Articles related to Pediatrics

Since the onset of COVID-19, medical professionals have struggled to rapidly diagnose and determine whether someone has the respiratory illness. This issue is particularly acute in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) where doctors and nurses must triage patients based on the severity of their illnesses. Now, a “breathalyzer” test given to critically ill patients has been found to detect the virus quickly and efficiently, providing new hope for the rapid screening of people who are overwhelming hospital emergency rooms. Specifically, the breathalyzer test was found to detect COVID-19 with 88% sensitivity among a group of 46 patients admitted to an ICU.

At the outset of the pandemic, biotechnology company Novavax was one of the frontrunners to bring a vaccine against COVID-19 to market. But nearly two years later, Novavax’s vaccine has yet to appear. In a compelling article, the BMJ details the repeated delays and setbacks that have torpedoed Novavax’s once-promising vaccine candidate and rendered it unnecessary now that other vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca flood the global marketplace.

Let’s be honest, some medical specialties are easier than others, offering better hours at higher rates of pay and with less stress. However, for every doctor whose specialty affords them time on the golf course, there are other specialties that leave physicians trapped in a spiraling cycle of unpredictable hours, bad pay, and terrible work-life balance. How does your specialty measure up?

Only about half of doctors in America identify themselves as “millionaires.” Like the rest of us, many physicians need to invest their money to grow it and build a retirement fund. And, increasingly, doctors are following the lead of the super-rich and investing in art. One-percenters are increasingly putting their money into art, which offers superior returns to the stock market averages with less risk and stress. Over time, the price of art tends to move in one direction — upwards — whereas stock prices can gyrate wildly and are prone to extreme volatility.

DLBCL is increasingly being recognized as a heterogeneous disease with distinct molecular subtypes. This has challenged the rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone (R-CHOP) treatment paradigm in recent years, as several DLBCL subtypes have inferior survival after standard R-CHOP therapy. So how do you choose? In this review the authors conclude with proposed clinical management scenarios in which DA-R-EPOCH may be preferred, including some for patient populations in which the use of R-CHOP vs. DA-R-EPOCH is controversial.

For patients being prescribed isotretinoin, there used to be three risk categories: women of reproductive potential, women not of reproductive potential, and males. The new risk classifications are two: those who can become pregnant and those who cannot. This change was based on stakeholder feedback that gender-specific language can be a barrier to access for patients who do not identify with the previous gender-specific patient categories.