Family practice
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Obesity is associated with stigma and discrimination. Health care providers should approach these patients professionally and without stigma, since treatment of obesity requires a relationship with mutual understanding between the doctor and patient. ⋯ Viewpoints on obesity were different, both within and between the groups. Some GPs consider obesity mainly as a lifestyle problem, rather than a chronic disease. If patients and doctors can find mutual viewpoints on obesity, both patient satisfaction and a treatment strategy will be more effective.
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Shared medical appointments (SMAs) may help mitigate some of the barriers for managing obesity in primary care. The primary aim of this systematic review was to measure the effect of weight loss SMAs. ⋯ Overall, SMAs may be of benefit to address obesity in primary care, particularly for women and older adults. Appropriately designed prospective and controlled studies are required to engage their target audience and to assess whether SMAs are superior to other weight loss options in primary care.
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Lung ultrasound (LUS) has become the first diagnostic imaging approach to assess lung involvement in COVID-19. While LUS proved to be safe, reliable, and accurate, not many primary care physicians (PCP) are capable to employ this instrument in the first evaluation of COVID-19 outpatients. The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of a brief training program in LUS for PCP. ⋯ This study showed that a short training program, but comprising a hands-on practice, is capable to bring even almost novices to achieve a high overall accuracy and reliability in detecting lung involvement in COVID-19. This may result in a significant improvement of the performances of PCP involved in the first evaluation of COVID-19 cases in primary care facilities.
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The prevalence of vitamin D deficiency varies across countries and few data exist in the adult population in Greece. ⋯ A large proportion of patients in primary care had vitamin D deficiency, independently associated with hypertension, sleepiness, depressive symptoms, and fatigue. Further research is needed in order to determine the role of vitamin D in these patients.
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Evidence has suggested a relationship between antenatal care (ANC) visits and childhood immunization coverage. However, evaluating its impact using observational data suffers from the problem of selection bias. Hence, we adopted propensity score-matched (PSM) analysis for studying the impact of ANC visits on childhood immunization. ⋯ Findings from our study imply that policymakers in India should focus on further improving the ANC coverage as it has a significant impact on improving childhood immunization coverage.