Articles related to Hospitalist

In a cohort study of more than 2 million patients, influenza vaccination was associated with a 22% to 24% lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. But more than half of that effect seems to be that healthier people are more likely to be vaccinated for flu.

In this retrospective cross-sectional study of patients hospitalized for suspected infection, temporal temperature measurement was associated with a lower odds of detecting fever compared with oral measurement in Black patients but not white patients. “Health care systems routinely use fever cutoffs to trigger notification pathways such as sepsis alerts to systematize timely triage and antibiotic administration. Although the absolute difference between oral and temporal temperatures was small, the findings suggest that this discrepancy combined with commonly used fever cutoffs may lead to fever going undetected in many Black patient.” Sivasubramanium V. Bhavani, MD

The problem with many of the findings of cirrhosis is you have to specifically look for them or you will miss them. Here’s a tip for helping you not miss them.

Palliative care (PC) can help reduce emergency department use, hospitalizations, and symptom burden across a spectrum of diseases. To assist clinicians in keeping their expertise current, the authors reviewed and summarized the top PC articles of 2020. The analysis included 28 PC intervention trials for heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and dementia.

Gabapentin has been increasingly used as part of a multimodal analgesia regimen to reduce opioid use in perioperative pain management. In this cohort study of 237,872 adults aged 65 years or older, perioperative gabapentin users had significantly increased risk of delirium, new antipsychotic use, and pneumonia compared with nonusers after major surgery.

A quartet of current clinical trials involving first-in-class molecules and CRISPR gene editing show great promise. STELLAR investigates a fusion protein in PAH, CodeBreak 200 studies a first-in-class of KRAS inhibitor, EMERGENT-2 focuses on a new treatment for schizophrenia, and NCT04601051 studies a gene editing drug for one form of amyloidosis.