Study: Automated VR psychotherapy can help reduce anxiety and distress, especially among those with psychosis and severe agoraphobia
Oxford University VR spinout demonstrates significant psychotherapy benefits in Lancet study (Fierce Healthcare):
Virtual reality can help treat symptoms in patients with psychosis, according to a new study published in The Lancet Psychiatry.
GameChangeVR automates psychotherapy, guiding users with a virtual coach. It was developed by OxfordVR, a digital therapeutics company, the University of Oxford and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust … The study, based on 346 patients, found that automated VR therapy led to “significant reductions” in symptoms of anxious avoidance and distress. The technology especially benefite...
Source: SharpBrains - May 5, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Technology & Innovation agoraphobia cognitive cognitive model gameChange psychosis Psychotherapy virtual coach virtual-reality Source Type: blogs
Detaching With Love: Setting Boundaries with Difficult Elderly Parents
Photo credit David Hinkle
When the family member we are trying to care for is critical, impossible to please or emotionally abusive, long-standing family dynamics are often to blame. I’m not talking about an elder who is suffering from chronic pain or has little control over their moods and behaviors because of Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia. In those cases, it is clear that we need the help of professionals to find a solution, like palliative care for symptom relief or a memory care unit that specializes in dementia behaviors. What I'm referring to are children who after a historically tox...
Source: Minding Our Elders - April 30, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
A man in his 40s with RUQ abdominal pain
Conclusion:In hemodynamically stable patients with chest pain, sinus tachycardia aids in the identification of patients unlikely to have type I MI, especially in those with HR greater than 120 bpm.===================================MY Comment by KEN GRAUER, MD (4/28/2020):===================================Insightful case presented by Drs. Goss and Meyers highlighting the importance of recognizing the ECG signs of acute PE. I focus my comments on further dissecting some of these " tell-tale " ECG features.The " theme " of today ' s case was "pattern recognition". Like the ECG diagnos...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - April 28, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
Listening to pain in our younger patients [PODCAST]
“As a family physician for more than 40 years, I have seen countless patients struggling to alleviate chronic pain, with far too many turning to self-destructive coping methods such as alcohol and opioids. Unfortunately, the struggle with chronic pain isn ’t going away – and more alarming is the fact that those suffering from it areRead more …Listening to pain in our younger patients [PODCAST] originally appeared inKevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 27, 2022 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/post-author/the-podcast-by-kevinmd" rel="tag" data-wpel-link="internal" > The Podcast by KevinMD < /a > < /span > Tags: Podcast Pain Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs
Empowering Trainees to be Leaders and Change Agents
We described several wellness initiatives that were done at individual campuses. The University of Illinois where I attend, we had a wellness committee that we formed led by students. We were able to partner with local companies to bring in more healthy food options. We were able to set up a counseling center dedicated specifically towards medical trainees.
Joe Geraghty:
And so that’s at the institutional level, but then in our local community, we had several letters from places like the University of Chicago. We had a medical student who wrote about how they were developing kind of like easy to digest infograp...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - April 25, 2022 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: amrounds Tags: AM Podcast AM Podcast Transcript Annual Call for Trainee-Authored Letters to the Editor ATLAS Trainee Perspective leadership medical education scholarship medical students residents scholarly publishing trainee engagement Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 25th 2022
We examined central genetic and environmental lifespan regulators (putative anti-aging interventions, PAAIs; the following PAAIs were examined: mTOR loss-of-function, loss-of-function in growth hormone signaling, dietary restriction) for a possible countering of the signs and symptoms of aging. Importantly, in our study design, we included young treated groups of animals, subjected to PAAIs prior to the onset of detectable age-dependent phenotypic change. In parallel to our studies in mice, we assessed genetic variants for their effects on age-sensitive phenotypes in humans.
We observed that, surprisingly, many PAAI...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 24, 2022 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
4 things the chronically ill wish others understood
One of the difficulties faced by those of us who are chronically ill (which includes chronic pain) is that others don ’t understand what we’re going through. Our culture does a poor job of educating people about health challenges even though they’re a natural part of the human condition. We wish with all our hearts thatRead more …4 things the chronically ill wish others understood originally appeared inKevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - April 17, 2022 Category: General Medicine Authors: < span itemprop="author" > < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/post-author/toni-bernhard" rel="tag" data-wpel-link="internal" > Toni Bernhard, JD < /a > < /span > Tags: Patient Patients Source Type: blogs
A Psychological Technique That Reduces Chronic Pain And Opioid Use (M)
Nine months later 45 percent of participants were no longer misusing opioids. (Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog)
Source: PsyBlog | Psychology Blog - April 12, 2022 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Jeremy Dean Tags: Mindfulness subscribers-only Source Type: blogs
Rehab Fails: What goes wrong in rehab 4
It’s not hard to choose rehab fails, the problem is more about when to stop! I tell a lie, it’s more about how to make changes so these things don’t happen.
