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Critical Illness and Renal Clearance: Why So Fast?
January 27th 2015Renal clearance can be significantly elevated in the critically ill. Treating these patients with renally cleared drugs can present a problem. Drugs-whisked through the body with greater than expected efficiency, a process called augmented renal clearance (ARC)-reach only suboptimal levels and, consequently, patients experience no improvement or actual clinical decline. ARC is often associated with elevated urinary creatinine clearance.
Rogue Breast Cancer: The Triple Negative Dilemma
January 27th 2015In March 2014, the Society of Surgical Oncology Susan G. Komen for the Cure Symposium focused on the literature on the epidemiology, molecular pathology, and therapy considerations of triple-negative breast cancer. The Annals of Surgical Oncology has published a summary of this work ahead of print.
Autism: EEGs and Staring Spells
Since children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) may also have epileptic disorders, physicians usually want electroencephalograms (EEGs) of their brains.One sign of autism is staring spells. That can also be a form of epilepsy, an absence seizure.But an Australian study of children referred for these episodes showed EEGs offer little diagnostic benefit.
Physical Brain Changes in Neglected Kids
Abandonment alters children's brain tissue.Children who experienced extreme neglect showed physical changes in the white matter of their brains, a Boston team found.Writing in JAMA Pediatrics Johanna Bick PhD and colleagues at Boston Children's Hospital reported on the Bucharest Early Intervention Project.
Flutemetamol Useful in Finding Neuritic Plaques
Finding brain beta amyloid is usefull in assessing Alzheimer's Disease. In a report in JAMA Neurology, Craig Curtis, MD, and colleagues report on a multicenter PET imaging study on terminally ill dementia patients using flutemetamol injections tagged with radioactive fluorine 18. In cases where autopsy was later possible, the team assessed how accurate the tests had been in diagnosing Alzheimer's.
Hypertension Puts Young at Risk
Isolated systolic hypertension (ISH) in young and middle-aged adults is on the rise. A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that ISH puts these patients at higher relative risk for heart disease and mortality than their peers with normal blood pressure. That raises the question of whether these younger ISH patients should be getting drug therapy.
Approval for Hemodialysis Drug
The US Food and Drug Administration approved ferric pyrophosphate citrate (Triferic/Rockwell) for use as an iron replacement therapy in patients with end-stage renal disease, the company announced. It is also indicated for chronic kidney disease. The drug is for adults.
NY Docs Press for E-Script Delay
Handwritten prescriptions will soon be illegal in New York. The Medical Society of the State of New York (MSSNY) and 18 national and NY State medical organizations are trying to delay for a year the onset of a law that would require electonic prescriptions, ban prescription pads, and drastically restrict phoned-in prescriptions. The measure, due to take effect March 27, would require electronic prescriptions for all medications-not just for controlled substances but antibiotics, allergy medications or anything else that requires a prescription.
A commonly used sensitive Troponin detection test to confirm heart attacks is often not being used in a way that will consistently detect these events, a UK research team has found. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Zhivko Zhelev PhD, a diagnostics research fellow at the University of Exeter and colleagues reported on their meta-analysis of studies that assessed the accuracy of a widely used diagnostic test, the Elecsys Troponin T high-sensitivity assay.
The hospital shooting death of Boston cardiac surgeon Michael Davidson, MD, 44, has shocked the cardiology world-far beyond his colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital where he was director of endovascular cardiac surgery. On a remembrance page and in formal statements, tributes are pouring in. Davidson, a respected innovator in heart valve replacement, died late Jan. 20, hours after he was shot by the son of a former patient who then turned his gun on himself.He leaves his wife Teri Davidson, who is 7 months pregnant, and 3 children ages 2 to 9.
FDA Approves New Psoriasis Drug
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved secukinumab (Cosentyx/Novartis) for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. The European Commission approved the same drug on Jan. 19. Its active ingredient is an antibody that binds to interleukin-17A and interferes with inflammation. The binding prevents that protein from triggering the inflammatory response that results in psoriasis patches.