Nederlands tijdschrift voor geneeskunde
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Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd · Jan 2013
Case Reports[A woman with skin abnormalities and muscle weakness].
A 54-year-old woman presented to the emergency department with progressive proximal muscle weakness and a symmetric skin rash. Physical examination demonstrated a heliotrope rash, Gottron lesions, mechanic's hands and symmetrical erythema of the face, neck and upper legs. The diagnosis 'dermatomyositis' was established. Subsequently, the patient was successfully treated with prednisolone 1 mg/kg.
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Acne is a common problem that is increasingly being effectively treated with isotretinoin, a highly teratogenic agent. According to the pregnancy prevention program, contraception should be used until at least one month after discontinuing the medication. ⋯ Given the teratogenicity of isotretinoin, every woman in the fertile phase of life should use contraception while taking the medication. If she becomes pregnant, however, the individual risk of having a child with congenital abnormalities can be carefully and reliably estimated by determining the precise date of conception through ultrasound and the date that isotretinoin was stopped.
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Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd · Jan 2013
[Five years of European regulation on medication use in children: what has been achieved?].
It is not known if many existing medications can safely be used in children. For this reason the EU Paediatric Regulation came into force in 2007. When new medications are developed, pharmaceutical companies are obliged to produce a plan to research their use in children which must be approved by the regulatory authorities. ⋯ The use of 10 of the 113 new, previously unregistered medications in children was approved, as was the case with 30 registered medications. Examination of existing data shows that results are often limited to changes in the 'Summary of Product Characteristics'. Many planned studies still have to be wound up, but in time the amount of information on safety and efficacy of new medications in children will increase greatly.
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Willem Kolff (1911-2009), son of a physician, studied medicine in Leiden and specialised in internal medicine in Groningen. It was there that he started attempts to apply the phenomenon of dialysis in patients suffering from renal failure. He built the first prototypes of dialysis machines after his appointment as an internist in the municipal hospital in Kampen, during the Second World War. ⋯ Haemodialysis also became feasible for patients with chronic renal failure after the 'Scribner shunt' (1960) provided easy access to the circulation. Peritoneal dialysis is another option. Excess mortality, mainly from cardiovascular disease, is still a largely unsolved problem.
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Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd · Jan 2013
[Does CT scan for blunt abdominal trauma in children amount to a lot of radiation for little yield?].
Blunt abdominal trauma in children occurs fairly frequently. Although computed tomography scanning is considered by many to be the gold standard, in children who are hemodynamically stable, CT images do not usually result in new perspectives that lead to changes in treatment management. ⋯ CT scanning for blunt abdominal trauma should therefore be avoided in children who are hemodynamically stable. Novel algorithms, using parameters from the patient's history, physical examination, and possibly ultrasound and laboratory tests, seem to be sufficient for ruling out intra-abdominal injury in more than 95% of cases.