In 2017 the Society for Critical Care Medicine updated its guidelines for sepsis management. These new guidelines differ significantly from ones in the past in that they no longer recommend protocolized resuscitation and emphasize early and aggressive fluid resuscitation when patients present with septic shock. This is the first podcast in the Surviving Sepsis guideline series. The next episode discusses why the new sepsis guideline changed.
Article discussed in this episode: Management of Sepsis and Septic Shock
Speakers:
Laura Evans, MD, MSc, of Bellevue Hospital and NYU Medical Center
Andrew Rhodes, MBBS, MD, of St George’s University Hospitals NHS Trust and co-chair of the Surviving Sepsis guideline panel
Mitchell M. Levy, MD, of the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital
Approximately one-third of all medical school graduates report having been abused as students. Medical student and resident abuse has long been considered unacceptable behavior but still persists in the teaching environment. In this podcast we discuss how students and residents might respond to these events. We interview Geoffrey Young, MD, from the Association of American Medical Colleges and Thomas J. Nasca, MD, from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, who discuss how they expect medical schools to respond to abusive behaviors and what resources are available to students and residents who have been abused to report those experiences without fearing retribution.
Article discussed in this episode:
As people age, loss of muscle mass is inevitable, resulting in sarcopenia. Muscle loss contributes to overall weakness, which causes frailty. Frailty, in turn, is the generalized susceptibility to disease and injury, all of which causes loss of autonomy. Because of the potential for progressive decline in physical function in very elderly patients, accurate tools are needed to predict mortality risk to individualize treatments intended to improve longevity such as chemotherapy, management of chronic diseases, and surgery. In this podcast, sarcopenia, frailty, and risk prediction are discussed in the context of major trials studying them being conducted in Europe.
Managing hypertension in elderly patients is complicated. Recent studies have shown that elderly patients may benefit from aggressive hypertension management, but other studies have shown that some are harmed by overly aggressive hypertension management. These issues were discussed in detail at the 2016 European Union Geriatric Medicine Society meeting. In this podcast we discuss how to best manage hypertension in elderly patients with Athanase Benetos, MD, PhD, a professor of internal medicine from Nancy, France, and the academic director of the European Union Geriatric Medicine Society.
Older patients tend to have multiple comorbid conditions requiring treatment with many medications. Managing polypharmacy is challenging. In this podcast we discuss 2 tools that help deal with this problem: The Beer’s list and the START/STOPP criteria. To help understand these tools we spoke with Michael Steinman, MD, a professor of medicine from University of California-San Francisco, and Denis O’Mahony from University College Cork, Ireland.
Links:
JAMA reviews on polypharmacy in the elderly: Evaluation and Treatment of Older Patients With Hypercholesterolemia (Sep 17, 2014)
Polypharmacy in the Aging Patient: Management of Hypertension (July 14, 2015)
Polypharmacy in the Aging Patient: Review of Glycemic Control in Older Adults With Type 2 Diabetes (DM article has polypharmacy podcast - Mar 8, 2016
SPRINT Trial of Hypertension Control in the Elderly: American Geriatrics Society Updated Beers Criteria for Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Older Adults or geriatricscareonline.org, click on the link for Clinical Guidelines & Recommendations–
The EU(7)-PIM list: Potentially Inappropriate Medications for Older People
STOPP/START Criteria for Potentially Inappropriate Prescribing in Older People