By Tracey Liebman

Faculty Peer Reviewed

The summer games may be over, but we’re still entertained by the 2012 Olympics! Here are a few medicine-related fun facts about the London Games.

Demographics of Summer 2012 Olympics:

10,500 athletes, 70,000+ volunteers, 20,000 media and journalists, 10+ million spectators

Medical care:

26 million dollars provided by the National Health Service (NHS) to build the state-of-the-art medical building in the Athletes’ Village for the Olympics

500 people expected to use the medical clinic each day …

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By Maryann Kwa, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

131 million: The number of times the most popular medication in the United States was prescribed in 2010.

 Recently, IMS Health, a company that monitors annual sales for pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, published a list of the most prescribed medications in the United States in 2010 .  

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By Michael Ford, MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

 “Blood Count”

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Chris Tully MD

Faculty peer reviewed

What is the number of patients needed to prophylax to prevent an episode of venous thromboembolism in a hospitalized medical patient?

 The use of prophylactic anticoagulation for venous thromboembolism (VTE) is considered standard of care in the inpatient medical setting in order to prevent deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and fatal and nonfatal pulmonary embolism (PE). While a majority of the knowledge stems of post-surgical patients, there…

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Elizabeth Gaines MD

Faculty Peer Reviewed

$275.50: The cost of routine morning labs at Bellevue in 2008.

Every morning, I sit down with my sign-out and scrawl “N, S, L” in red ink under each of my patients name. This becomes my to-do list, so that each day I remember to write a Note, up-date the Sign-out, and order morning Labs for each of my patients. As objective as I think I am, everyday…

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Rebecca Hall MD

50:  The number of patients on >100mg/day of methadone needed to be screened with an EKG to detect 1 person with a QTc >500 ms

A recent review in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggested guidelines for QTc interval screening in methadone users. The “number needed to treat” was thus calculated from several studies reviewed which show that about 2% of patients on methadone maintenance therapies (at doses >100 mg daily) developed QTc intervals in…

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