Latest Updates

Management and Therapeutic Issues in the Dementias

    • The cholinesterase inhibitors donepezil, galantamine, and rivastigmine have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of AD dementia.
    • Patients with mild to moderate AD dementia are the appropriate candidates for cholinesterase inhibitor therapy. These patients need a designated caregiver to supervise the use of the medication.
    • Support for and empowerment of the caregivers of dementia patients must be an integral part of management. The emotional and physical health of caregivers is critical to long-term outcomes. 

Advanced and Recurrent Rectal Cancer

    • Patients with colorectal cancer, due to increased age and exposure to neoadjuvant therapy, are likely to have or obtain functional deficits prior to surgery. Optimizing patients is crucial for minimizing postoperative complications after radical resections. It has been established that patients with poor physical fitness experience a greater number of complications after surgery, are at greater risk for death, and have a significant delay in regaining their baseline functional status. Prehabilitation is an increasingly studied novel approach to patient optimization through a process of increasing functional capacity prior to colorectal surgery. Several small studies have shown beneficial functional outcomes, although the clinical impact, as far as decreased morbidity and mortality, has not been clearly demonstrated.
    • With an aggressive multidisciplinary approach, the overall 5-year survival rate of LRRC is 25 to 67%. The quality of the surgery has a large impact on patient survival; therefore, an aggressive surgical strategy to gain a negative resection margin is vital to patient outcomes

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

    • 2020 ATS and 2019 CTS practice guidelines delineating pharmacologic management of COPD.
    • Introduced the new Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) Combined COPD Assessment using symptoms of breathlessness, spirometric classification, and risk of exacerbation to evaluate patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and guide treatment
    • Epidemiology section updated to reflect new data suggesting a decline in the age-adjusted prevalence of COPD, likely as a result of decreased smoking rates
    • Multiple new common genetic risk factors associated with COPD described, including a recently discovered functional genetic variant
    • Discussion about the long-term care of patients with COPD extensively revised to include the most recent trials assessing indications for long-acting inhaled bronchodilators and inhaled corticosteroids, among other therapies
    • Recent evidence supporting lung cancer screening in patients with COPD reviewed

Complications Following Bariatric Surgery

    • Bariatric surgery is the most effective therapy for obesity and associated metabolic diseases
    • 200,000 bariatric procedures are performed annually in the US with an overall low complication rate  
    • Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy and Roux-en-Y gastric bypass are the most commonly performed procedures and each have unique complication profiles

Parkinson Disease: Epidemiology, Pathology, and Clinical Diagnosis

    • The contribution of genetics to Parkinson disease (PD) is suggested by the increased risk of disease associated with a family history, and community-based studies that found a 1.5- to threefold increased risk of PD in persons with an affected first-degree relative. However, the most convincing evidence to date has come with the discovery of monogenic forms of PD. Highly penetrant mendelian forms of PD have now been associated with mutations in different genes but, in most populations, causative mutations in these genes have been found in fewer than 5% of patients. Nevertheless, different variants with incomplete penetrance in the LRRK2 and the GBA gene are strong risk factors for PD, and are especially prevalent in some populations. Mutations of the GBA gene are indeed the most important risk factor yet discovered for PD; the presence of a GBA mutation in homozygous or heterozygous form is associated with an approximately 20-fold increase in the risk for PD.

Sepsis

    • Sepsis syndromes have been redefined (Sepsis-3 definitions) by international experts, based on sepsis mortality data extracted large administrative databases.
    • National focus has turned to early identification of sepsis as a key determinant of outcomes. International critical care experts have recommended using the qSOFA criteria in the Emergency Department setting to identify sepsis risk in patients prior to obtaining diagnostics.
    • The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has added a sepsis quality measure (SEP-1) as a reporting requirement for all US hospital tied to Medicare & Medicaid reimbursement. This measure has increased awareness of sepsis performance and focused quality efforts on improvement.
    • 2018 update to bundles to simplify to 1-hour bundle.

Sepsis

    • Sepsis syndromes have been redefined (Sepsis-3 definitions) by international experts, based on sepsis mortality data extracted large administrative databases.
    • National focus has turned to early identification of sepsis as a key determinant of outcomes. International critical care experts have recommended using the qSOFA criteria in the Emergency Department setting to identify sepsis risk in patients prior to obtaining diagnostics.
    • The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has added a sepsis quality measure (SEP-1) as a reporting requirement for all US hospital tied to Medicare & Medicaid reimbursement. This measure has increased awareness of sepsis performance and focused quality efforts on improvement.
    • 2018 update to bundles to simplify to 1-hour bundle.

Sepsis

    • Sepsis syndromes have been redefined (Sepsis-3 definitions) by international experts, based on sepsis mortality data extracted large administrative databases.
    • National focus has turned to early identification of sepsis as a key determinant of outcomes. International critical care experts have recommended using the qSOFA criteria in the Emergency Department setting to identify sepsis risk in patients prior to obtaining diagnostics.
    • The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has added a sepsis quality measure (SEP-1) as a reporting requirement for all US hospital tied to Medicare & Medicaid reimbursement. This measure has increased awareness of sepsis performance and focused quality efforts on improvement.
    • 2018 update to bundles to simplify to 1-hour bundle.
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