Journal of general internal medicine
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We describe a 65-year-old woman with a history of hypertension and smoking who presented with an acute episode of chest pain precipitated by severe emotional stress. Her initial electrocardiogram done in the emergency room showed non-specific T wave changes in the lateral leads and her cardiac troponin levels were mildly elevated. Because of her clinical presentation, she was admitted with a presumptive diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction and managed with antiplatelet and anticoagulant therapy. ⋯ The patient remained asymptomatic and recovered uneventfully. Three weeks post-discharge, an echocardiogram documented resolved left ventricular dysfunction. We describe the clinical features and highlight the electrocardiographic findings that may help differentiate takotsubo cardiomyopathy from myocardial infarction.
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Many countries have initiated legislation to detect individuals who are unfit to drive, without any evidence that positive effects of these screening procedures outweigh negative effects. ⋯ Because of the expected difficult application and cost of road tests and annual screening by clinicians, the most acceptable strategy from public health, clinical, and individual points of view is likely to be no screening.
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Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a novel, yet well-described, reversible cardiomyopathy triggered by profound psychological or physical stress with a female predominance. ⋯ Whether an emotional or physical event precedes one's symptoms, it is apparent that takotsubo cardiomyopathy case presentations mimic ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, and thus is an important entity to be recognized by the medical community.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Impact of an evidence-based medicine curriculum on resident use of electronic resources: a randomized controlled study.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is widely taught in residency, but evidence for effectiveness of EBM teaching on changing residents' behavior is limited. ⋯ EBM teaching improved EBM knowledge and increased use of evidence-based resources by residents, but did not improve performance on Web-based clinical vignettes. Future studies will need to examine impact of EBM teaching on clinical outcomes.
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Efforts to improve primary care depression treatment have assessed strategies across heterogeneous groups of patients, but few have examined clinician-level influences on depression treatment. ⋯ Clinicians who provide more chronic care also provide greater depression treatment intensity, suggesting that clinicians who care for complex patients can integrate depression care into their practice. Targeting interventions to these clinicians to enhance their ability to provide guideline-concordant depression care is a worthwhile endeavor and deserves further investigation.