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I alluded recently to the fact that a lot of cardiology trials have word-based names, which makes it fun to listen to cardiologists talk, because they bandy these trial names about throughout any discussion they have.  What I didn’t realize is how creative some of the trial names had become:  I was becoming comfortable with HOPE, LIFE, ALLHAT, JNC-7, and a few others (for you prehospital types, OPALS), but I didn’t realize that people had gone as far as inventing acronyms to create words like CARPORT, HELVETICA, ESCOBAR, EXACTO, and OXCHECK.

We were making fun of named cardiology trials one day when I was on cardiology service.  We were noting our attending’s compulsive hand-washing (not a bad thing, really) when I remarked that there was probably a named trial about handwashing.  Without missing a beat, one of the other students said:  “Yeah, that was the HANDJOB-2 trial.”