Back in late March (people often tell me that, these days, 4 months ago might as well be 4 years ago) we talked with emergency physician Julian Flores, who was working out of Broward County. Covid-19 cases were modest in number but threatening to get worse, and indeed they did. The county’s cases jumped 100-fold, from […] The post Podcast 271: Checking back in with Florida — 4 months later first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Aug 05, 2020•16 min
Don’t expect HIPAA regulations to protect your “digital health footprint” from prying eyes. Every time you swipe your card to buy goodies at the supermarket (are you risking diabetes with all that ice cream?), or binge-watch that kinky series (how’s your mental health these days, really?), or let your step-tracker show you’ve fallen off the pace […] The post Podcast 270: Is healthcare privacy possible if “all data are health data”? first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Jul 14, 2020•20 min
We interview Dr. Michael Gonzalez, a Houston-based emergency physician, who describes the situation there as “an ongoing, slow-rolling, level 6 hurricane that just isn’t gonna go away and, more importantly, isn’t gonna tell us when landfall is coming and when it’s gonna be over.” How are his patients reacting to this surge? What does he do […] The post Podcast 269: The pandemic in Texas is like a “slow-rolling level 6 hurricane” first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Jul 06, 2020•25 min
This time Dr. Ali Raja and Joe Elia talk with two authors of a study that found disparate effects on traffic deaths from the legalization of recreational cannabis. The two states under study, Colorado and Washington, were compared, not with each other, but with a composite of states that most closely resembled what Colorado and […] The post Podcast 268: Cannabis and road accidents — is there an association? first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Jun 29, 2020•20 min
The novel coronavirus obviously has devastating effects on the lungs, but other, less immediately visible attacks occur — notably to the kidneys. Dr. Steven Fishbane (a nephrologist) and his colleagues have just published their findings based on a survey of some 5500 patients with COVID-19 admitted to a metropolitan New York health system. Acute kidney injury […] The post Podcast 267: Acute kidney injury in COVID-19 — how one New York system dealt with it first appeared on Clinical Conversations...
May 19, 2020•21 min
A combination of three antivirals — Kaletra (which is lopinavir plus ritonavir) and ribavirin — when given early and with interferon significantly reduces viral shedding, disease symptoms, and hospital stay in patients with COVID-19 when compared with a control regimen of Kaletra alone. The drugs are active against other coronaviruses, but the key factors seem […] The post Podcast 266: Interferon and early treatment in COVID-19 bring good outcomes first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
May 10, 2020•14 min
We (Dr. Danielle Bowen Scheurer and Joe Elia) talk with Dr. John Jernigan of the CDC COVID-19 Investigation Team, which recently published its findings on the spread of COVID-19 in a Seattle-area skilled nursing facility. Most intriguingly, over half the patients who tested positive were asymptomatic at the time of their first testing, and a few […] The post Podcast 265: COVID-19 in skilled nursing facilities first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
May 01, 2020•17 min
Cardiovascular consults are way down. Is the threat of COVID-19 infection scaring people away from EDs? We caught up with Dr. Comilla Sasson, the American Heart Association’s VP for science and innovation. She’s an emergency physician who teaches at the University of Colorado. She’d traveled to New York City to “help with the response,” and she […] The post Podcast 264: Is COVID-19 pushing MIs out of emergency departments? first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Apr 20, 2020•15 min
This week’s guests, Dr. Andre Sofair and Dr. William (“Rusty”) Chavey are physician-editors on the daily clinical news alert called Physician’s First Watch. I went back through the recent issues and found this January 10 entry, which began “The CDC is requesting that clinicians ask their patients with severe respiratory disease about any travel to Wuhan […] The post Podcast 263: Checking in with Connecticut and Michigan on medicine after COVID-19 first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Apr 15, 2020•20 min
Four weeks ago — in early March — I interviewed Dr. Renee Salas about climate change and clinical medicine. Back in those halcyon days, COVID-19 was very much a gathering storm, but it had not yet slammed into the United States. Here we are, over 10,000 U.S. deaths later in early April, not having heard of much […] The post Podcast 257: Here comes the summer after COVID-19 first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Apr 06, 2020•18 min
