Tue, Mar 21 – Top 10 Medical News Stories

1 – Management of COPD exacerbations: a European Respiratory Society/American Thoracic Society guideline – European Respiratory Journal (free)

Source: Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

2 – Acute kidney disease and renal recovery: consensus report of the Acute Disease Quality Initiative (ADQI) 16 Workgroup – Nature Reviews Nephrology (free)

Source: Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

3 – Thoracic Ultrasound: What Non-radiologists Need to Know – Current Pulmonology Reports (free)

Source: Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

Comprehensive review with descriptive videos.

4 – Characteristics of Initial Prescription Episodes and Likelihood of Long-Term Opioid Use – Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), CDC (free)

See also: The risk of a single 5-day opioid prescription, in one chart – VOX (free)

“One simple way to curb opioid overuse: prescribe them for 3 days or less” – dependency on opioids can develop quickly and the risk increases after 4-5 days.

5 – Patient Mortality During Unannounced Accreditation Surveys at US Hospitals – JAMA Internal Medicine (free)

Patients admitted to hospitals during Accreditation Surveys had significantly lower mortality than during nonsurvey weeks.

“To reduce hospital mortality, I guess we should have unannounced accreditation surveys every day” (RT @EricTopol – see Tweet).

6 – Heartbeat: Challenges in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease – Heart (free)

Editorial: Statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (free)

See also: Lessons from the controversy over statins, By Fiona Godlee (BMJ Editor in Chief – letter in The Lancet questioning the evidence regarding statins for primary prevention of cardiovascular disease)

7 – News from ACC 2017: Rivaroxaban vs. Aspirin to Prevent Recurrent VTE / Evolocumab’s Clinical Outcomes / More… – Physician’s First Watch (free)

8 – Pop a Pill for Heartburn? Try Diet and Exercise Instead – The New York Times (free)

See also: When is proton pump inhibitor use appropriate? – BMC Medicine (free) AND Effective and safe proton pump inhibitor therapy in acid-related diseases – A position paper addressing benefits and potential harms of acid suppression – BMC Medicine (free) AND Long-term kidney outcomes among users of proton pump inhibitors without intervening acute kidney injury – Kidney International (free)

9 – Richard Lehman’s weekly review of medical journals, 20 March 2017 – The BMJ Blogs (free)

10 – Association of Preceding Antithrombotic Treatment With Acute Ischemic Stroke Severity and In-Hospital Outcomes Among Patients With Atrial Fibrillation – JAMA Internal Medicine (link to abstract – $ required for full-text)

Source: Richard Lehman’s weekly review (free)

“In patients with acute ischemic stroke who had a known history of atrial fibrillation, 84% did not receive guideline-recommended therapeutic anticoagulation preceding the stroke”, showing the importance of adequate anticoagulation in this population.