In Reply.
—Dr Roizen's letter raises an important point, ie, that general platitudes or vague suggestions provided by internists during preoperative consultations are unlikely to be useful to those requesting consultation. Indeed, we found during additional analysis of our data1 that the likelihood of advice being followed was directly related to the "definitiveness" of the advice being offered.However, though we agree with the main thrust of Dr Roizen's letter, we would hasten to point out that the compliance calculations used in our Archives article excluded those recommendations "that were vague in wording," ie, exactly those about which Dr Roizen expresses appropriate concern. Thus, the poor compliance demonstrated by those requesting consultations in this study cannot be attributed to the lack of specificity in the recommendation.