La Revue de médecine interne
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Historical Article
[French national emergency department's crisis: The outcome of a growing gap between health resources and needs?]
Overcrowding in Emergency Departments is often considered as an outcome of insufficient access to hospital beds or primary care, therefore a potential lack of health resources. We sought to describe the quantitative evolution of health resources in the French health care system, in comparison with demographic and epidemiologic parameters that reflect health needs. Overall, in the last decade, parameters of capacity and human resources stagnated while activity and spending increased jointly, stimulated by ageing of the population and chronic diseases mostly. ⋯ This has led to a dangerous saturation of emergency care and to the ongoing systemic health crisis. This situation will require ambitious health resources reinforcement plans in both hospital and primary care. Furthermore, ageing of the population and chronic diseases must lead society to deliberate on the fundamental goals and funding of our health care system.
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Review Case Reports
[Cerebral infarction and tuberculosis: case report and literature review].
Although tuberculous meningitis is an uncommon presentation of tuberculosis, it still remains one of the deadliest forms of this disease. In this context, the occurrence of a cerebral infarct is an aggravating factor. ⋯ Cerebral infarctions in patients with tuberculous meningitis are events that cannot be underestimated in terms of frequency or severity. Their poor prognosis is partly the result of insufficiently defined management, which combines anti-tuberculosis treatment and early corticosteroid therapy.
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Puffy hand syndrome is a rare complication of intravenous drug addiction. Diagnosis is based on the patient's history and clinical examination. ⋯ Puffy hand syndrome seen in intravenous drug addicts is poorly understood. It is a chronic complication despite the cessation of drug use. This syndrome has to become more widely known because its management is mandatory, although symptomatic.
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Transthyretin (TTR) cardiac amyloidosis results from the dissociation of the tetrameric, liver-synthetized transport protein, either because of a mutation (hereditary CA), or spontaneously due to ageing (wild type CA). Monomers self-associate into amyloid fibrils within the myocardium, causing heart failure, arrhythmias and conduction defects. This overlooked disease must be recognized in case of unexplained increased thickness of the myocardium, particularly in subjects of African descent, in patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction, and in those with aortic stenosis. ⋯ Pacemaker or defibrillator implantation should be determined in patients with high risk of sudden death. Until now, etiologic treatments were liver and/or heart transplantation in some rare cases. Tafamidis, a TTR stabilizer has recently been approved, and new therapeutic approaches targeting TTR at the transcriptional level are under investigation.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
[Evaluation of the use of a simulation software in the learning of cardiopulmonary auscultation in undergraduate medical students].
Medsounds™ software allows to create an auscultation learning platform, by providing real pre-recorded cardiopulmonary sounds on virtual chests. The study aimed at comparing the skills in cardiopulmonary auscultation between students who benefited from this platform and students who did not have access to it. ⋯ The supervised use of an online auscultation simulation software in addition to the traditional clinical training seems to improve the auscultation performances of undergraduated medical students.