Q Fever in Southern California: a Case Series of 20 Patients from a VA Medical Center.

Query fever (Q fever), caused by , was first described in southern California in 1947. It was found to be endemic and enzoonotic to the region and associated with exposure to livestock. We describe a series of 20 patients diagnosed with Q fever at a Veterans Affairs hospital in southern California, with the aim of contributing toward the understanding of Q fever in this region.

Factors Considered by Clinicians when Prognosticating Intracerebral Hemorrhage Outcomes.

Background: The early subjective clinical judgment of clinicians outperforms formal prognostic scales for accurate determination of outcome after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), with the judgment of physicians and nurses having equivalent accuracy. This study assessed specific decisional factors that physicians and nurses incorporate into early predictions of functional outcome.

Methods: This prospective observational study enrolled 121 ICH patients at five US centers.

Clinician judgment vs formal scales for predicting intracerebral hemorrhage outcomes.

Objective: To compare the performance of formal prognostic instruments vs subjective clinical judgment with regards to predicting functional outcome in patients with spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).

Methods: This prospective observational study enrolled 121 ICH patients hospitalized at 5 US tertiary care centers. Within 24 hours of each patient's admission to the hospital, one physician and one nurse on each patient's clinical team were each asked to predict the patient's modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score at 3 months and to indicate whether he or she would recommend comfort measures.

Splenic abscesses in a returning traveler.

Burkholderia, an aerobic gram-negative rod, is the causative organism behind melioidosis and is a common soil and water organism found predominantly in South-East Asia. We report the case of a 68 year-old man returning from an extended trip to the Philippines, with splenic hypodense lesions on abdominal computer tomography scan, later confirmed to be culture-positive for Burkholderia pseudomallei. The patient was treated with a course of intravenous ceftazidime followed by eradication therapy with oral doxycycline and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole.

Cutaneous ulcer as leading symptom of systemic cytomegalovirus infection.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection rarely manifests with skin ulcerations. We describe a case report of a 64-year-old woman with chronic immunosuppression for treatment of mixed connective tissue disease, presenting with new onset leg ulcerations after a recent change in immunosuppressive regimen. She subsequently developed fulminant hepatitis, encephalopathy, and pancytopenia and was found to have severe systemic CMV viremia.