By Robert Mocharla, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Both New York and the world had a busy last few days this week. We all shared a collective cringe when JP Morgan announced a monstrous financial loss in an already volatile (to put it lightly) market. However, with the news that the Rangers took game 7, we were invited to live in the moment for just a bit longer and turn the city back into a hockey town for a few more days. On the medical side,…
By Jennifer Mulliken
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Case 1:
A 30-year-old African-American male with a history of bilateral pulmonary emboli presents with a 1-week history of bilateral lower extremity edema. Blood pressure is 138/83, cholesterol 385, LDL 250, albumin 2.9. Urinalysis shows 3+ protein. Twenty-four hour urinary protein is 7.2 grams.
Case 2:
A 47-year-old Hispanic male with a history of mild hypertension and venous insufficiency presents with a 3-month history of bilateral lower extremity edema. BP is 146/95, cholesterol 241, LDL 165, albumin 1.9.…
By Jessica Taff, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
With the thrills of the Kentucky Derby and Cinco de Mayo now behind us, we are left awaiting the May flowers promised by an abundance of April showers. In our state of anticipation for the warm days of summer, popular activities appear to be intersecting with modern medicine. This past week, Facebook introduced a campaign to urge members to announce their organ donor status on the social networking site in a hope that this issue would creep into…
By Brian D. Clark
Faculty Peer Reviewed
The ability to critically assess the validity of a clinical trial is one of many important skills that a physician strives to develop. This skill helps guide clinical decision-making, and there are a number of things that we are trained to look for to help determine the validity of any given study. Right at the top of the list of factors that go into this appraisal is that of study design, with the randomized, placebo-controlled trial serving…
By Matthew Ingham, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
History provides many examples of medical interventions that were intended for one use, but were ultimately found therapeutic for a wholly different purpose. A review of this week’s prominent medical journals finds a number of studies proposing new applications for established treatments, including the use of bariatric surgery for inducing the remission of diabetes, bone marrow cells to improve heart failure, aspirin for prevention of cancer metastasis, and highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for preexposure prophylaxis in those…
By Aneesh Bapat, MD
Faculty Peer Reviewed
Perhaps it’s the French name, the curvaceous appearance on electrocardiogram (EKG), or its elusive and mysterious nature, but Torsades des pointes, a polymorphic ventricular arrhythmia, is certainly the sexiest of all ventricular arrhythmias. Very few physicians and scientists can explain its origin in an early afterdepolarization (EAD), and fewer still can explain its “twisting of the points” morphology on EKG. Despite its rare occurrence (only 761 cases reported to the WHO Drug Monitoring Center between 1983 and 1999)1,…
When April with
Her showers sweet
Drives you inside to
Your window seat,
We shall excite
Synapses neural
With landmark trials
And doggerel.
This cruelest month
Should not deter
A nature curious
With thoughts astir.
So electrify
Your occiputs
With this week’s release
Of…
By Xiao Jing Wang
Faculty Peer Reviewed
ML is from Fu Zhou, China. She doesn’t speak much English and works in her family’s clothing store as a sales girl. ML is only one year older than I am. When ML was first diagnosed with lupus, about when I started my first year of college, she spent two months in the ICU with renal failure. ML had most of her bowel resected after developing mesenteric vasculitis. With a combination of lupus cerebritis, high dose steroids, and…
