Background: Death certificates are legal documents that permit families to finalize a multitude of end‐of‐life tasks. Physicians play a key role in generating these documents, in partnership with hospital staff, funeral directors, and state health departments. Although delays and errors in the completion of death certificates increase waiting times for families and, anecdotally, have been […]

Background: Antipsychotics are frequently used in the hospital setting for managing both acute and chronic neuropsychiatric disorders. However, antipsychotics have been associated with higher rates of adverse events, including mortality, due to their association with QT prolongation, which can lead to fatal cardiac arrhythmias such as torsade de pointes, earning a black box warning for use in dementia related psychosis. Yet, […]

Background: Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) creation is a commonly utilized procedure used for patients with chronic liver disease and resistant portal hypertension. Previous studies have explored the trends and short-term outcomes in TIPS procedures. This study aims to further compare short-term in-hospital outcomes of patients with chronic kidney disease when undergoing TIPS. Methods: This […]

Background: There are various reasons why physicians order laboratory tests. In teaching institutions and academic centers, residents often order many unnecessary tests for patients. Earlier studies have shown that in many cases test‐ordering behavior lacks efficiency, resulting in excessive laboratory utilization. Throughout the years various attempts have been made to improve this situation with mostly […]

Background: Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) is an important risk factor for thromboembolic complications. We hypothesized that using an implantable loop recorder (ILR) may help for identification of occult AF in patients with cryptogenic stroke. Methods: We report the early results from a prospective study that monitors patients with cryptogenic stroke/TIA for 2 years after loop […]

Background: Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) creation is a commonly utilized procedure used for patients with chronic liver disease and resistant portal hypertension. Previous studies have explored the trends and short-term outcomes in TIPS procedures. This study aims to further compare short-term in-hospital outcomes of patients with coagulation disorders when undergoing TIPS. Methods: This retrospective […]

Background: Although procedural sedation has been proposed as a core competency for pediatric hospitalists (PHs), little sedation training is given during pediatric residency. Most PHs are trained on the job and may have received only a didactic lecture on procedural sedation medications along with supervised sedation training. In general, children who need procedural sedation are […]

Background: Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) creation is a commonly utilized procedure used for patients with chronic liver disease and resistant portal hypertension. Previous studies have explored the trends and short-term outcomes in TIPS procedures. This study aims to further compare short-term in-hospital outcomes of patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) when undergoing TIPS. Methods: This […]

Case Presentation: A 63 year-old woman with a history of liver transplant presented to a rural hospital for evaluation of rigors, nausea and vomiting. Her post-transplant course had been complicated by HCV recurrence treated successfully with interferon and ribavirin; cirrhosis, and refractory gastric variceal bleeding for which she received a transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) […]

Case Presentation: A 44-year-old Hispanic woman with no past medical history presented to the emergency department complaining of difficulty walking.  She reported a three-week history of progressive, sharp lower back pain followed by a one-week history of bilateral lower extremity weakness. She denied history of fever, night sweats, weight loss, hemoptysis or travel outside of […]