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Primecuts – This Week In The Journals

July 21, 2014
Primecuts – This Week In The Journals

By Caroline A. Nelson, MD

Peer Reviewed

New legislation signed by Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has opened the door for medical school graduates to treat patients in underserved primary care settings without residency training or passing Step 3 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination. After 30 days of supervision by a collaborating physician, the law would permit these new “Assistant Physicians” to treat patients with only indirect supervision as far as 50 miles away. The Missouri State Medical Association helped draft the law to…

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Medical Etymology: Scrofula

July 18, 2014
Medical Etymology: Scrofula

By Sagar S. Mungekar, MD

Peer Reviewed

It was around the 300s BCE when a sow must have had her snout near Mycobacterium intercellularae, an environmental saphrophyte that lives in soil and water. After some time, she—like many of her community—developed tubercles in her cervical lymph nodes. Aristotle noted that this happened to many domesticated animals such as pigs and oxen. Though this phenomenon was likely noted by many of the time, Aristotle’s is the first written record of it. Some time later, a physician…

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Get Your Caffeine fix while lowering your diabetes risk – too good to be true?

July 17, 2014
Get Your Caffeine fix while lowering your diabetes risk – too good to be true?

By Jennifer Ng, MD

Peer Reviewed

Addiction, by definition, is a negative word. It implies the overindulging of something with a high or uncertain risk to benefit ratio, such as coffee. Yet recently, writer Markham Heid informed coffee addicts all over the world, “Drink Coffee, Lower Your Diabetes Risk” . To add to that, it’s not just coffee; tea and decaf can do it too, or so his article proclaims. Skeptical? Let’s review the evidence and judge for ourselves.

It turns out that this same…

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Primecuts – This Week In the Journals

July 14, 2014
Primecuts – This Week In the Journals

By Kimberly Skrobarcek, MD

Peer Reviewed

As the world is seemingly captivated by German’s victory in overtime of the World Cup final game, more and more of our television commercials and advertisements seem to be caught up in the frenzy as well. One Hyundai commercial in particular highlights the emotional connection we feel with the joy of a victory, maybe even prompting the start of a family . With this in mind, we turn to an exciting new study that could prove very important in…

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Vit-a-minute: Are Supplements Worth It?

July 11, 2014
Vit-a-minute: Are Supplements Worth It?

By Aditya K. Sreenivasan

Peer Reviewed

The Huffington Post recently publicized a large study on the health habits of doctors. The study, a survey done by Medscape with 31,399 participants, revealed that more than half of doctors take some form of dietary supplement. The most common form of supplement taken was a multivitamin . With the way doctors find themselves in constant discussions about “evidence based medicine” these days, we can assume that there are solid data showing that multivitamins are beneficial to long-term health.…

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Mystery Quiz- The Answer

July 10, 2014
Mystery Quiz- The Answer

Vivian Hayashi MD, Robert Smith MD

The answer to the mystery quiz is rhabdomyolysis due to legionella pneumonia (LP). The presentation of the patient, namely severe rhabdomyolysis complicated by acute kidney injury, obscured the presence of a subtle retrocardiac density that is visible on the CXR (Image 2, asterisk). The upper axial image from an abdominal CT, obtained one day after the CXR, shows the extent of the LLL infiltrate (Image 3). The infiltrate is contained by the major fissure and is characterized by air…

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Primecuts – This Week In The Journals

July 8, 2014
Primecuts – This Week In The Journals

By Miguel A. Saldivar, MD

Peer Reviewed

Last week the US team bowed out of the World Cup, but not without a valiant final effort. Particularly noteworthy was goalie Tim Howards’ performance, leading some fans to affectionately label him the new “Secretary of Defense” (1). In spite of the US team’s exit from the tournament, “the beautiful game”, as the great Brazilian player Pelé once called it, continues to both entertain and teach in unexpected ways. As proof of the latter, we begin this week’s…

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From the Archives: Myth vs. Reality: The July Effect

July 3, 2014
From the Archives: Myth vs. Reality: The July Effect

Please enjoy this post from the archives dated August 12, 2012

By Mark Adelman, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

Another July 1st has come and gone, marking the yearly transition in US graduate medical education of interns to junior residents, junior residents to senior residents, and senior residents to fellows. With this annual mid-summer mass influx of nearly 37,000 interns and other trainees taking on new clinical responsibilities, learning to use different electronic medical record systems and navigating the other idiosyncrasies of unfamiliar institutions, one…

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