Today’s #rehabfail is all about attempting to carve bits of a person off so each profession gets “their” bit to do with what they will. Oh boy, this is a doozy, and it comes to me off the back of seeing the return of the age-old argument about whether pain is “all about the bio” or whether the person gets a look-in. Cuz if it’s all bio then we just treat that bio and be done with it, right? It’s a question ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 10, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Interdisciplinary teams Pain Pain conditions Professional topics biopsychosocial Chronic pain Health healthcare pain management Research Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
How to Navigate Life with a Chronic Disease Like T1D and High-Deductible Insurance - Redux
Last February (2021), I wrote a blog post called " How to Navigate Life with a Chronic Disease Like T1D and High-Deductible Insurance Plans " (read my post athttps://blog.sstrumello.com/2021/02/how-to-navigate-life-with-chronic.html for details).I still stand by all of the recommendations I made in that blog post because I actually used (and still use some) the methods described effectively and saved a lot of money by doing so. But times change, and sometimes strategies need to evolve with changes that happen in the world around us.Intro of " Authorized Generic " Insulins, plus Branded/Unbranded BiosimilarsFor example, in ...
Source: Scott's Web Log - April 7, 2022 Category: Endocrinology Tags: 2022 high-deductible insurance plans insulin Source Type: blogs
Rehab Fails: What goes wrong in pain rehabilitation 3
I’m beginning to think this series could grow into a monster – so many #rehabfails to pick from!
Today’s post is about rehabilitation that doesn’t fit into the person’s life. Or that the person hasn’t been supported to fit the rehabilitation into their life. THEIR life, not ours!
You know what I mean: for six to twelve weeks, this person has been coming along to their treatment sessions, doing the things the therapist suggests. They make progress and it’s time to end the programme. “Good bye patient” the therapist says. And the patient skips off into the sunset, f...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - April 3, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Assessment Clinical reasoning Coping Skills Coping strategies Interdisciplinary teams Occupational therapy Pain conditions Physiotherapy Professional topics Psychology Research Resilience/Health Science in practice Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
The Mysteries of Patella Dislocations
The patella, the largest sesamoid bone of the body, resides within the patellar tendon and gives the quadriceps muscle mechanical advantage during knee extension. It also protects the knee joint. The flat triangular-shaped patella with its apex pointed downward consists of dense trabecular bone covered with a thin compact lamina.The patella develops embryologically from six ossification centers that ultimately fuse around ages 4 to 6. The patellar tendon attaches to the patella inferiorly, and the vastus medialis and lateralis attach medially and laterally. The quadricep muscle attaches at the top and anterior aspects o...
Source: M2E Too! Mellick's Multimedia EduBlog - April 1, 2022 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
A woman in her 50s with shortness of breath
Case written by Neha Ray, MD, with edits by Meyers, Smith, GrauerA woman in her 50s presented for evaluation of multiple episodes of syncope with shortness of breath. On EMS arrival, she was GCS 15 with HR 110s. En route to the ED, the patient had 4 more episodes of syncope and became hemodynamically unstable with SBP in the 80s and HR 160s. The first recorded SpO2 was 73%. On arrival to the ED, patient was diaphoretic and in extremis. Her initial EKG is below. Paramedics arrive to the ED and state that they are worried about inferior STEMI. What do you see? What do you think?The ECG shows sinus tachycardia...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - March 28, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
What goes wrong in pain rehabilitation (2)
One size does not fit all. Cookie cutter treatments fail to take into account the huge variability each person brings into a clinical encounter, particularly when the person is living with persisting pain. Not really earth shattering news, is it?!
Let me unpack this one.
When we’re treating a person with an acute musculoskeletal injury, let’s say a lateral ankle sprain, I’m going to hazard a guess that most of the recovery occurs without our assistance (don’t shoot the messenger – go read Chen et al, 2019). In essence, we’re creating an environment that supports tissues to do what...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - March 27, 2022 Category: Anesthesiology Authors: BronnieLennoxThompson Tags: Chronic pain Clinical reasoning Interdisciplinary teams Motivation Pain conditions Professional topics Research Science in practice Health healthcare pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs
Understanding this pathognomonic ECG would have greatly benefitted the patient.
Written by Pendell MeyersInterpret this ECG first without context. You don ' t need context yet because this ECG is nearly pathognomonic.After having learned about benign T wave inversion pattern years ago on this blog, and having seen many cases on this blog and in my practice since then, I instantly recognize this as BTWI, a fairly common normal variant. I see maybe one of these ECGs each month in my practice. There is no ischemia, certainly no concern at all for OMI. It meets basically all of the criteria that Dr. Smith has consistently described over the years, after reviewing a large cohort of patients by W...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - March 22, 2022 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
