Internal medicine journal
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Internal medicine journal · Jan 2025
Clinical utility of 18F-fluorodopa positron emission tomography in the movement disorder clinic: an Australian experience.
Differentiating idiopathic Parkinson disease (iPD) from other causes of tremor and parkinsonism based on clinical grounds can be challenging, particularly early in the course of disease or in the case of atypical clinical presentations. 18F-fluorodopa (F-DOPA) is a positron emission tomography (PET) radioligand that can be used to demonstrate the presence and pattern of striatal presynaptic dopaminergic deficit and, thus, assist in the diagnosis of iPD and related disorders. ⋯ There was significant change in provisional clinical diagnosis and management in the short term following review of F-DOPA PET results indicating significant clinical utility of F-DOPA PET in the Australian movement disorder clinic setting.
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Internal medicine journal · Jan 2025
Clinical practice in an age of medical misinformation and conspiracy theories.
Medical misinformation (false health or medical-related information) has seen a rapid increase in volume recently, with the global surge in social media usage and further exacerbation by the COVID-19 pandemic. This may put more lives at stake, as misinformation is an often-cited reason that people make dangerous health choices, engage in harmful practices and reject beneficial health treatments. In this article, we explore the drivers and consequences, as well as suggest several strategies at the personal, educational and systemic level, for physicians to guide and communicate with patients who subscribe to medical misinformation.
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Internal medicine journal · Jan 2025
Appropriateness of lumbar spine imaging in patients presenting to the emergency department with low back pain in a Western Australian tertiary hospital.
The Australian Rheumatology Association identified the use of imaging in patients with low back pain without indication of serious pathology as a low-value practice. ⋯ Four in five lumbar spine imaging requests for investigating low back pain were appropriate. Of the inappropriate requests, the most common reason was the absence of alerting features, while a small number were the incorrect imaging modality.