good reading.

Best regards!

Geraldo Pereira Jotz
Editor - Revista @rquivos Internacionais de Otorrinolaringologia