Be Alert For Ectopic Pregnancy After Self-Managed Abortion
Clinicians in the emergency department (ED) and primary care settings should be prepared to spot complications of self-managed abortion, according to a case report. A patient who had attempted self-managed abortion presented to the ED with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that went undetected, reported Isabel Beshar, MD, of Stanford University in California, and colleagues. They […]
Primary Care Visits Prior to Cancer Diagnosis Tied to Lower Mortality
Regularly visiting a primary care physician (PCP) before cancer diagnosis was associated with better disease outcomes among a cohort of patients from the Veterans Affairs health system. Compared with no prior visits, annual PCP use among over 200,000 veterans with 12 different tumor types was linked with lower odds of being diagnosed with metastatic disease […]
Early Promise With Fluoxetine for Refractory Nocturnal Enuresis in Children
Children with refractory primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) obtained significant short-term symptom relief with the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) fluoxetine, a small placebo-controlled trial showed. Two-thirds of patients in the fluoxetine arm had more than a 50% reduction in wet nights by 4 weeks, as compared with 16.7% of the placebo group. By 12 […]
Electronic health record tool can help children achieve healthy weight
An electronic health record (EHR) program to help primary care doctors address child obesity is an effective tool to promote positive body mass index (BMI) trends, especially among young children with obesity, according to a new University of Missouri School of Medicine study that examined the effectiveness of the FitTastic tool over an average follow-up […]
Primary Care Docs Need Better Community Data to Improve Public Health, Expert Says
Primary care doctors need to play a major role in improving the public health system, and to do that they need better data on the community they’re serving, said Andrew Bazemore, MD, MPH, at a briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Policy Friday. “I need to understand what the ‘community vital signs’ are for […]
Primary Care Docs Need 27 Hours a Day to Do Their Best Work
There literally aren’t enough hours in a single day for primary care physicians (PCPs) to provide the full gamut of basic, guideline-based care, according to a simulation study. PCPs would need an “infeasible” 26.7 hours each day to provide preventive, chronic disease, and acute care for a typical panel of U.S. adult patients, Justin Porter, […]
Opinion | I Got Monkeypox Drugs — Not Everyone Is So Lucky
When I first contacted my primary care physician about some minor rectal discomfort that surfaced a few days after New York City’s Pride festivities in June, he and I both knew the most likely diagnosis: a sexually transmitted bacterial infection. We performed an STI screen, and I went home to await the seemingly inevitable positive […]
Sexual Dysfunction, Hair Loss Among Long COVID Symptoms
People who had COVID reported a wider range of post-infection symptoms to their primary care physicians than expected, a retrospective matched cohort study in the U.K. showed. Overall, 62 symptoms were significantly associated with a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection after 12 weeks, reported Krishnarajah Nirantharakumar, MBBS, MPH, of University of Birmingham in England, and colleagues. […]
Deep Learning Identifies PPMS Patients Who May Respond to Treatment
Deep learning identified subgroups of patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) who may respond to disease-modifying therapy, researchers said. A trained model separated responders and non-responders across a range of predicted effect sizes, reported Jean-Pierre Falet, MD, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, at the ACTRIMS Forum 2022, the annual meeting of the Americas […]
LDCT Screening Linked to Lower Risk of Brain Mets in Lung Cancer
Patients with primary lung cancer detected with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening have a lower risk of developing brain metastases than patients whose cancer was detected through other methods, researchers found. After adjusting for age at diagnosis, cancer stage, histology, and smoking status, patients whose lung cancer was detected with LDCT screening had a significantly […]