Clinical

Many Americans are fed up with social isolation, worrying about loved ones and themselves, wearing masks, and delays in rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Some are getting desperate and scouring the internet for outside-the-box, readily available ways to supposedly shore up their immune systems and ward off the virus, or even to self-treat infection itself. Unfortunately, their efforts are in vain if an article just published by JAMA Network Open is any indication. Researchers conducted …

As the East Coast braces for its third snowstorm in less than 2 weeks, much of Texas is still struggling with very un-Texas-like cold temperatures and widespread power outages. Six people were killed and dozens were injured in a 133-car pileup on a slick highway near Fort Worth. An urgent care center in Fairfield, CT was featured on local media talking about a sharp rise in injuries due to people falling on icy walkways. These …

Patients (and probably more than a few healthcare professionals) are all about the COVID-19 vaccine these days. However, the need for ongoing vigilance against other communicable diseases goes on. To that end, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed its recommended immunization schedule for adults for 2021. You can read the entire report here, but following are illness-specific changes that may be most relevant for the …

Millions of Americans have already availed themselves to one of the newly approved COVID-19 vaccines. Multiples more are eager to get their turn. There are many, however, who say they won’t get the shot because the vaccines were “rushed through” the approval process. While that’s not true—studies were prioritized due to the urgent nature of the pandemic—too many people are afraid that they’re putting themselves at unreasonable risk for a bad reaction, with anaphylaxis being …

Urgent care patients and staff members who wear a loose-fitting mask are putting themselves and those around them at unnecessarily higher risk for COVID-19 infection, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, the CDC now specifically states that a tight-fitting mask provides more protection than a loose mask, and that doubling up on masks is advisable—especially now that new, more contagious strains are making the rounds. If …

It’s been assumed for close to a year that the isolation and stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic would take a toll on our collective sense of wellbeing and peace of mind. Those consequences are now being borne out in data on presentations to the emergency room for mental health conditions, suicide attempts, drug overdoses, intimate partner violence, and child abuse or neglect. All  increased as a percentage of overall ED visits over a 7-month …

As in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people (including healthcare professionals) may be taking false comfort in the fact that the multiple variants of the virus started cropping up “somewhere else.” Also as we saw a year ago, however, that kind of thinking is no protection. Early, yet-to-be published data show that the variant first detected in the United Kingdom is becoming the dominant strain in several countries—and that its occurrence is …

Schools, workplaces, and health clubs have developed screening processes to try to keep their doors open while also minimizing risk to staff and constituents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions about shortness of breath, fever, and other symptoms may actually pointless, however, as new research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reveals that at least one third of patients with COVID-19 may be asymptomatic. On a societal level, this calls into question whether it’s wise …

As time goes on and more is understood about the secondary effects of coronavirus, many patients are shocked to discover that they’re at greater risk than they thought. Some, however, can breathe a sigh of relief upon learning that their situation may not be as dire as they had been led to believe. Patients with asthma fall into the latter category, as new research published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine …

Patients with heart disease were identified early on in the COVID-19 pandemic as a population that was likely at risk for severe disease. At the same time, however, those same patients became less likely to follow through with cardiologists and primary care physicians over misaligned concerns that visiting healthcare professionals exposed them to greater risk of infection. That phenomenon is now being borne out in research. For example, an article published in the Journal of …