Pre-operative echocardiograms in acute fragility hip fractures: How effective are the guidelines?

In 2014, the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) released guidelines for ordering pre-operative echocardiograms in patients undergoing non-cardiac surgery. The purpose of this study is to determine if pre-operative echocardiograms ordered prior to fragility hip fracture repair are ordered according to these guidelines, change anesthetic management or affect patient outcomes. In addition, we attempted to evaluate the efficacy of the ACC/AHA guidelines.

Immune mediated necrotizing myopathy: A rare complication of statin therapy.

Immune mediated necrotizing myopathy (IMNM) is part of the inflammatory myopathies group of diseases and presents with muscle weakness, myalgias and elevated serum creatine phosphokinase (CPK). Statin-induced IMNM is a rare complication. We present a patient with IMNM secondary to simvastatin use.

Metastasis of Ewing Sarcoma to the Pancreas: Case Report and Literature Review.

Ewing sarcoma (ES) is a highly aggressive malignant bone cancer. ES is part of the Ewing sarcoma family of tumors (ESFT), which express characteristic t(11;22) translocation as well as higher levels of CD99. Given that metastasis and tumor burden are significant prognostic factors in patient's response to treatment, prompt diagnosis is needed to effectively treat ESFT patients.

A Case of Confirmed Ceftriaxone-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia.

Drug-induced immune thrombocytopenia (DITP) is a rare, but potentially fatal cause of isolated thrombocytopenia. DITP is thought to occur when drug-dependent antibodies bind to the platelet membrane glycoproteins to activate platelet consumption signaling. Common implicated drugs include quinine/quinidine, penicillamines, valproic acid and cotrimoxazole.

Implementing a medical student interpreter training program as a strategy to developing humanism.

Background: Humanistic care in medicine has shown to improve healthcare outcomes. Language barriers are a significant obstacle to humanistic care, and trained medical interpreters have demonstrated to effectively bridge the gap for the vulnerable limited English proficiency (LEP) patient population. One way in which medical schools can train more humanistic physicians and provide language access is through the implementation of programs to train bilingual medical students as medical interpreters.