Immunotherapy: What you need to know
Not all that long ago, chemotherapy was the only option to treat most advanced (metastatic) cancers. Because these drugs work by destroying rapidly dividing cells, they harm some healthy cells — such as hair follicles — as well as cancer cells. In the past two decades, cancer treatment has been transformed by targeted drugs and the emergence of chemotherapy. Targeted drugs are designed to home in on specific genes or proteins that are altered or overexpressed on cancer cells. Immunotherapy has been very successful for certain types of advanced cancers, such as lung, bladder, and skin cancers. One form of immunotherapy ...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 22, 2019 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Guru P. Sonpavde, MD Tags: Cancer Immunotherapy Managing your health care Source Type: blogs

Seven things you probably didn ’ t know about IBS
To an impressive degree, irritable bowel syndrome, IBS, vividly illustrates what consuming wheat and grains do to the human body, as well as the myriad effects of factors such as GMOs containing glyphosate and Bt toxin, veggies and fruits with herbicides and pesticides, water “purified” with awful chemicals such as chloramine (MUCH longer lasting than chlorine in the body and environment), and commonly prescribed drugs like Protonix, Prilosec, and other stomach acid-suppressing drugs. You may already know that many people obtain relief from IBS symptoms just by banishing wheat and grains from their diet. But so...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - September 1, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates autoimmune bowel flora dysbiosis gluten-free grain-free grains IBS Inflammation prebiotic probiotic small intestinal wheat belly Source Type: blogs

Medical Care in Rural India
By SAURABH JHA I’ve humbly realized that doctors aren’t always indispensable. When I was three, a compounder – a doctor’s assistant – allegedly saved my life. Dehydrated from severe dysentery, I was ashen and lifeless. My blood pressure was falling and I would soon lose my pulse. I needed fluids urgently. An experienced pediatrician could not get a line into my collapsed veins. When hope seemed lost, his compounder gingerly offered to try, and got fluids inside my veins on the first attempt. My pulse and color returned and I lived to hear the tale from my mother. So, on a recent trip to India...
Source: The Health Care Blog - July 16, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs

Emerging issues of misuse and abuse of OTC loperamide challenge FDA to address a new turn in the opioid addiction crisis, while maintaining access for patients
By: Scott Gottlieb, M.D. The opioid epidemic has reached tragic proportions. Yet it continues to take many new, and troubling turns. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned from this crisis, it has been the ability of the mounting abuse and … Continue reading → (Source: FDA Voice)
Source: FDA Voice - May 10, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs

LITFL Review 324
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog Welcome to the 324th LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest and deliver a bite-sized chunk of FOAM. Readers can subscribe to LITFL review RSS or LITFL review EMAIL subscription The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beauts of the Week Nice discussio...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - March 25, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Marjorie Lazoff, MD Tags: LITFL review LITFL R/V Source Type: blogs

It ’s time to treat C. diff diarrhea
For millennia, blood-letting was the standard of care for many diseases; today it is a joke, evoked only to mock our predecessors.  But it is time to dismount our high horse and realize that there is at least one infection that we still primitively try to drain from the body, not from the bloodstream, but from the colon.  This is our friend Clostridium difficile. According to the CDC, there are about 500,000 cases of C. diff in the U.S. each year and 29,000 deaths, some from overwhelming sepsis and others from the sequelae of dehydration.  While we treat the infection with metronidazole, oral vancomycin, and now with fe...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - February 20, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/eric-r-gottlieb" rel="tag" > Eric R. Gottlieb, MD < /a > Tags: Conditions Gastroenterology Infectious Disease Source Type: blogs

Psychology Around the Net: February 3, 2018
Well, ol’ Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow yesterday, so we might be looking at six more weeks of winter — “might,” because he’s usually wrong. However, if he’s right, there’s plenty of cozy wintertime activities to get us through the days and nights when it’s too cold or snowy to go out. One of my favorites? Reading! Coincidentally, in this week’s Psychology Around the Net we have a list of 10 new mental health books out in 2018! We also have the latest on the anti-diarrhea medicine overdoses, a psychologist’s controversial research regarding how we distinguish p...
Source: World of Psychology - February 3, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Alicia Sparks Tags: Addiction Books Habits Industrial and Workplace Medications Phobia Psychology Around the Net Research Substance Abuse anti-diarrhea medicine books about mental illness business coaches Gaydar Imodium Michal Kosinski Opioids Source Type: blogs

LITFL Review 258
Welcome to the 258th LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest and deliver a bite-sized chunk of FOAM. The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beauts of the Week Nearly missed this one: Ryan Radecki goes audio in a podcast reformatting of EM Lit of Note posts from the month of October. Slick brief critical appraisals, quality audio–a must add to your podcast library. [JS] The Best of #FOAMed Emergen...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - November 20, 2016 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Marjorie Lazoff, MD Tags: Education LITFL review Source Type: blogs

