Postgraduate medical journal
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This study determines the diagnostic utility of lung ultrasonography (LUS) in a medical ward in a developing country. In a low resource country like India, we hope that use of lung ultrasound in primary and secondary hospitals will assist in earlier and better bedside diagnosis. ⋯ We found that the LUS was better than chest radiograph and as good as CT in most pathologies, especially pulmonary oedema and ARDS. We believe that training in the basics of bedside LUS must be part of the medical curriculum and a low-cost ultrasound machine must be made available in medical wards, so that clinical diagnosis can be supplemented with this tool. In a low resource setting like India, where access to chest radiograph and CT may be difficult particularly in a rural setup, expertise in LUS would be helpful in easy bedside diagnosis and saving cost on a CT scan.
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Influenza disproportionately affects individuals with underlying comorbidities. Long-term follow-up studies have shown that patients with cancer with influenza have higher mortality. However, very little is known about the in-hospital mortality and cardiovascular outcomes of influenza infection in cancer hospitalisations. ⋯ Patients with cancer affected by influenza have higher in-hospital mortality and a higher prevalence of acute coronary syndrome, atrial fibrillation and acute heart failure.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted students learning, with the time off resulting in students 'de-skilling', increasing concerns for upcoming observed structured clinical examinations. Foundation Year 1 (F1) doctors (F1s), despite being expected to teach, rarely receive formal preparation, with COVID-19 exacerbating opportunities to practice. As such, a national orthopaedic teaching programme was designed to provide F1s with opportunities to develop their teaching skills and to synergistically teach medical students how to perform clinical orthopaedic examinations. ⋯ We demonstrate that online delivery of clinical orthopaedic examinations is effective, increasing the knowledge and confidence of students, while providing opportunities for F1s to teach. We present our findings to encourage similar teaching programmes to be adopted at other locations and specialties, to synergistically benefit students, doctors and ultimately, patients.
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To determine if multiple Genetic Risk Scores (GRSs) improve bone mineral density (BMD) prediction over single GRS in an independent sample of Caucasian women. ⋯ The multipolygenic score model explained a considerable amount of BMD variation. Compared with single score models, multipolygenic score model provided significant improvement in explaining BMD variation.