Host: Elizabeth Esty, MD. Smoking is known to increase both susceptibility and severity of all manner of colds and pneumonias, so you’d think the world’s 1.1 billion smokers would be at risk in this pandemic of what at first seemed to be a just a respiratory virus. What’s more, tobacco smoking increases risk for COPD,…
Read More*(A shorter and more clinically focused follow up piece to our COVID Digest released on 5/1/20) Contributor: Nick Tsipis, MD Educational Pearls: Case series reported 5 cases of generally young and healthy patients with COVID-19 who presented to the ER with acute stroke Now several case series showing cardiovascular involvement or complications related to COVID-19…
Read MoreHost: Elizabeth Esty, MD In the US, few people receive vaccination for tuberculosis (TB), a disease that hasn’t been a major killer here for many decades. But while we in the US mostly experience TB as a relatively rare but real threat in its multidrug resistant form, particularly in patients with HIV–or in Victorian novels–TB…
Read MoreContributor: Don Stader, MD Educational Pearls: COVID-19 commonly appears as a bilateral patchy infiltrate on chest radiograph, but this is a non-specific finding Sensitivities range from 17-70% for COVID-19 Many other viral pneumonias such as RSV and influenza can have similar findings Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) demonstrates B-lines, water-fall sign, or hepatization of the lung, but…
Read MoreHost: Elizabeth Esty, MD Last week we looked at neurologic presentations of COVID-19; this week we’ll look more closely at strokes in young people with COVID. A letter published 2 days ago in the NEJM with lead author Thomas Oxley, the Neuro ICU director at Mt Sinai, presents five case studies of relatively young patients…
Read MoreContributor: Don Stader, MD Educational Pearls: COVID-19 is diagnosed with a nasopharyngeal swab (q-tip). This unfortunately can be painful, but if the swab doesn’t go deep into the nasal cavity the sample can be inadequate leading to false negatives (missed infections). The sensitivity of the COVID-19 RT PCR test is low, ranging from 66-80% in…
Read More
Host: Elizabeth Esty, MD Accumulating clinical evidence suggests that many patients with COVID have neurological symptoms and that some may even present with neurologic manifestations of the disease. Most COVID patients have a cough, respiratory distress, and while clinicians often speak about how similar the presentations of patients with respiratory COVID are, it’s worth looking…
Read More
a typical case of the pandemic Chief Complaint: Altered Mental Status HPI: 69-year-old male with history of diabetes brought in by his son to the emergency department with altered mental status. Patient is unresponsive and all history is from his son and chart review. Son reports that he had increasing shortness of breath and confusion…
Read MoreHosts: Elizabeth Esty, MD & Dylan Luyten, MD In this episode of the COVID-19 Digest, we revisit the airborne vs droplet transmission debate and analyze a highly publicized study on Remdesivir from the New England Journal of Medicine. Research By: Tanisha Crosby-Attipoe & Nathan Novotny Sound Editing By: Stephen Bahmani Time Stamps: 0:00 – Numbers…
Read MoreHost: Elizabeth Esty, MD The circumstances that led to the national shortage in PPE for healthcare workers, the inspiring work of New Orleans med students to equip medical providers with PPE and the science behind personal use of cloth masks are all topics covered in this special edition of the Emergency Medical Minute. Research By:…
Read More