Conditions

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 38-year-old woman undergoes follow-up evaluation in the office. She was evaluated in the emergency department 3 nights ago with fever and flank pain following 2 days of dysuria. A urine culture and two sets of blood cultures were collected. She was given intravenous ceftriaxone and discharged with a 7-day ...

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On several occasions, most recently during a press conference in March 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has advocated changing the voting age to 16. Pelosi told reporters that lowering the voting age would increase engagement in politics among younger Americans and would help drive a higher level of voter awareness and turnout. Speaker Pelosi is not the only prominent lawmaker to advocate for a lowered voting age. Also in ...

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Cognitive decline in older adults has been accepted as a normal part of aging. Recall, episodic memories, processing speed, and divided attention are all expected to decrease with time, but the implications of this decay are rarely discussed. Elderly scholars, or individuals who have sought to learn about the world or facets of the world through books, articles or newspapers, often are devastated by this cognitive decay. But, what if ...

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Asthma is a common childhood condition. Estimates are that around 8 percent of all children have it. The incidence had been steadily increasing for many years, but some recent data suggest the burden of the disease in children may have leveled off over the past couple of years. That’s encouraging, but the number of children with asthma is still huge. The peak age group is 5 to 14. The ...

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Here is some news about cancer that isn’t widely known and is hiding in plain sight: Deaths from melanoma -- a skin cancer that has lethal potential -- have declined dramatically over the past several years. And while that fact alone is surprising, so is the reason behind the drop. Let’s make something clear at the outset: too many people die from melanoma. It is not the ...

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Here is a standard emergency department situation, played out all across America today. Patient X has schizophrenia.  He takes medication, but only until he feels better.  He is calm when he takes it, but sometimes aggressive and assaultive when out of treatment and off medications. Patient X decides to leave town and drive somewhere else because he is angry at 1) family 2) significant other 3) health care system 4) situation. He is ...

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Exercising good judgment can mean the difference between life or death. Life can be unforgiving of the choices we make. As we all know, many life events are beyond our control and understanding. But, there is much we can do to shape our paths to a brighter destination. Consider some of the choices listed below that many folks make every day. Are any of them familiar to you?

• Texting while driving.
...

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Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 23-year-old woman is evaluated for 2 weeks of painful lumps on her legs. The lumps persist for several days and make it difficult for her to go to work as a waitress. She is a college student in Ohio where she has lived her whole life. She has ...

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Google that phrase, and you will come up with lots of hits. The following is a partial list of things that have been found to have more germs than a toilet seat: Kitchen cutting boards, sponges and sinks, refrigerators, spatulas, pet food bowls, clean laundry, smartphones, electronic tablets, computer keyboards, carpets, faucet handles, handbags, can openers, ice served in restaurants, menus, reusable shopping bags, TV remotes, ...

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