Articles related to GUIDELINES/RECOMMENDATIONS

The controversial 2016 CDC opioid guideline for chronic pain is updated and replaced by the new guidance, which addresses acute, subacute, and chronic pain for primary care and other clinicians. Some organizations misapplied the 2016 guideline, which was perceived as imposing strict opioid dose and duration limits. As a result, the guideline authors clarified their recommendations in 2019.

The new guidelines have drawn criticism and many or most hospitals are sticking to state guidelines, which generally mandate masking. Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, of Brown University tweeted that CDC’s logic “escapes me,” as it pertains to society’s “most health-vulnerable” people in a setting with a higher-than-average risk of COVID positivity.

Patients discontinuing antidepressant therapy experience insomnia, flu-like symptoms, mood disturbances, dizziness, and paresthesias — among a broad array of adverse effects. Those symptoms can last for days to months. This narrative review describes the array of discontinuation symptoms and their causes and provides practical clinical guidance for discontinuing antidepressants to minimize the risk of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome (ADS).

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine issued a health advisory on September 25, 2022, encouraging parents to seek medical advice before giving melatonin to children. Although melatonin can be useful in treating certain sleep-wake disorders like jet lag, there is much less evidence it can help healthy children or adults fall asleep faster. Symptoms of melatonin overdose can include headache, dizziness, and irritability.

A response to “practice-changing data” in the first- and second-line setting The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has amended its advice against routinely administering PARP inhibitor monotherapy to patients with recurrent platinum-sensitive epithelial ovarian cancer in the second or later-line situation.

This update is based on the results from the June 2022 ATHENA-MONO2 phase III multinational, double-blind, randomized controlled trial (RCT), which showed a significant improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with stage III-IV epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) who are in complete or partial response to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.