A patient ’ s resilience and the challenge of dialysis
After she developed a serious complication, she wanted to know the facts plainly stated. I told her the treatment would change her quality of life; it would be hard but doable. To this, she replied, “Now, don’t bullsh*t me, I don’t like bullsh*tters.” These words were uttered by my resilient, 75-year-old patient undergoing peritoneal dialysis.
Read more…
A patient’s resilience and the challenge of dialysis originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 14, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Tariq Shaheed, DO Tags: Conditions Nephrology Source Type: blogs
Implantable Bioreactor for Kidney Cells
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have developed an implantable bioreactor that may pave the way for artificial kidneys. Dialysis and kidney transplants both have significant disadvantages for patients with kidney failure, and so scientists are trying to develop a lab created kidney that would not require harsh immunosuppression or a donor kidney. This implantable bioreactor may be a step in the right direction, and it includes a type of cell found in the kidney which is protected from the immune system behind a silicon membrane. Blood can flow through the device, and so far the researchers have sho...
Source: Medgadget - September 26, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Medicine Surgery Urology artificial kidney UCSF Source Type: blogs
75 year old dialysis patient with nausea, vomiting and lightheadedness
Written by Jesse McLaren A 75 year-old patient with diabetes and end stage renal
disease was sent to the ED after dialysis for three days of nausea, vomiting,
loose stool, lightheadedness and fatigue. RR18 sat 99% HR 90 BP 90/60, afebrile. Below is the 15 lead ECG. What do you think? There ’s normal sinus rhythm, normal conduction, normal axis,
normal R wave progression and normal voltages. There’s subtle inferior ST
elevation with straightening of the ST segment, reciprocal ST depression and T
wave inversion in aVL, and ST depression in V2. This is diagnostic of
infero-posterior OMI, but it is falsely n...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - August 19, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Jesse McLaren Source Type: blogs
The corporatization of medicine: Part One
This will be a multi-part series. The days of independent community hospitals and small
physician practices are just about over. Paul Starr ’s famous book The Social
Transformation of American Medicine tells the story
of rise of a “sovereign” medical profession, consisting largely of
entrepreneurs who owned their own individual or small group practices and made
their living as independent business people. They were generally suspi cious of
alternative models such as large group practice and salaried employment. But recent
decades have been marked by one overarching trend: the consolidation of the
medical institu...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 20, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Kidney disease: a UK public health emergency - the health economics of kidney disease to 2033
This report looks at the growing costs of kidney disease, both in treating patients and in money lost to the economy by people being left unable to work due to time-consuming and gruelling treatment. It finds that kidney disease is costing the UK economy £7 billion a year, costs which could rise to £13.9 billion in just ten years. It contains projections that the NHS could see capacity for dialysis treatment overwhelmed unless the disease becomes a government priority.ReportKidney Research UK - news (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - June 8, 2023 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Library Tags: NHS finance NHS performance and productivity Public health and health inequalities Source Type: blogs
The unjust reality of racial disparities in pediatric kidney transplants
I noticed a troublesome trend during my three weeks working in the pediatric dialysis unit and the post-kidney transplant unit. The whiter and younger pediatric patients were resting comfortably in the post-transplant unit with their new surgically placed kidneys being meticulously taken care of. The darker and older pediatric patients spent countless, mindless hours attached
Read more…
The unjust reality of racial disparities in pediatric kidney transplants originally appeared in KevinMD.com. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 31, 2023 Category: General Medicine Authors: Lien Morcate Tags: Conditions Nephrology Source Type: blogs
Legalizing Organ Sales
This article appeared onSubStack on May 25, 2023.Organ sales are illegal in the United States and most other countries (Iran is a partial exception). The National Organ Transplantation Act of 1984states, “it shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if the transfer affects interstate commerce.” The penalty for breaking the law is a fine of $50,000 or up to five years in prison , or both.In Libertarian Land, organ markets are legal. This makes everyone better off.Consider first kidneys. People have ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 25, 2023 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey Miron Source Type: blogs
Automated Computer Assistant for Kidney Transplant Rejection Diagnostics: Interview with Study Authors
A recent study in Nature Medicine, entitled “An automated histological classification system for precision diagnostics of kidney allografts,” has showcased the efforts of a group of researchers who have developed an automated system that can diagnose kidney transplant rejection.
A variety of disparate factors can affect the chances that a transplant will be rejected. At present, clinicians have to manually consider these complex data when making decisions about transplant patients, which can lead to a high level of misdiagnosis and patient morbidity.
This new system incorporates an algorithm that can synthesize t...
