May 27th, 2022 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. The number of daily COVID-19 deaths is dropping in the United States, but one fact has not changed in two-plus years of the pandemic: The elderly are still most at risk of dying from the virus. The seven-day moving average of COVID-related deaths is now 288, a number far lower than the peaks of ...

May 26th, 2022 - David Chanoff, PhD As Usha Lee McFarling has pointed out, the orthopedic surgeon specialty suffers from a gross underrepresentation of minorities and women, more severe than in other medical specialties. There are various reasons for this and a variety of possible paths toward improvement, but the "critical first step," as American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) former president Kristy W...

May 26th, 2022 - Promoting cardiovascular medicine articles on Twitter increases online visibility and citation rates, a new randomized study indicates. A study by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) found that actively tweeting cardiovascular articles in the @ESC_journals handle was associated with a 12% increase in the citation rate at a median follow-up of 2.7 years. The results confirm the "gut feeling...

May 23rd, 2022 - A study shows that over a 4-year period, 15 teenagers were injured from exploding e-cigarettes, according to surgeons who have treated young people at nine hospitals in the United States. "It definitely was an injury we were seeing frequently," Shannon Acker, MD, an assistant professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a pediatric surgeon at Children's Ho...

May 23rd, 2022 - A recent article on Medscape shines an important light on the challenge – and urgent need – of integrating climate change training into medical education. These nascent efforts are just getting underway across the country, with some programs – notably Harvard's C-CHANGE (Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment) program, mentioned in the article, and others, such as the University...

May 20th, 2022 - In the digital age, being present on social media is no longer just an enhancement of medical practice, it's become an essential way to build bridges and establish trust with patients, to network with colleagues, and to dispel misinformation online. "Simply put, the days of the Yellow Pages and the Rolodex are behind us...as patients increasingly turn to the internet for information about their...

May 20th, 2022 - Patients who self-report as Black or Hispanic appear more likely than White patients to experience occult hypoxemia during anesthesia, a large retrospective cohort study suggests. Dr Matthew Levin "The rate of occult hypoxemia — arterial blood oxygen saturation less than 88% despite a pulse oximetry reading greater than 92% — was significantly higher in patients with self-reported Black or Hisp...

May 20th, 2022 - The first-ever guidelines for interventional cardiologists using percutaneous patent foramen ovale closure recommend expanding the use of the procedure beyond the Food and Drug Administration-approved indication following PFO-associated ischemic stroke, adding clarification about the use of PFO with anticoagulation and hedging against abuse and overuse of the procedure, said the chair of the gu...

May 19th, 2022 - The Sept. 10, 2019 PBS article accompanying the Frontline documentary "Deadly Water" was topped by a provocative headline: "The EPA Says Flint's Water is Safe — Scientists Aren't So Sure." The PBS story relied on a study of adverse health outcomes for people given point-of-use (POU) water filters during the Flint Federal Emergency. We were astonished. Several of us worked closely with residents...

May 19th, 2022 - Iqbal "Ike" K. Ahmed, MD, is a world-renowned ophthalmologist whose clinical work and research focus on glaucoma, complex cataracts, and intraocular lens complications. In 2020, The Ophthalmologist Power List named Dr Ahmed the second most influential ophthalmologist worldwide. He has done pioneering work in innovative glaucoma therapeutics and coined the term micro-invasive glaucoma surgery (M...

May 18th, 2022 - Not long after my own personal 40-year parts warranty expired, I sprinted a block to retrieve my daughter from her late-afternoon activity lest I incur the wrath of the activity director. My left ankle caught the curb edge, snapping the styloid process of my left fibula along with the fourth metatarsal — unknown to me until I got home, hobbled inside, and shrieked when my daughter inadvertently...

May 18th, 2022 - Preprints, scientific papers that have not been peer reviewed for publication in a journal, became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic, as researchers and physicians sought to share information about the novel disease as quickly as possible. In addition to writing about significant preprints when they are newsworthy for physicians, Medscape has been summarizing preprints in a new sectio...

May 18th, 2022 - Patients receiving treatment with ibrutinib for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) show significant increases in the risk for bleeding when undergoing Mohs micrographic surgery for skin cancer, indicating the need for temporary treatment interruptions, new research shows. Dr Kelsey E. Hirotsu "Our cohort of CLL patients on ibrutinib had a two-times greater risk of bleeding complications relativ...

May 18th, 2022 - Editor's Note: This commentary was recorded before nurse RaDonda Vaught was sentenced to probation in the death of one of her patients. This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I run the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University's Grossman School of Medicine. Much in the news over the past couple of months is the fate of a nurse who, at one of the most prestigiou...

May 17th, 2022 - Dr Cody Dunne Preexisting medical conditions are associated with an increased risk for death by drowning, new data indicate. In a retrospective analysis of 4288 unintentional fatal drownings reported between 2007 and 2016, researchers found that a chronic medical condition such as epilepsy contributed to 616 of these cases. "Many of the people with preexisting medical conditions who drowned did...

May 17th, 2022 - Distal radial access is not superior to conventional radial access with regard to radial artery occlusion (RAO) but is a valid alternative for use in percutaneous procedures, according to results of the DISCO RADIAL trial. The primary endpoint of forearm RAO at discharge was not met, occurring in 0.31% of patients whose radial artery was accessed distally (DRA) at the anatomical snuffbox and in...

May 16th, 2022 - Almost forgotten today, tuberculosis (TB) is still one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world. In an interview with Coliquio, Ronald D. Gerste, MD, PhD, an ophthalmologist and historian, looked back on this disease's eventful history, which encompasses outstanding discoveries and catastrophic failures in diagnosis and treatment from the Middle Ages to the present day. Under different...

May 16th, 2022 - Our ability to learn new things and adjust our approach based on failure and success can be credited to a multi-tasking group of neurons, or messenger cells in our brain, suggest the results of a series of new lab tests. The study findings, published this month in the journal Science, offer fresh insight into how our brain manages to track and adjust how we function in a wide variety of situati...

May 16th, 2022 - California researchers are seeking women willing to use sex toys for science. A group at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has launched a study to see whether the current generation of vibrators — powerful, technologically advanced, even Bluetooth-enabled — can improve sexual health, pelvic floor function, and overall well-being. "We have not had good-quality studies with the use of mo...

May 14th, 2022 - (Reuters Health) - Fifty years after initial news reports that 400 men participated unwittingly in the Tuskegee syphilis study, a doctor urges scientists to always be on guard for research missteps that could harm patients and to always speak up. The study of syphilis-infected African-American men who were intentionally denied treatment for 40 years became a textbook case demonstrating the need...