Articles related to Internal Medicine

How could complete silence possibly be considered music (John Cage’s 4’33”), or a blank canvas a masterpiece of art (Robert Rauschenberg’s White Painting)? This oncology medical student explains how after truly listening to a dying patient’s wishes, the student’s silence provided the canvas for the patient’s thoughts, becoming an advocate for his needs: “Silence is not merely the absence of sound but rather an invitation for others to be heard.”

Available from Guideline Central, the free, quick-reference print and digital pocket guide covers the most recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Hepatocellular Carcinoma Guidelines. Accessed by web and offline mobile devices, the pocket guide covers key points, treatment, first- and second-line therapies, a downloadable PDF, and links to other resources in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

This is the third edition of the guidelines – the last coming in 2014 – providing a resource and guidance specifically for primary care practitioners about how to plan care for childhood cancer survivors. “A care plan just really encourages coordination, especially if a child has a very complicated post-cancer treatment history with a lot of morbidity,” said Dr. Melissa Hudson, director of the division of cancer survivorship at St. Jude’s and corresponding author of the new guidelines.

The two new studies in the Morbidity and Mortality Report compared data from July and August 2021 – when delta was dominant to the earlier period in the pandemic – and found that about 1.4 of every 100,000 children/adolescents were hospitalized for COVID-19, nearly 5x the weekly rate in late June and close to the peak in January. Also, the weekly rate of 1.9 per 100,000 children ages 0-4 years in mid-August was nearly 10 times that of late June.

Publication: JAMAMethod: Electronic health record (EHR) data from 8 health systems over seven 4-week surveillance periods to identify and assign gestational ages for spontaneous abortions and ongoing pregnancies; analyzed and compared odds of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine in the 28 days prior to spontaneous abortion and ongoing pregnancies.Results: Of 105,446 unique pregnancies, 13,160 spontaneous abortions and 92,286 ongoing pregnancies were identified; spontaneous abortions did not have an increased odds of exposure to a COVID-19 vaccination in the prior 28 days compared with ongoing pregnancies.

As the influenza season will coincide with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it’s perfect timing for the release of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) influenza vaccination updated guidance. The comprehensive report indicates that COVID-19 vaccines can be co-administered with other vaccines, including influenza vaccines like egg-based flu vaccines and cell culture-based inactivated and recombinant vaccines.