Internal and emergency medicine
-
The number of patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) has increased dramatically. Substance use disorders in general are thought to occur in one in five patients in primary care. However, despite this prevalence, there is a dearth of training in undergraduate and continuing medical education to manage OUDs, and internal medicine doctors need to have an understanding of the basic physiology and treatment options for this illness. ⋯ It will also allow clinicians to appropriately refer their patients for lifesaving specialized care and help them prevent dangerous medical complications often seen as a result of addiction. There are three FDA-approved medications to treat OUD disorder, known collectively as medication-assisted treatment (MAT). In this paper, the three medications-methadone, naltrexone, and buprenorphine-are presented, compared, contrasted, and clinically reviewed.
-
Colchicine is a tricyclic, lipid-soluble alkaloid which has long been used to treat gout and many immunological diseases. Due to its narrow therapeutic window and long half-life of elimination, colchicine overdose occurs occasionally. Unfortunately, some patients lost their lives because of colchicine overdose or suicide. ⋯ Meanwhile, there are no management guidelines to treat patients with acute colchicine poisoning until now. Herein, we systematically elaborate on the clinical features and progress in the management of acute colchicine poisoning in adults according to the previous literature. This paper will provide some valuable and available information for clinicians.
-
Biological sex and sociocultural gender matter when it comes to health and diseases. They have been both proposed as the undeniable gateways towards a personalized approach in care delivery. The Gender Working Group of the Italian Society of Internal Medicine (SIMI) was funded in 2019 with the aim of promoting good practice in the integration of sex and gender domains in clinical studies. ⋯ The SIMI Gender '5 Ws' Rule for clinical studies has been conceptualized as follows: Who (Clinical Internal Medicine Scientists and Practitioners), What (Gender-related Variables-Gender Core Dataset), Where (Clinical Studies/Translational Research), When (Every Time It Makes Sense) and Why (Explanatory Power of Gender and Opportunities). In particular, the gender core dataset was identified by the following domains (variables to collect accordingly): relations (marital status, social support, discrimination); roles (occupation, caregiver status, household responsibility, primary earner, household dimension); institutionalized gender (education level, personal income, living in rural vs urban areas); and gender identity (validated questionnaires on personality traits). The SIMI Gender '5 Ws' Rule is a simple and easy conceptual framework that will guide IM for the design and analysis of clinical studies.
-
Multicenter Study
Relapses of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies after vaccination against COVID-19: a real-life multicenter Italian study.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccination plays a crucial role as pivotal strategy to curb the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The present study described the clinical status of patients affected by idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) after COVID-19 vaccination to assess the number of relapses. We included all patients affected by IIM and followed by Myositis Clinic, Rheumatology and Respiratory Diseases Units, Siena University Hospital, Bari University Hospital, Policlinico Umberto I, Sapienza University, Rome, and Policlinico Paolo Giaccone, Palermo. ⋯ No patients had flares after third dose. Our study represents the largest cohort of IIM patients in which the incidence of recurrence after anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was assessed. In line with real-life data from other diseases, we found a clinical non-statistically significant risk of relapse in our patients, which occurred seldom, usually mild and in patients with a more severe and aggressive course of disease.
-
Review Meta Analysis
The impact of cognitive aids on resuscitation performance in in-hospital cardiac arrest scenarios: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Different cognitive aids have been recently developed to support the management of cardiac arrest, however, their effectiveness remains barely investigated. We aimed to assess whether clinicians using any cognitive aids compared to no or alternative cognitive aids for in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) scenarios achieve improved resuscitation performance. PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL and ClinicalTrials.gov were systematically searched to identify studies comparing the management of adult/paediatric IHCA simulated scenarios by health professionals using different or no cognitive aids. ⋯ Meta-analyses of the two paediatric studies, showed non-significant improvement of critical actions for resuscitation (adherence to guideline recommended sequence of actions, time to defibrillation, rate of errors in defibrillation, time to start chest compressions), except for significant shorter time to amiodarone administration (SMD - 0.78; 95% CI - 1.39; - 0.18; I2 = 0). To conclude, the use of cognitive aids appears to have benefits in improving the management of simulated adult IHCA scenarios, with potential positive impact on clinical practice. Further paediatric studies are necessary to better assess the impact of cognitive aids on the management of IHCA scenarios.