Source: Medgadget - May 23, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Exclusive Surgery Urology INSERM kidney transplant univ_paris_cite Source Type: blogs
Nursing the Nation and the World
Nurses are everywhere. They are legion. The ubiquitous nurse is present in the care of children, the elderly, the disabled, and the dying. Nurses don ' t shy away from responsibility — they embrace it. Nurses run towards the metaphorical fire. Just as firefighters rush into burning buildings and police officers run towards the active shooter, nurses don their gloves and deal with the sputum, the blood, the pus, the emesis, the feces, and the urine — body fluids be damned, th ere ' s work to do and nurses do it. The Ubiquitous NurseWhere would the country be without nurses? Without nurses, the healthcare system wou...
Source: Digital Doorway - May 8, 2023 Category: Nursing Source Type: blogs
A woman in her 60s with large T-waves. Are they hyperacute, hyperkalemic, or something else?
Case written by Brandon Friedman M.D., edits by MeyersA woman in her 60s with a history of chronic atrial fibrillation on Eliquis, ESRD on hemodialysis, type-II diabetes mellitus, prior CVA, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia presented to the emergency department with multiple complaints after missing dialysis. She described a feeling of general unwellness, diarrhea, right-sided abdominal pain, bilateral leg pain, bilateral leg swelling, and diffuse itching. She missed her last two dialysis appointments, with her last session occurring one week prior to presentation. On initial assessment, she was found to be tachycard...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - May 1, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
Wellth Announces $20M Series B for Continued Growth of Behavioral Science-Based Platform
Why don’t we do what we’re “supposed to do” when it comes to our health?
Written by Matt Loper, Co-Founder and CEO at Wellth and originally posted on Wellth’s website.
I’ve seen so much unnecessary pain caused simply because we often don’t do the things we know we “should”. In my own family, my Uncle Roy struggled to manage his type 2 diabetes—he constantly missed doctor appointments, failed to take his medications, and never checked his blood sugars. He knew he should do all of these things—he even wanted and intended to—but he seemingly never could follow through. Uncle Roy spent years on di...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - April 10, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: AI/Machine Learning Communication and Patient Experience Health IT Company Healthcare IT Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Alec Zopf Artificial Intelligence At Home Care Behavioral Economics behavioral health CD Venture Chronic Cond Source Type: blogs
RBBB and LAFB. Is it trifascicular block? The complexities of Wenckebach, with Ken Grauer analysis.
This patient presented with complications of his dialysis fistula.Medical history:History of Ischemic Heart DiseaseHistory of Congestive Heart FailureDiabetes Mellitus requiring treatment with insulinPre-operative serum creatinine>2 mg/dLHe had this ECG recorded:What do you think?There is AV 2nd degree AV Block (Mobitz I, Wenckebach) with RBBB and LAFBThe physicians recognized the RBBB and LAFB, but not the Wenckebach. They compared to a previous ECG and thought they were identical. Here is the previous ECG from 2 months prior for pre-op for cataract surgeryThis appears to be atrial fibrillation with RBB...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - April 6, 2023 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 27th 2023
This study tested the hypothesis that ischemic vascular repair in aging by Ang-(1-7) involves attenuation of myelopoietic potential in the bone marrow and decreased mobilization of inflammatory cells.
Young or Old male mice of age 3-4 and 22-24 months, respectively, received Ang-(1-7) for four weeks. Myelopoiesis was evaluated in the bone marrow (BM) cells by carrying out the colony forming unit (CFU-GM) assay followed by flow cytometry of monocyte-macrophages. Expression of pro-myelopoietic factors and alarmins in the hematopoietic progenitor-enriched BM cells was evaluated. Hindlimb ischemia (HLI) was induced by ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 26, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Greater Thymic Atrophy Correlates with More Rapid Progression of Chronic Kidney Disease
In this study, we explored the impact of T cell senescence on the renal prognosis and mortality of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). We found that decreased recent thymic emigrant (RTE) T cells, which corresponds to decreased thymic output, was associated with CKD progression and high mortality, and an increase in highly differentiated CD28-CD4+ T cells, which increases with age, tended to be associated with CKD progression. Thymic atrophy is a characteristic of an aging immune system and has been implicated in age-related diseases such as infection, malignancy, atherosclerosis, and CKD. However, epidemiologic da...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 24, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Bonus Features – February 5, 2023 – 78% of data breaches result from hacks or IT incidents, Nova Scotia taps Oracle Cerner for EHR modernization, and more
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job.
Research and Studies
Nearly 80% of healthcare’s data breaches can be attributed to hacking and IT incidents, according to a recent report from managed security services provider Fortified Health Security. That represents ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 5, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Security and Privacy Telemedicine and Remote Monitoring Adam Kautzner ADAMS Center Agewell AHIMA AnMed AristaMD Aruba Atlanta Women's Health Group Atlas Dataset Brightside Health CCS Cerner C Source Type: blogs
