Annals of internal medicine
-
Delirium is an acute confusional state that is common and costly and is associated with significant functional decline and distress. It is the manifestation of acute encephalopathy and is variably called acute brain failure, acute brain dysfunction, or altered mental status. All patients are at risk for delirium, although those with more vulnerabilities (such as advanced age, exposures to other stressors like infection, and certain medications) are at higher risk. ⋯ There is no single intervention or medication to treat delirium, making it challenging to manage. Therefore, risk mitigation and prompt treatment rely on a sophisticated strategy to address the contributing factors. Delirium may be prevented or attenuated when multimodal strategies are used, thereby improving patient outcomes.
-
Denosumab is effective for osteoporosis, but discontinuation leads to rapid reversal of its therapeutic effect. ⋯ National Clinical Research Center for Orthopedics, Sports Medicine & Rehabilitation.
-
Racial minorities in the United States have reported experiencing widespread racism throughout all aspects of life, from housing to education to employment. Existing research has examined the role of racism, discrimination, and violence in one's interaction with the health care system and their association with poorer mental and physical health. ⋯ The demonstrated association between discriminatory law enforcement practices and violence and personal and community health necessitates treating these issues as public health issues worthy of a public policy intervention. Addressing some of the sources of institutional racism and harm through transparency and accountability measures is the first of many steps required to begin correcting historical racial injustices.
-
Multicenter Study
Qualitative Assessment of Rapid System Transformation to Primary Care Video Visits at an Academic Medical Center.
The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic spurred health systems across the world to quickly shift from in-person visits to safer video visits. ⋯ Stanford Department of Medicine and Stanford Health Care.
-
Evaluating the quality and effectiveness of the institutional review boards (IRBs) responsible for overseeing research involving human participants is critically important but perpetually challenging. Seemingly common-sense measures, such as the number of proposals approved with and without major modifications and the number of unexpected adverse events occurring in approved protocols, can be misleading indicators of participant protection, and regulatory compliance may not correspond to achieving ethical goals. These measurement challenges make it difficult to assess the validity of concerns about different IRB models. ⋯ Although all IRBs face pressure to speed reviews and none are entirely free of conflicts of interest, the private equity model is particularly susceptible to approaches that could undercut the ethical mission of IRBs to protect and promote the rights and welfare of research participants. Ideally, the quality of board oversight could be measured directly, rather than relying on the heuristic of board type; this article describes several current efforts toward this goal. In the meantime, one improvement may be to pursue a new model of IRB oversight: independent nonprofit boards that stand apart from research institutions, take advantage of business approaches to research review, and minimize conflicts of interest.