The LITFL Review 107
Conclusion = use it, or don’t. Either is fine (but Carley does).
As UK docs changed over to new terms, Damian Roland (@damian_roland) started a #paedstips hashtag where people posted…well…paeds tips. You can see the storify of it here.
News from the Fastlane
Need some inspiration? Check out LITFL’s very own Michelle Johnston who gave a SMACC talk on The Physiology Of Inspiration - truly awe inspiring and magical!
The master of FOAMed has a talk posted from SMACC as well. Check out Mike’s rant on Forget Social Media… Get #FOAMed!
LITFL Review EM/CC Educational Social Media Round...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - August 19, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Kane Guthrie Tags: Education eLearning Emergency Medicine Featured Health Intensive Care LITFL review LITFL R/V Source Type: blogs
RESPECT: More thoughts for interns and residents courtesy of Dr. Darilyn Moyer
Darilyn Moyer is Vice-Chair for Education in the Department of Medicine at Temple University. She also is the Chair-Elect of the ACP Board of Governors and a good friend. She sent this wonderful piece on respect for house officers:
The Power of RESPECT (one of my favorite songs of all time)
1. Respect the Power of Words
Perform bloodless surgery with your brain and practice a thorough history and physical. Despite the explosion of medical technology over the past several decades, most diagnoses can still be arrived at with a thorough history and physical. The best doctors use technology to AUGMENT not SUBSTITUTE ...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - July 20, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
Funny Allergy Quotes, Jokes, Stories and a List of Crazy Reactions.
If you're looking for funny allergy quotes, jokes and stories you've come to the right place. I asked my readers from facebook to provide me with their experiences they've had regarding crazy allergy reactions and they did not let me down. They relayed dozens of incidents they've experienced through the years. Over the years I've discovered several funny allergies myself, including allergies to prednisone, diet products and the color red. Some patients have dozens of allergies. My experience is that most of these allergies are not allergies in the physiological sense. The te...
Source: The Happy Hospitalist - July 2, 2013 Category: Internists and Doctors of Medicine Authors: Tamer Mahrous Source Type: blogs
EuroPace 2013 wrap up — A major study on AF ablation and the limits of gene testing in Cardiology
I’m writing this from home. The travel back was uneventful and I actually got a little caught up in the office Friday. It was a fun trip but getting back to doctoring felt good.
Atrial Fibrillation ablation:
The Gap-AF trial was released as the lead late-breaker at EuroPace 2013. There were many remarkable (‘they-really-did-that’ sort of) features of this study. Born from a (Italian/German) debate on whether complete isolation of the pulmonary veins is needed, Gap-AF investigators swallowed hard and randomized German patients to two groups. The complete isolation group underwent AF ablation done in the currently acc...
Source: Dr John M - June 29, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr John Source Type: blogs
Sometimes it is best to do nothing. A "must read " by Dr Justin Coleman
The Naked Doctor: an indepth look at the pitfalls of “cutting edge” medicineThe Naked Doctor is an ongoing project at Croakey that aims to encourage discussion and awareness of the opportunities to do more for health by doing less.In this latest edition, Dr Justin Coleman suggests that an equitable health system does not mean trying to give everyone the very best, if that means “the most tests, the most expense, the most treatments”.“Not only will that aspiration require others to miss out on even the second-best treatment, but it too often also actively harms the recipient,” he says.Perhaps one ...
Source: PharmaGossip - June 24, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Unraveling the Secrets of Our Mysterious Brain
There are many big moments in scientific discovery. Humans have explored our world and learned incredible things. We’ve discovered a giant asteroid belt circling a star 25 light-years from earth. We determined that disease comes from microorganisms.
We’ve explored the structure of an atom. And we can see bones inside our bodies as well as bombs inside suitcases.
Yet the human brain still remains very much a mystery. Recent advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have led to great gains in our understanding of the brain and how it functions.
But even so, scientists have not yet discovered all the ty...
Source: World of Psychology - June 23, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Christy Matta, MA Tags: Addiction Alcoholism Alzheimer's Brain and Behavior General Health-related Memory and Perception Mental Health and Wellness PTSD Research Schizophrenia alzheimers Asteroid Belt Biological Structure Bombs brain initiative Br Source Type: blogs
Sore throats and the learned professional
aka American ER Doc Gone Walkabout… 022
Let’s take a single complaint – “sore throat” – and look at a few of the ways that it can be handled.
Let’s say that we’re satisfied with having a good outcome with no further intervention, say 90% of the time. And, another 9% of the time we get a second chance on a “bounceback” to get it right. To do this we might develop a very simple algorithm. Ask the patient if it hurts, and ask if he had a fever. Ask the patient to open his mouth – if he can open it, get a Rapid Antigen Test for strep. If he can’t open it, get...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - June 21, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Rick Abbott Tags: American ER Doc Gone Walkabout Emergency Medicine Featured Health Pharyngitis professionalism rick abbott Sore Throat Source Type: blogs
One. . .Million. . .Pounds (For a New Antibiotic?)
