Debra Wood, RN

Clinicians should consider a patient's risk of hypoglycemia, the duration of time with the disease, age, comorbidities, vascular complications, and other factors when setting treatment goals.

With state-of-the-art treatment regimens for hepatitis C becoming more effective and easier to administer and monitor, care delivery will shift away from specialists to include more involvement by primary care physicians.

Several studies have shown good results with Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and laparoscopic gastric banding when combined with lifestyle modifications in severely overweight patients with type 2 diabetes.

Once confirmation of an asthma diagnosis is made, most primary care physicians can manage the condition and need refer only challenging cases to a pulmonologist.

Thorough screening, advance planning, careful medication selection, and caregiver education and training are the keys to effective management of patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Mitigating the risk of stroke, heart failure, and death when treating patients with atrial fibrillation requires a careful consideration of patient characteristics and management options.

Transoral incisionless fundoplication (TIF) was shown to be more effective than taking the maximal proton pump inhibitor (PPI) dose in relieving heartburn, regurgitation, and other troublesome symptoms in patients with refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD).

As irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) remains a complicated condition to treat with an etiology that's still unknown, it's difficult for physicians to find the best proven therapies among new remedies and the variety of pharmacological and nondrug options they have been trying for years.

While it's already clinically understood that most patients with Crohn's disease suffer a recurrence following an intestinal resection, researchers have not evaluated the best strategy to prevent the disease from recurring.

Patients taking linaclotide experience clinically meaningful improvement in abdominal and bowel symptoms, which closely correlate with the US Food and Drug Administration's new criteria for irritable bowel syndrome with constipation (IBS-C).

Growing evidence suggests increased cardiovascular risk in patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) - in particular nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASN) - but no data exists to support a specific management approach.

Esophageal pH monitoring is more cost effective than the long-term use of proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs), since it can help rule out gastroesophageal reflux diseases (GERD) and avoid the unneeded costs associated with prolonged medication therapy.

While it's important for nutrition and an integral part of patients' lives, food also plays a role in functional gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Andrew J. Muir, MD, MHS, said having more antiviral hepatitis C drugs in the pipeline could spur more people to accept treatment and improve patient outcomes.

Presenters at Digestive Disease Week 2013, held May 18-21, 2013, in Orlando, Fla., differed on the risks of surgical complications from the use of biologic agents.