May 4th, 2021 - Initiatives targeting hypoglycemia and insulin pen wastage could lead to dramatic cost savings in small community hospitals, new data suggest. The two projects are part of a dedicated inpatient glucose management service led by Mihail ("Misha") Zilbermint, MD, one of the few full-time endocrine hospitalists in the United States and one of even fewer who work at a small community hospital. Regar...

May 3rd, 2021 - For most vitamin and mineral supplements, there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against taking them to prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to new draft recommendations from the US Preventive Services Task Force. While the evidence is still unclear for most vitamin and mineral supplements, there is evidence that two products do not reduce the risk of these disea...

May 2nd, 2021 - Primary care providers can confidently pick any of three cervical cancer screening strategies recommended by the American Cancer Society and the United States Preventive Services Task Force, experts said. Cytology testing every 3 years, cytology/human papillomavirus cotesting every 5 years, and primary HPV testing every 5 years are similarly effective at reducing cervical cancer risk, said Rach...

Apr 29th, 2021 - Lowering blood pressure with antihypertensive medication protects against future cardiovascular (CV) events even in people with normal or only mildly elevated blood pressure, a large meta-analysis concludes. Results showed that each 5 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure lowered the relative risk for CV events by about 10% across the full spectrum of baseline blood pressures, regardless o...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Guidelines on intragastric balloons (IGBs) in the management of obesity were published in April 2021 by the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) in Gastroenterology.[1,2] For obese patients (body mass index [BMI] >30 kg/m2) desiring weight loss but for whom conventional weight-loss strategies have failed, a combination of IGB placement and moderate- to high-intensity lifestyle modific...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Updated guidelines on diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) were published on April 9, 2021 by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in the Annals of Oncology.[1] Diagnosis SCLC should be diagnosed according to the World Health Organization criteria. Currently, no predictive biomarker is available and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) and tumor mutation...

Apr 28th, 2021 - Guidelines on appropriate short-course antibiotics in common infections were published in April 2021 by the American College of Physicians in the Annals of Internal Medicine.[1,2] Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Uncomplicated Bronchitis If patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute uncomplicated bronchitis show signs of bacterial infection, such as increased purulen...

Apr 27th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is finalizing new guidelines to help clinicians diagnose and manage long COVID, or post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV2 infection. In a daylong congressional hearing on Thursday, John Brooks, MD, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC's Division of H...

Apr 27th, 2021 - MOSCOW (Reuters) - Some Russians who have taken COVID-19 antibody tests and found their antibodies have fallen are having third and fourth shots of the Sputnik V vaccine, but researchers in the country suggest they are unnecessary. Revaccination in effect simulates getting the disease so that the body develops more antibodies to fight it. Researchers have said an immediate rise in antibodies se...

Apr 27th, 2021 - Hospitalized patients with acute respiratory failure can benefit from high-flow nasal oxygen in certain settings, according to a new clinical guideline from the American College of Physicians. High-flow nasal oxygen (HFNO) has demonstrated advantages including improved oxygenation and ventilation, wrote Arianne K. Baldomero, MD, of Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System and the Univers...

Apr 27th, 2021 - When the True Talking Toastmasters moved to making speeches on Zoom at the pandemic's start, the group's savvy members — residents of Silicon Valley — aced the technology. But they missed the human touch. Some members felt remote meetings slowed their progress in polishing public speaking skills, club president Bhavesh Shah says. "The feel of the audience, when they're sitting right in front of...

Apr 27th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. In the small Nebraska town of Oxford, the school district dropped its mask mandate last month in what was a fairly straight-forward decision: Cases were down dramatically, and it didn't bother local officials that their move flouted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Those fe...

Apr 27th, 2021 - A common cause of infant morbidity and hospitalization in developed countries, infant viral bronchiolitis, has long been bedeviled by treatment uncertainty beyond supportive care. Rationales for most pharmacologic treatments continue to be debated, and clinical practice guidelines generally advise respiratory and hydration support, discouraging the use of chest radiography, albuterol, glucocort...

Apr 26th, 2021 - Universal multigene panel testing of colorectal cancer patients can detect heritable mutations that would not have been discovered with guideline-based testing, according to new research. A prospective study of universal genetic testing suggested that one in six colorectal cancer patients have an inherited genetic predisposition to the cancer. More than half of the patients with genetic mutatio...

Apr 26th, 2021 - New practice guidelines released by the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) remove long-time barriers to buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD). Specifically, the Practice Guidelines for the Administration of Buprenorphine for Treating Opioid Use Disorder exempts eligible physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and others from federal certificatio...

Apr 26th, 2021 - Although vaccination rates against the human papillomavirus (HPV) remain low for young adults across the United States, the number of self-reported HPV vaccinations among women and men between the ages of 18 and 21 years has markedly increased since 2010, according to new research findings. The findings were published online April 27 as a research letter in JAMA. In 2006, the US Food and Drug A...

Apr 26th, 2021 - A call for more appropriate use of a new class of drugs for the treatment of opioid-induced constipation (OIC) has been issued by researchers who found that the number of Medicare beneficiaries who use these drugs, as well as associated costs, soared during a 4-year period (2014–2018). This class of drugs, known as peripheral µ-opioid receptor antagonists (PAMORAs), include methylnaltrexone (Re...

Apr 25th, 2021 - RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil's COVID-19 vaccination program is being put at risk by people failing to show up for their second shot, with 1.5 million people missing appointments for the follow-up dose needed to maximize protection, according to the Health Ministry. Specialists say that is particularly concerning after a recent real-world study from Chile found that the Sinovac Biotech COVI...

Apr 22nd, 2021 - Hispanic diabetes patients are significantly less likely than Black or White patients to receive preventive guideline-based care soon after diagnosis, based on data from more than 7,000 individuals. Racial and ethnic disparities in diabetes care remain a pervasive health problem, and minorities including non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics experience higher rates of complications, including retin...

Apr 22nd, 2021 - CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, says the agency may revise its guidance on whether people should wear face masks outside. "We'll be looking at the outdoor masking question, but also in the context of the fact that we still have people who are dying of COVID-19," she said on NBC's Today show. Current CDC guidance, which was updated April 9, says: "Masks may not be necessary when you are outs...