Salmonella colitis as an unusual cause of elevated serum lipase.

Authors and clinicians advocate lipase as the preferred serological test for the diagnosis for acute pancreatitis. While acute pancreatitis is among the differential diagnosis for elevated lipase levels, several other causes of elevated lipase levels have been identified including several reports Salmonella species as a causative agent. There also have been retrospective studies that have reported clinical pancreatitis associated with Salmonella infection.

Renal Cell Carcinoma Presenting with Paraneoplastic Hallucinations and Cognitive Decline from Limbic Encephalitis.

We present a 66-year-old woman with 2 months of visual hallucinations, unintentional weight loss, and short-term memory decline, whose clinical presentation and EEG supported a diagnosis of limbic encephalitis. Subsequent evaluation for a paraneoplastic etiology revealed a renal mass, which was resected and identified as clear cell renal carcinoma. The patient's clinical condition improved after resection of the mass.

Low-molecular-weight heparin may alter point-of-care assay for international normalized ratio.

Study Objective: To compare the international normalized ratio (INR) measured by a point-of-care testing device with that measured by a reference laboratory method for patients receiving either warfarin only or warfarin plus low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH).

Design: Retrospective study.

Setting: Outpatient anticoagulation clinic.

Telemedicine improves diagnosis of essential hypertension compared with usual care.

A randomized controlled trial was conducted to assess the efficacy of a telemedicine service for the diagnosis of essential hypertension. The telemedicine service consisted of using an automatic home blood pressure monitor connected to an ordinary telephone line for the transmission of the data to a central computer. After use of the home monitor for a week, the results were converted to a report form and faxed to the patient's physician.