Articles related to Family Medicine/General Practice

A 56-year-old man has had right-upper-quadrant abdominal pain for several months but is otherwise healthy. He does not drink alcohol, has not been exposed to other hepatotoxins, and takes no medications. On physical examination, vital signs are normal. Abdominal examination reveals hepatosplenomegaly. The remainder of the physical exam is normal. What would you do?

A new cohort study has found physical, mental, and cognitive symptoms in patients one year after being treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) for COVID-19. The study involved an exploratory multicenter prospective cohort study that included 246 patients who were alive one year following ICU treatment for COVID-19. Three-quarters of patients reported physical symptoms, 1/4 reported mental symptoms, and about 15% reported cognitive symptoms a year after being hospitalized with the respiratory illness.

A proposed six-step approach to making sense of arterial blood gas (ABG) labs. This six-step process with simple table support helps ensure a complete and understandable interpretation of every ABG.

Can you figure out the cause of this progressing discoloration on the bilateral anterior thighs of this 48-year-old patient? The patient denies pain, itching, or blistering, but her medical history is relevant for hypothyroidism. Any guesses?

In contradistinction to recent reports that showed increased risk of death and no clinical benefit with escalation of allopurinol for progressive CKD, this 5-year population-based review found no increased mortality risk in escalating allopurinol dose and achieving target serum urate levels.

Vitamin D supplementation for five years, with or without omega-3 fatty acids, reduced autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis by 22%, according to the findings of a new study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation with or without vitamin D reduced the autoimmune disease rate by 15%, which was not statistically significant. Both treatment arms showed larger effects than the reference arm (vitamin D placebo and omega-3 fatty acid placebo).