May 22nd, 2011 by ChristopherChangMD in Health Tips
Tags: BMS, Burning Mouth Syndrome, Burning Tongue, Gastroenterology, Magnesium Deficiency, Magnesium Supplements, Treatment
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Patients with burning mouth syndrome (BMS) have two major findings: one, burning sensations in their mouth and two, no anatomical changes present in their mouth to relate to this burning.
Dr. Henkin and colleagues at the Center for Molecular Nutrition and Sensory Disorders have clinically distinguished two major groups of patients with BMS. One group has burning limited only to their tongue – called GLOSSOPYROSIS. The other group has burning in their entire mouth, including their tongue, lips, palette, gums and pharynx – called OROPYROSIS. They have recently been able to distinguish these two patient groups biochemically.
Patients with GLOSSOPYROSIS have lower levels of magnesium in their red blood cells (erythrocytes) than do patients with OROPYROSIS or normal subjects. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Fauquier ENT Blog*
May 22nd, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Health Tips, News
Tags: Cool, How To Find A Vein, Internal Medicine, IV, IV Access, Nursing, PICC Line, Technology, Vein Light
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Here’s how we used to find a difficult vein. If a floor nurse could not get an IV in, they asked one of their colleagues to try. If their colleague could not find the impossible-to-locate vein, they contacted an ICU nurse. If the ICU nurse couldn’t get one, sometimes an ER nurse or a flight nurse would try. If they still couldn’t get an IV, then I would be paged to ask if they could get an order for an anesthesiologist to try. And if the anesthesiologist couldn’t figure out how to find a difficult vein, we got a PICC line with the PICC nurse or with the radiologist or I placed a central line if the patient could not wait for a PICC line.
That’s how we used to find a difficult IV.
How do we find one now? If you’re on the floor, you use one of these cheaper vein lights to find the difficult vein and place your IV. However, if you work in Happy’s ER, now you have a $6,000 Star Trek looking vein finder for those dehydrated nursing home patients and cracked out meth heads. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
May 21st, 2011 by PJSkerrett in Health Tips
Tags: Arthritis, Arthritis: Keeping Your Joints Healthy, Harvard, Health, Rheumatology, Special Report
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Many Americans are remarkably unaware and uninformed about arthritis, a disease that affects about one of every five U.S. adults. Arthritis runs under the public’s radar because it isn’t a killer like heart disease and cancer. Yet it can take a huge toll on the quality of life through the pain and problems it causes. Arthritis is often viewed as an inevitable part of growing old. But it isn’t—there are many things you can do to keep your joints healthy.
May is National Arthritis Awareness Month. It isn’t aimed at people with arthritis—they’re quite aware of it already. It’s for the rest of us, some of whom are unknowingly on their way to living with this condition, and others who live with, work with, or play with folks who have it.
If you have arthritis, a new Special Health Report from Harvard Health Publications called Arthritis: Keeping Your Joints Healthy, can help you manage your condition. At the link you’ll find a description of the report, table of contents, and an excerpt. If you don’t have arthritis, the Arthritis Foundation offers 10 tips for protecting your joints. These include: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
May 21st, 2011 by JessicaBerthold in Health Tips
Tags: Claims, How To Avoid Being Sued, Law Suits, Legal Risk, Liability, Medical Malpractice, Patients, Physicians, Poor Outcomes
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A few pearls from a session on legal risks and mitigation strategies from an HM ‘11 session by Harvard’s Allen Kachalia, MD, JD:
–A relatively small number of injured patients actually file claims and get compensation.
–Many filed claims do no have actual errors in them, but the majority do.
–Poor outcomes are correlated with claims, and so is patient satisfaction. Satisfied patients are less likely to file.
–There is no evidence that hospitalists’ risk of having claims filed against them is higher than primary care internists.
To protect yourself against claims, document well. Don’t go back and change a record (you can addend, but don’t alter). Document as contemporaneously as possible. Also, “as simple as it sounds, don’t abandon your patient, and don’t stop providing necessary care,” he said. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
May 20th, 2011 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Health Tips, Research
Tags: Basic Science, Fingolimod, Fungus, Multiple Sclerosis, Neurology, New treatment, Pharmaceuticals, Traditional Chinese Medicine
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A very well-written review of an orally-active drug for multiple sclerosis has just appeared in the April 25th issue of the Journal of Natural Products, a joint publication of the American Chemical Society and the American Society of Pharmacognosy.
The review, Fingolimod (FTY720): A Recently Approved Multiple Sclerosis Drug Based on a Fungal Secondary Metabolite, is co-authored by Cherilyn R. Strader, Cedric J. Pearce, and Nicholas H. Oberlies. In the interest of full disclosure, the latter two gentlemen are research collaborators of mine from Mycosynthetix, Inc. (Hillsborough, NC) and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. My esteemed colleague and senior author, Dr. Oberlies, modestly deflected my request to blog about the publication of this review.
So, I am instead writing this post to promote the excellent work of his student and first author, Cherilyn Strader. As of [Wednesday] morning, this review article is first on the list of most-read articles in the Journal. This status is noteworthy because the review has moved ahead of even the famed David Newman and Gordon Cragg review of natural product-sourced drugs of the last 25 years, the JNP equivalent of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (the album known for its record 14-year stay on the Billboard music charts.). Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
Patients with burning mouth syndrome (BMS) have two major findings: one, burning sensations in their mouth and two, no anatomical changes present in their mouth to relate to this burning.
