Articles related to Emergency Medicine

An OBGYN voices frustration — “silently cursing behind my mask” – with the patients who “recite a litany of scientifically illiterate reasons for not taking” the COVID-19 vaccine despite its 99%+ effectiveness in keeping them alive. Do you share this doctor’s sentiments?

Can you differentiate between bradykinin-mediated angioedema and the more common histamine-mediated angioedema? How significant is a delayed diagnosis? Do you favor on-demand or preventative therapy? What is the recommended therapy? Access to specialist care and effective treatment in the past 10 years has improved the quality of life and reduced the mortality rate in patients with hereditary angioedema. This wide-ranging report from the British Journal of Hospital Medicine covers emerging treatments and outlines where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going in hereditary angioedema (HAE) care.

Often undiagnosed due to its unspecific symptoms, hereditary angioedema (HAE) is a tricky condition that causes many patients unnecessary suffering with unnecessary surgeries and invasive diagnostic/therapeutic interventions. Read on to educate yourself on some of the alarming numbers on the orphan disease.   

After diagnosis during a partial mastectomy, this patient’s estimated blood loss was 58 mL, causing anemia and requiring a red blood cell transfusion along with ventriculoperitoneal drain placement. With a substantive bleeding history before the diagnosis, what would you do next with this patient? Work her up for von Willebrand disease? Do a complete blood count test to look at platelet count, a peripheral smear to look at the morphology of the platelets, and a coagulation profile? Offer genetic testing for fibrinogen disorders? What would your next steps be? Read the full case presentation and expert opinion to see how your peers responded.

The FDA added a warning that Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine may trigger Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in a small number of people. Of the 12.5 million Americans who received this vaccine, about 100 people reported having GBS, which is an acquired demyelinating polyneuropathy that often begins in the lower extremities and ascends over time with loss of reflexes, causing muscle weakness, or in the most severe cases, paralysis.

According to a study of 135,000 doctors by Doximity, male physicians made, on average, 28% more than females in 2020, a 3% increase from the 2019 numbers. The survey, along with Medscape’s poll in 2021 that showed male specialist physicians overall making 33% more than females, points to a few other large gender pay gaps, as well as some in which women doctors make salaries closer to those of men.