Chronic use of benzodiazepines: The problem that persists.

Though clinical guidelines and policies discourage the chronic prescribing of benzodiazepines, rates of prescribing have continued to rise in the United States with an estimated 65.9 million office visits per year made for this purpose. Quietly, we have become a nation on benzodiazepines.

Attitudes of primary care physicians toward prescribing buprenorphine: a narrative review.

Background: The opioid epidemic is a major public health issue associated with significant overdose deaths. Effective treatments exist, such as the medication buprenorphine, but are not widely available. This narrative review examines the attitudes of primary care providers (PCPs) toward prescribing buprenorphine.

Characteristics of emergency department transfers for hand surgery consultation.

Background: The purpose of this study was to establish the characteristics of patients who are transferred from referring emergency departments (EDs) to two receiving institutions for hand-related emergencies. Our primary hypothesis was that many transferred patients would not require emergent specialty intervention. Our secondary hypotheses were that treatment would differ by day of presentation and type of insurance coverage.

Outcomes of open carpal tunnel release at a minimum of ten years.

Background: There is little research on the long-term outcomes of open carpal tunnel release. The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine the functional and symptomatic outcomes of patients at a minimum of ten years postoperatively.

Methods: Two hundred and eleven patients underwent open carpal tunnel release from 1996 to 2000 performed by the same hand fellowship-trained surgeon.

Finding orthopedic patients lost to follow-up for long-term outcomes research using the Internet: an update for 2012.

The Internet is available to researchers as a tool for studying long-term outcomes, but no recent research exists on how to best use it. The authors hypothesize that using the Internet can be at least 75% effective in locating patients lost to follow-up. With Institutional Review Board approval, the authors searched for 66 patients lost to follow-up after a period of 10 years or more with no contact.