Commentary by Bani Chander MD, PGY-3
Childhood obesity, foodborne illness and the evil pharmaceutical industy…sorry to start your day off with some gloomy topics, but the news is full of it these days. Let’s get started.
Childhood obesity, as we know, has been on the rise, and children are starting not only to eat, but to walk, talk, and act like adults. Now should we also start treating them like adults? This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a new…
Commentary by Judith Brenner MD, Associate Program Director, NYU Internal Medicine Residency Program
Happy July 4th! As we celebrate our nation’s 232nd birthday, I sit here wondering what “shortcuts” might have looked like in 1776. Smallpox inoculation might have made the cut. Apparently people like Thomas Jefferson inoculated themselves and their families against this dreaded disease via inhalation. It wasn’t until 20 years later, in 1796, that Dr. Edward Jenner discovered that he could protect people from smallpox by vaccinating them using cowpox. …
Commentary by Danise Schiliro- Chuang MD
Welcome to the wide world of shortcuts. While I hope this post comes to you from your laptop while you’re relaxing on the beach with a cool drink, I realize this is likely not the case. Hopefully, reading this post will be refreshing enough.
Also before we start, a warm welcome to the new intern class! We hope that you’re settling in to life as an MD with ease and that you will enjoy shortcuts for…
Commentary by Michael Poles MD, Associate Editor, Clinical Correlations
Hey Blogophiles,
In case you were blogopenic, awaiting the latest installment of shortcuts, here we go.
It is still early morning as I write this. Many folk the world over are sitting down to their 1st or 2nd or perhaps 3rd cup of coffee. Caffeiniacs rejoice because an article in the latest issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that you may be headed for a longer life. The authors sought to…
Commentary by Joshua Remick MD, NYU Senior Chief Resident
We’ll start this week off with some good news—we’re living longer and dying less! At least we were back in 2006. You remember 2006 don’t you? That was the year that Dick Cheney shot his buddy, Pluto was demoted, Brokeback Mountain created the stir but Crash won the Oscar, Roger Clemens unretired for the 3rd time (more on this in a bit) and Taylor Hicks was your American Idol. This week the CDC released…
Commentary by Neil Shapiro MD, Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Correlations
Spiking oil prices, unemployment at 5.5%, Israel considering bombing Iran, 95 degree heat in early June, the White House exaggerating the case to go to war…the news was just tremendously uplifting this week. At least the democrats seem to be getting their act together. Sorry to start ShortCuts on a downer, but I thought maybe what follows could be seen as a reprieve from the news, where you can spend a moment not cursing the…
Commentary by Henry Tran, MD
Opiate-induced constipation is frequently encountered by hospitalized patients. As Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” therefore an aggressive bowel regiment of stool softeners and laxatives will often prevent this problem from becoming a serious one. Not shockingly conventional bowel regiments sometimes don’t work and clinicians must resort to other treatments. Oral naloxone (Narcan) in escalating doses has been shown to be a successful treatment for opiate-induced constipation and even for post-op…
Commentary by Josh Olstein MD, NYU Chief Resident
This week’s edition of shortcuts begins with an article from the NEJM looking at the role of cardiac troponin in patients with acute decompensated heart failure. Many of us have “cycled the trops” countless times to evaluate patients with chest pain. However the utility of troponin measurement in patients with CHF is less clear. In this study the authors examined short-term outcomes of patients admitted with CHF exacerbations that had troponin data available on…
Commentary by Michael Tanner, M.D., Section Editor, Clinical Correlations
In the May 15th issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC recommends vaccinating all people 60 and older against shingles with one dose of zoster vaccine. Let’s all get straight with the nomenclature here. Varicella is chickenpox, zoster is shingles, and varicella zoster is the DNA herpesvirus that causes both of them. Ninety-eight percent of adult Americans have varicella zoster virus latently lurking in their sensory dorsal root ganglia neurons. The…
Commentary by Cara Litvin MD, Executive Editor, Clinical Correlations
Making headlines this week was a study published in JAMA analyzing prospective data from over 100,000 female participants in the Nurses’ Health Study for 22 years of follow-up. 64% of deaths among current smokers and 28% of deaths among former smokers were attributable to cigarette smoking. However, an encouraging 13% reduction in all cause mortality was seen within the first 5 years of quitting smoking, and after 20 years, the excess risk decreased to…
Commentary by Sean Cavanaugh MD, Associate Editor, Clinical Correlations
More strong evidence is popping up in the journals indicating that genes might actually be important in determining disease. Who knew? Now that we are well into the dawning age of genetically determined diagnosis and therapy, this week features a few interesting articles on recently discovered genetic associations with particular disease. Other than that – it’s all about global hypertension…
The Lancet features a type of research increasingly seen in the major journals:…
Commentary by Judith Brenner MD, Associate Program Director, NYU Internal Medicine Residency Program
This week’s ShortCuts begins with a follow up of a story first presented in March, 2008, when the recall of potentially contaminated heparin was reported.
Typical case: 73 year old woman with a complex medical history including end-stage renal disease treated with the use of hemodialysis for 7 years routinely receives heparin intravenously during hemodialysis. In January 2008, during a dialysis session, she develops hypotension with associated nausea and…
