Subclinical cardiovascular disease and Systemic Sclerosis: A comparison between risk charts, quantification of coronary calcium and carotid ultrasonography.

Background And Objectives: Recently published population-based cohort studies have shown a high prevalence of cardiovascular disease in Systemic Sclerosis (SSc) patients. The aim of this study is to compare three different methods to measure cardiovascular risk in patients with scleroderma.

Methods: Forty-three SSc patients were included.

Cardiac F-FDG PET/CT procedure for the diagnosis of prosthetic endocarditis and intracardiac devices.

Infective endocarditis (IE) is a serious condition with a poor prognosis, its mortality unchanged significantly despite diagnostic and therapeutic advances in the last 30years. The diagnostic ability of the modified Duke criteria in prosthetic endocarditis and/or devices does not exceed 50%, so new tools are necessary for the diagnosis of this entity in this context. The F-FDG PET/CTA combines a highly sensitive technique to detect inflammatory-infectious activity with a technique with high anatomical resolution to assess the structural lesions associated with endocarditis.

Incorporation of Scribes Into the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic Improves Quality of Care and Physician Productivity.

Background: Electronic health records (EHRs), despite their positive attributes, increase physician workload and decrease efficiency. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of scribes in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinic on improvement of the physician-patient relationship, physician productivity, clinical efficiency, and achievement of some Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) metrics.

Methods: We analyzed of pre- and postscribe data between fiscal years 2015 (FY15) and 2016 (FY16) using data from patients at the Inflammatory Bowel Clinic at the University of Florida.

[Thoracic vascular disease in oncologic patients].

Patients with oncologic disease require frequent imaging tests (predominantly computed tomography) for follow-up. These patients may have thoracic vascular disease that can influence the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of their cancer. Primary vascular tumors can involve the thoracic vessels, like the pulmonary arteries (pulmonary artery sarcoma), and the neoplastic disease can extend locally (lung tumor) or remotely to the thoracic vessels (pulmonary tumor embolism and pulmonary tumor thrombotic microangiopathy).