Chest
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services stipulate shared decision-making (SDM) counseling as a prerequisite to lung cancer screening (LCS) reimbursement, despite well-known challenges implementing SDM in practice. ⋯ Those responsible for developing and managing SDM for LCS programs voiced concerns regarding both patient access and SDM quality, regardless of organizational context, or the SDM for LCS model implemented. The challenge facing these organizations, and those wanting to help patients and clinicians balance the tradeoffs inherent with LCS, is how to move beyond a check-box documentation requirement to a process that enables LCS to be offered to all high-risk patients, but used only by those who are informed and for whom screening represents a value-concordant service.
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Case Reports
Case of a 21-Year-Old Man With Hemoptysis, Recurrent Pneumothorax, and Cavitary Lung Lesions.
A 21-year-old man was admitted to our hospital with recurrent bilateral pneumothorax and hemoptysis. Three years earlier, he underwent coil embolization due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by an intracerebral aneurysm rupture. Two months after the coil embolization, he underwent an emergent total colectomy due to a massive infarction of the colon. ⋯ He was taking Depakote and aspirin to prevent seizure and thromboembolic complications, respectively, both of which he began taking after the coil embolization. He denied the use of any illicit drugs. The histories of his parents and sister were not remarkable.
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has resulted in significant morbidity and mortality because of a lack of effective therapies. Therapeutic strategies under investigation target the overactive cytokine response with anti-cytokine or immunomodulators therapies. ⋯ Thus, etoposide may have a role as salvage therapy in treatment of cytokine storm in COVID-19. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of use of etoposide in COVID-19.
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A 56-year-old man presented to the lung nodule clinic with abnormal chest imaging prompted by a chronic cough and hemoptysis. Approximately 2.5 years earlier, while kneeling beside his car fixing a flat tire, he fell backwards while holding the tire cap in his mouth, causing him to inhale sharply and aspirate the cap. He immediately developed an intractable cough productive of flecks of blood. ⋯ His symptoms improved transiently with antibiotics and additional narcotics. Ultimately, his chronic cough with intermittent hemoptysis affected his ability to work, and 30 months later he sought medical attention and was diagnosed with pneumonia and reactive airway disease. He was prescribed doxycycline, steroids, inhaled albuterol, and dextromethorphan, with initial improvement, but his symptoms recurred multiple times despite quitting smoking, leading to repeated medication courses.