A Patient on Dialysis with Syncope

History:  A 67-year-old female presents to urgent care complaining of one episode of syncope earlier in the day. No seizure-like activity was noted by the family and she returned to baseline within a minute. She has a past medical history of end-stage renal disease on scheduled hemodialysis, hypertension, diabetes, coronary artery disease, and chronic nausea. Medications include aspirin, insulin, amlodipine, hydralazine, ondansetron, metoclopramide, and amiodarone.               View the ECG taken and consider what your diagnosis …

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Abstracts in Urgent Care: April, 2011

Randomized Controlled Trial of Cephalexin Versus Clindamycin for Uncomplicated Pediatric Skin Infections Key point: When it comes to curing skin infected with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), timely and proper wound cleaning and draining may be more important than the choice of antibiotic. Citation: Chen AE, Carroll KC, Diener-West M, et al. Pediatrics. 2011;127(3):e573-e580. Researchers originally set out to compare the efficacy of two antibiotics commonly used to treat Staph skin infections, ran- domly giving 191 …

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Abstracts in Urgent Care: April, 2010

Diagnostic Medical Errors: What Goes Wrong and Why Key point: Errors often occur because clinicians don’t consider the diagnosis, test for it, or follow up on abnormal test results. Citation: Schiff GD, Hasan O, Kim S, et al. Diagnostic error in medicine: Analysis of 583 physician-reported errors. Arch Intern Med. 2009; 169: 1881-1887. Autopsy data from the past few decades reveal diagnostic error rates of 10% to 15%, but do not inform us about the …

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