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Ruling Out Acute Coronary Syndrome in Patients With Chest Pain

ACS is a common and potentially lethal problem. However, only about 10% of patients who present to an emergency department with chest pain actually have ACS. In this JAMA Clinical Reviews podcast, we discuss which signs, symptoms and tests used to make the diagnosis of ACS are reliable.

Edward H. Livingston MD, speaks with Alexander Fanaroff, MD, author of Does This Patient With Chest Pain Have Acute Coronary Syndrome? The Rational Clinical Examination Systematic Review as well as a patient who was diagnosed with myocardial infarction.








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Metformin for Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes

Interview with Ingrid M. Libman, MD, PhD, author of Effect of Metformin Added to Insulin on Glycemic Control Among Overweight/Obese Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes









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Head Trauma

Minor head trauma usually does not cause significant brain injury. To be safe, clinicians often obtain head CT scans to ensure no major injury is present. For minor head trauma (Glascow coma scale 13-15), the risk to benefit ratio for head CT is usually not in favor of getting CT scans. When the Canadian head CT rule or New Orleans Criteria are negative, there is a very small risk for missing a significant brain injury. Joshua Easter, MD from the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Virginia who authored a JAMA Rational Clinical Examination article on this topic is interviewed as is Frederick Rivara, from the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington who wrote an accompanying editorial. Michelle Mello, a Law Professor at Stanford, discusses the medical liability associated with not obtaining neuroimaging for minor head trauma.






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Advances in Diagnosis and Treatment of Constipation

Constipation is one of the most frequent problems clinicians are asked to deal with. Despite how common it is, constipation is frequently not treated adequately. In this podcast, Arnold Wald, MD, explains a stepwise approach to the management of constipation ranging from very simple measures to the most novel and complicated new medical therapies.







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New Dietary Guidelines

The 2015-2020 US Dietary Guidelines for Americans were recently released. They are intended to provide guidance for health policy officials and clinicians regarding healthy diets and establishing goals for improving nutrition. These are important since bad eating habits are the underlying cause for a great deal of disease in the US and that these guidelines influence the operations of programs such as school lunch assistance, meals on wheels etc. Because these guidelines influence policy, they have been criticized by various investigators and special interest groups. Karen DeSalvo, MD, Acting Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS and author of Dietary Guidelines for Americans responds to some of these criticisms and explains how the guideline was created and what it is intended to do. Implementation of the guidelines dietary advice may be challenging and Deborah Clegg, RD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine at UCLA discusses how the various recommendations can be followed.




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Antibiotic Therapy for Community-Acquired Pneumonia in Adults

Community acquired pneumonia accounts for 600,000 hospital admissions a year. Many patients with this disease are quite ill and have a very high mortality. To save lives, the appropriate antibiotics should be given in a timely basis, but it is not clear what the best antibiotics are and how long they should be given. In this podcast we interview the author of a JAMA review on community acquired pneumonia, Dr Jonathan Lee, author of Antibiotic Therapy for Adults Hospitalized With Community-Acquired Pneumonia, who performed a systematic review of the literature to determine the best way to treat community acquired pneumonia.







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Interview with Robert O. Bonow, MD, MS

Robert O. Bonow, MD, the editor-in-chief of JAMA Cardiology, the JAMA Network’s newest addition, discusses his editorial vision for the journal, as well as his insights on advances in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease.  






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Treating Geriatric Polypharmacy by Deintensifying Unnecessary Diabetes Treatment

Polypharmacy is a rapidly worsening problem that hits elderly patients particularly hard.  As patients grow older, they need more medications but at the same time become less capable of managing the complexity of drug treatments.  In order to simplify treatment regimens for older patients, it is necessary to consider the evidence supporting treatment of various conditions and when the evidence is not particularly strong, reduce or eliminate medications accordingly.  Diabetes management in the elderly is highlighted in this podcast with specific attention given to deintensifying diabetes treatment in the elderly.

Articles discussed in this episode:





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Opioid Prescribing: Rising to the Challenge

An opioid abuse epidemic now plagues US healthcare. It was caused, in part, by overzealous advocacy for controlling chronic pain resulting in overuse of narcotics. There are now 2 million Americans addicted to opioids. The approach for treating chronic pain must change. In this podcast, we summarize recent CDC guidelines for the proper use of opioids for treating chronic pain.

Articles discussed in this episode:









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Diagnosing Infectious Mononucleosis

Mononucleosis is a common disease of young adults manifested by lethargy, fever, pharyngitis, lymphadenopathy and splenomegaly. In this podcast, we review the clinical features of the disease and how good each of them is at establishing a diagnosis of mononucleosis. We also review how Epstein Barr virus was discovered as the cause of mononucleosis and talk to Mark H. Ebell, MD, MS, author of Does This Patient Have Infectious Mononucleosis? The Rational Clinical Examination Systematic Review.

Articles discussed in this episode:






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Quelling Zika Fears With Evidence

Christine Curry, MD, PhD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Miami, discusses the challenges of keeping pregnant patients and her colleagues well-informed of the facts as Zika virus fears circulate.





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Treating ADHD in Adolescents

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD is a very common problem affecting about 10% of all adolescents. Children with ADHD have short attention spans, are hyperactive, talk a great deal, can be disruptive in the classroom etc.-features that are common in many adolescents. However, to have true ADHD, children must be significantly impaired by these problems. An array of medical and behavioral treatments can successfully help manage ADHD. These are reviewed in a series of articles appearing in the May 10, 2016, issue of JAMA. In this podcast, we discuss ADHD with the authors of some of those papers, Eugenia Chan, MD, MPH from Harvard and Philip Shaw, MD, PhD from the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Articles discussed in this episode:

 





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Histologic Changes in the Esophagus in Patients With GERD

Drs Stuart Spechler and Peter Kahrilis discuss GERD and esophagitis--how they occur and how they are treated. Dr Spechler also discusses a new hypothesis regarding how reflux esophagitis is caused that differs from the traditional teaching that acid and pepsin reflux into the esophagus and burn the mucosa layers.

Related articles:
Association of Acute Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease With Esophageal Histologic Changes
Turning the Pathogenesis of Acute Peptic Esophagitis Inside Out