MKSAP: 25-year-old woman with diarrhea for 2 days
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 25-year-old woman e-mails her internist from Mexico with a report of diarrhea for 2 days. She is traveling and reports three to four loose bowel movements per day. She has been dining in the hotel restaurants but has also consumed foods and bottled soft drinks served with ice from local food vendors. She feels urgency to move her bowels but no tenesmus. She has mild abdominal cramping without pain, vomiting, or fever. Stools are described as watery without mucus or blood. Although she is uncomfortable, she has...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 22, 2016 Category: Journals (General) Authors: < a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/mksap" rel="tag" > mksap < /a > Tags: Conditions GI Source Type: blogs

LITFL Review 230
Welcome to the 230th LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest and deliver a bite-sized chuck of FOAM. The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beauts of the Week  The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists have uploaded some talks from their recent ASM. Listen to Anil Patel talk on THRIVE (think NODESAT on steroids!), Stuart Marshall talk on Human Factors in airway management, and Helen Kolaw...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - May 8, 2016 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Marjorie Lazoff, MD Tags: Education LITFL review Source Type: blogs

Legally High
A 24-year-old is brought to the emergency department by EMS after being found altered outside a fast food restaurant talking to inanimate objects. Initial vital signs on arrival include a blood pressure of 145/92 mm Hg, heart rate of 126 bpm, respiratory rate of 22 bpm, temperature of 98.4°F, and pulse oximetry of 100% on room air.   The patient is awake, alert, but oriented x 0. He is tachycardic, dry, flushed, and his mydriatic pupils measure 5 mm in diameter. The patient repeatedly was asking to go to the bathroom, and after multiple attempts, ultrasound was used to scan his bladder. It was determined that he had 50...
Source: The Tox Cave - December 1, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs

Legally High
A 24-year-old is brought to the emergency department by EMS after being found altered outside a fast food restaurant talking to inanimate objects. Initial vital signs on arrival include a blood pressure of 145/92 mm Hg, heart rate of 126 bpm, respiratory rate of 22 bpm, temperature of 98.4°F, and pulse oximetry of 100% on room air.   The patient is awake, alert, but oriented x 0. He is tachycardic, dry, flushed, and his mydriatic pupils measure 5 mm in diameter. The patient repeatedly was asking to go to the bathroom, and after multiple attempts, ultrasound was used to scan his bladder. It was determined that he had 500 ...
Source: The Tox Cave - December 1, 2015 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs

A patient presents with painless diarrhea. What should you do next?
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 67-year-old woman is evaluated for a 1-year history of loose stools. She reports approximately four episodes per day without abdominal pain. She has not had nausea, vomiting, weight loss, bright red blood per rectum, or melena. On physical examination, temperature is 36.7 °C (98.1 °F), blood pressure is 115/85 mm Hg, pulse rate is 76/min, and respiration rate is 18/min; BMI is 25. No rashes are noted. Abdominal examination is normal. Rectal examination demonstrates normal resting anal tone. Laboratory studie...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - August 29, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Conditions GI Source Type: blogs

Carcinoid Tumor
Carcinoid tumor is a type of neuroendocrine tumor Pathophysiology 1) contains and may secrete physiologically active substances 2) occurs in GI tract (appendix, rectum, small bowel, stomach), thymus, lung, ovary, and testes 3) produces “local” symptoms, systemic but non-carcinoid syndrome symptoms, and systemic carcinoid syndrome symptoms Signs and Symptoms of Carcinoid Tumor Local Symptoms 1) appendix – usually asymptomatic and found incidentally on appendectomy 2) small intestine – obstruction, episodic abdominal pain, bleeding 3) rectum – bleeding, constipation, and diarrhea 4) stomach/thym...
Source: Inside Surgery - November 18, 2013 Category: Surgeons Authors: Editor Tags: Oncology 5-HIAA appendix flushing GI metastases motilin serotonin Source Type: blogs

Lessons Learned from a Medical Mission
Nurses can serve as excellent physician extenders.My mentors in austere medicine warned me that with an interpreter I would be lucky to see 30 patients per day. That concerned me because the local missionaries indicated at our first organizational meeting in the Dominican Republic that we were expecting to see 100 patients per day. On top of that, 100 cards were being handed out at each of the four locations we would be visiting.   As the single physician in the group of 19 team members (seven nurses), these seemed like very high expectations. Working in a setting that uses physician extenders and emergency medicine resid...
Source: M2E Too! Mellick's Multimedia EduBlog - May 2, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs