Consultant’s Diabetes Resource Center features a collection of information to help the physician in the diagnosis, treatment, and handling of patients with Diabetes. The newest addition to the page includes an article discussing the correct approach to choosing new agents for patients with Type 2 diabetes. Also included are clinical trials, recommendations from the ADA, and tools for assisting patients, such as the Exercise for a Healthy Life tool.
Podcasts and videos are also available, featurning videos demonstrating the correct use of glucose monitors, as well as explanations on how diabetes itself “works”.
Guest Commentator and Editorial Board Memeber Greg Rutecki, MD has been featured on KevinMD, offering his insight into the issue of whether the history and physical are even worth doing on patients anymore. He also brings up the issue of histories and physicals being prefered by “older” clinicians, over the imaging techniques often employed in greater numbers by younger, newer physicians.
Check out his opinions on KevinMD, and on Consultant, as well as Dr Rutecki’s further opinions on the history and physical.
A recent study found that men taking high doses of vitamin c were more likely to develop kidney stones than those men not taking the supplement. In men taking vitamin c as part of an overall multivitamin, no raised risk of kidney stones were found.
Kidney stones come in many shapes and sizes, made from several different elements, but mostly calcium. Several methods to treating the stones are available, such as surgical removal, medical treatment, or use of ultrasound to break up the stones without penetrating the body.
Diagnosis and treatment of kidney stones, as well as their common complications, can be very complicated. Infected stones, stone formation and stone location all play a role in the difficulty of treatment.
CT scans are among the most overused, and most “avoidable” imaging scans used in medicine. As many as 32% of CT scans were found to be avoidable in a test of CT scans checking for pulmonary embolism.
Many children also undergo the scans when checking for head trauma or injury. These tests subject the patient to radiation, which may, if overused, pose a great risk to the patient outweighing the benefits of the scan itself. The high medical costs of such tests is also a factor to be considered.
Measures should be utilized to limit the amount of CT scans that patients, especially children, undergo. The tests should be used only when absolutely necessary.
A mother brings her 10-year-old son into your office for evaluation of benign moles. She mentions offhandedly the lesions on her son’s right hand, located on the knuckles. What are these lesions?
Warts? Psoriasis? Lichen planus? Trauma?
After further questioning, the mother revealed that her son had a nervous habit of chewing his knuckles. The lesions were caused by trauma.
Anxiety disorders affect 19 million adults in the United States at some point in their lives and are as prevalent and dangerous as depression, although are often left undiagnosed for some time. Most importantly, primary care physicians must be able to distinguish anxiety disorders from simply regular anxiety and fear. Most anxiety disorders can be treated in the primary care setting, but do require ongoing care. Ongoing treatments can come in the form of medication or therapy.
