Disparities in Quality of Primary Care by Resident and Staff Physicians: Is There a Conflict Between Training and Equity?

Background: Outpatient primary care experience is vital to internal medicine resident training but may impact quality and equity of care delivered in practices that include resident physicians. Understanding whether quality differences exist among resident and staff primary care physicians (PCPs) may present an opportunity to address health disparities within academic medical centers.

Objective: To determine whether there are differences in the quality of primary care provided by resident PCPs compared to staff PCPs.

Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic differences in bone loss among men.

As men age, they lose bone and are susceptible to fracture. Despite having lower fracture rates than women, men have worse fractures than women do. Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities in fracture rates exist, yet data on rates of bone loss by race/ethnicity and SES among men are limited.

The impact of changing medical therapy on transplantation-free survival in pediatric dilated cardiomyopathy.

Objectives: We sought to determine whether the introduction of these agents had altered the outcome of dilated cardiomyopathy (DC) in childhood.

Background: Pediatric DC has a poor prognosis. Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and beta-adrenergic receptor blockers (BBs) improve survival in adults with DC, but their effectiveness in children has not been confirmed.

Cocaine cardiotoxicity: a review of the pathophysiology, pathology, and treatment options.

Cocaine is a powerful stimulant that gives users a temporary sense of euphoria, mental alertness, talkativeness, and a decreased need for food and sleep. Cocaine intoxication is the most frequent cause of drug-related death reported by medical examiners in the US, and these events are most often related to the cardiovascular manifestations of the drug. Once playing a vital role in medicine as a local anesthetic, decades of research have established that cocaine has the ability to cause irreversible structural damage to the heart, greatly accelerate cardiovascular disease, and initiate sudden cardiac death.

Prenatal intrapericardial teratomas: diagnosis and management.

We present a 21-week gestation fetus, who upon routine investigation was noted to have a left-sided pleural effusion. The pregnancy was terminated, and at autopsy, a diagnosis of intrapericardial teratoma was confirmed. Primary cardiac tumors in infants and children are rare, and intrapericardial teratomas are even more so.