When investigating malnutrition and weight loss in older patients, clinicians should screen for physiologic, psychological, and social risk factors. Malnutrition may be caused by social isolation and lack of awareness regarding healthy eating and may be associated with depression, bereavement, dementia, or alcohol use. Patients with malignancy, nonmalignant gastrointestinal diseases, psychiatric conditions, and diseases that become more common with aging (such as diabetes mellitus and cancer) should be considered high risk for unintentional weight loss.

• A number of subjective and objective tools have been developed recently to assess cough severity. An encouraging development to aid in the assessment of new antitussives is the automated cough counter. Researchers will now be able to make objective measurements of cough frequency rather than relying exclusively on reported cough symptoms such as recorded in cough diaries and visual analogue scales describing cough severity.
• Approved devices are available that appear to accurately distinguish cough from throat clearing, snoring, and ambient background noises. They are compact and noninvasive, with a long battery life for extended recording times. Their role is currently limited to cough research rather than clinical practice.

• Accurate estimation of burn size (percent total body surface area; % TBSA) is critical for appropriate fluid resuscitation volume.
• Most adult patients with burn size less than 20%TBSA and pediatric patients with burn size less than 15% TBSA typically do not require intravenous resuscitation.
• The mainstay of burn resuscitation is based on continuous fluid administration, not on fluid boluses.
• Judicious intravenous fluid use reduces fluid creep and resuscitation-related complications.
• Therapies such as renal replacement therapy (continuous venovenous hemodialysis, dialysis), plasmapheresis, or colloid administration may facilitate resuscitation in patients who are refractory to crystalloids.

• Patients with peripheral arterial disease require antiplatelet and statin medication for prevention of cardiovascular events
• Treatment of ulcer infection should precede any attempt at revascularization of the foot
• TASC A-B lesions are amenable to endovascular intervention; TASC C-D lesions require surgery
• After revascularization, toe/partial foot amputations and/or local flaps can be performed for wound healing
• Nonambulatory patients may benefit from primary amputation instead of attempts at limb salvage

• Although allotransplant remains the gold standard for organ transplant, bioengineering offers future possibilities to alleviate the donor organ shortage.

• New applications of bioengineering are regularly being seen in clinical investigation and are nearing widespread clinical application.

• New technologies such as three-dimensional printing are becoming increasingly cost-effective and allow for both experimentation and eventual clinical production.

• Recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) should be defined as two or more pregnancy losses at any gestational age, not necessarily consecutive.
• At second pregnancy loss, miscarriage chromosome testing is essential to determining whether an RPL evaluation is indicated. Fifty to 70% of pregnancy losses of less than 10 weeks gestational age are due to a random numeric chromosome errors (“explained miscarriages”).
• If a miscarriage is found to be euploid (46,XX of pregnancy origin, 46,XY, or a balanced structural chromosome rearrangement), it is termed an “unexplained” miscarriage, and an RPL evaluation is indicated.