Via Stuart Cantrill on Twitter, I see that UK Prime Minister David Cameron is prepared to announce a prize for anyone who can "identify and solve the biggest problem of our time". He's leaving that open, and his examples are apparently ". . .the next penicillin, aeroplane or world wide web".
I like the idea of prizes for research and invention. The thing is, the person who invents the next airplane or World Wide Web will probably do pretty well off it through the normal mechanisms. And it's worth thinking about the very, very different pathways these three inventions took, both in their discovery and their development. Wh...
Source: In the Pipeline - June 14, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Who Discovers and Why Source Type: blogs
7 Limiting Beliefs of Unhappy People
Your beliefs shape your life.Trust me, I know that life can be hard.Really, really hard.But how you see the world is ultimately responsible for whether you are overall a happy person, or whether you end up feeling bitter and unhappy most days.Negative beliefs act like a filter. They change the way you experience people and events, and over time, they chip away at your sense of self.The good news is, once you recognize negative beliefs in yourself, they begin to lose their power over you.And like a ray of sunlight peeking through dark clouds, your inner capacity for joy will begin peeking through, brightening up your life o...
Source: Dumb Little Man - Tips for Life - May 22, 2013 Category: Life Coaches Authors: DLM Writers Source Type: blogs
The Fog of Science
As you may recall, in our last episode, Abraham Flexner has persuaded the world -- or at least the space between the North Atlantic and the North Pacific -- to put medicine on a scientific basis. But, it turns out that is very easy to say and very hard to do.Back in 1910, people knew more about human biology than they did in 1850 or 500 BC, to be sure. But the usefulness of that knowledge for making or keeping people healthy -- whatever that means, and remember we still haven't figured that out -- was very limited. To take stock briefly of our relevant knowledge at the time, we knew something about pathogenic microbes and ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 13, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Atypical Chest Pain: Suspicious ECG, and a Left Main ACS is found in a 30-something
A male in his 30s presented with chest pain, cough, and sore throat.He had been seen in clinic the day prior for cough x 1 month and sort throat. A strep test was positive and he was treated with penicillin, and also with acetaminophen and ibuprofen.On the day of ED (ER) presentation, he presented with 5 hours of intermittent sudden onset left side chest pressure unrelieved by ibuprofen, with associated vomiting and SOB. There was some association with moving and palpation, but also some improvement with NTG. An ECG was obtained immediately:Sinus rhythm. There is some inferior and lateral ST elevati...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - May 7, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Steve Smith Source Type: blogs
Top stories in health and medicine, May 2, 2013
Brought to you by MedPage Today.
1. Study Eases Some Azithromycin Fears. Danish patients taking azithromycin were at no greater risk of cardiovascular death, relative to those using penicillin, when pretreatment mortality risk was taken into account.
2. Study: Medicaid Expansion Won’t Help All Aspects of Health. Expanding Medicaid coverage improves mental health but doesn’t tackle some basic measures of physical health, like blood pressure, judging by the experience seen with a Medicaid lottery in Oregon.
3. On-Call Pay Varies Widely by Specialty. Surgeons commanded more than $1,000 a day for being on-call at t...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - May 2, 2013 Category: Family Physicians Tags: News Health reform Infectious disease Medicare Medications Source Type: blogs
Danish Study Finds No Increased CV Risk With Azithromycin In General Population
A large observational study found no increased risk for cardiovascular events associated with azithromycin (Zithromax, Pfizer) in a general population of young and middle-age adults. In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Danish investigators report the results of a large national observational study comparing people who took azithromycin with matched controls who took no antibiotics and with matched controls who took penicillin V for similar indications. Although there was a significant increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular causes in people taking azithromycin compared with people takin...
Source: CardioBrief - May 1, 2013 Category: Cardiology Authors: Larry Husten Tags: People, Places & Events Policy & Ethics Prevention, Epidemiology & Outcomes antibiotics azithromycin FDA Pfizer Zithromax Source Type: blogs
Please Poke My Paronychium!
THE BASICSWhat is more satisfying than draining a pus-filled paronychium? Seeing the look of relief on the face of your patient when his painful, pulsating digit is relieved of all that tension! This rather elementary procedure could be perceived as stale and uneventful for some of you. The more thorough and astute clinicians, however, realize these tiny infections around the nail root may open the door to a mixed bag of insidious and harmful bacterial infections including MRSA, chronic reoccurrences, cellulitis, subungual abscesses, osteomyelitis, herpetic whitlow, or even the dreaded felon.
Whatever your pleasure, thi...
Source: The Procedural Pause - May 1, 2013 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