We talk with Colleen Farrell who’s doing her third year of an internal medicine residency in New York City. Fortunately, we caught her during a one-week vacation (she was supposed to be taking two), and she chatted with us about how she and her colleagues are coping. We asked her what she thought COVID-19’s larger lessons would […] The post Podcast 262: COVID-19’s larger lessons first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Apr 01, 2020•12 min
San Diego County has Dr. Kristi Koenig as medical director of its emergency medical services. That’s fortunate for the county, because she’s co-edited a definitive textbook, “Koenig and Schultz’s Disaster Medicine: Comprehensive principles and practices.” We’re fortunate to have her as our guest. She’s full of sound advice on organizing a community’s response (for example, setting […] The post Podcast 261: COVID-19 as a medical disaster first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Mar 29, 2020•19 min
This time we talk with Dr. Julian Flores, who works in a Broward County, Florida, emergency room. When he was interviewed, the count of Covid-19 cases stood at 412, less than 12 hours later, the new number was 505, as of this posting — on Friday near noon Eastern — it’s at 614. Flores is expecting […] The post Podcast 260: Interview with a Broward County, Florida, emergency room physician first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Mar 27, 2020•13 min
Dr. Matt Young is a first-year resident in obstetrics and gynecology in suburban Delaware. Between the day I invited him to be interviewed and the interview itself (a 36-hour span) things had changed a lot for him. Anxiety levels are up among his colleagues, and everyone in his hospital must wear a mask all the time. […] The post Podcast 259: A first-year resident tells us what he sees in the Covid-19 pandemic first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Mar 25, 2020•13 min
We talk with Susan Sadoughi, an internist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, about how quickly things have changed over the past week. Last week, I introduced the Fauci interview by saying that I’d heard a clinician complain that she’d spent half her time answering questions about COVID-19. This week, she’s our guest, and she’s […] The post Podcast 258 — One clinician’s experience of the early days of the COVID-19 epidemic in the U.S. first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Mar 19, 2020•18 min
We have Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIAID to talk with us about COVID-19, the disease caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (also known as SARS-CoV-2). He’s full of sound advice in the midst of a rapidly changing epidemic. We wanted to know, How do you talk with patients about this rapidly spreading infection? How do you […] The post Podcast 256 — Anthony Fauci: Talking with patients about COVID-19 first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Mar 10, 2020•14 min
Here we have an interview with Prof. Feng He, whose English is much better than my Mandarin. Thus, I’ve attached a transcript to make her ideas on salt intake (no level is too low) and blood pressure (there’s a dose-response relation with salt) more immediately available than it might be to your ears alone. She’s coauthor […] The post Podcast 255: Salt talks — transcript included first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Mar 06, 2020•28 min
JAMA recently published a review of some 40 papers examining the relation between malpractice liability strategies — tort reform, increased insurance premiums, etc. — and the quality of care. Apparently the efforts had no discernible effect on mortality rates, length of hospital stays, and the like. An editorial accompanying the paper sketches out a vision of […] The post Podcast 254: Old malpractice liability strategies need rethinking first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Feb 28, 2020•17 min
With human papillomavirus vaccine in short supply around, moving from a three- or two-dose regimen to one dose would immediately double or treble supplies, cut costs, and simplify logistics. A careful study in Cancer by this week’s guest, Ana Rodriguez, and her colleagues adds to the evidence that single-dosing is possible and protective against pre-cancerous cervical lesions. […] The post Podcast 253: Is a single-dose HPV vaccination effective? first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Feb 21, 2020•16 min
Back in November, Ali Raja and Joe Elia talked with Garen Wintemute about his Health Affairs paper regarding addressing the topic of guns with patients. Having encountered another of those weeks in which interviewees were either on vacation (richly deserved, we’re certain) or too busy to respond to Joe’s requests (get some sleep!), we’re going to […] The post Podcast 252: We revisit our chat about chatting about guns first appeared on Clinical Conversations ....
Feb 13, 2020•19 min
