Post-Discharge Cardiac Care in the Era of Coronavirus 2019: How Should We Prepare?

How differently we should prepare for the next disaster?

Following the Great East Japan earthquake (the Big Quake) that hit the northeastern parts of Japan on March 11, 2011, aid was dispatched from multiple levels of organizations including the Japanese Nurses Association (JNA). Evidence indicates that the JNA did not play an effective role in the aid efforts, since the professional organization had pulled out and stopped sending nursing personnel f...

How should we optimize cardiac resynchronization therapy?

Optimization of cardiac resynchronization therapy is increasingly performed. Numerous methods have been proposed, many being echocardiographic. Both the technique and the timing of optimization are contentious. Whether acute haemodynamic benefits translate into long-term improvements in remodelling, symptoms, or prognosis is unknown. Recent guidelines from the American Society of Echocardiograp...

How Should We Pay for Health Care?

Malignant hyperthermia in the ambulatory surgery center: how should we prepare?

1306 June 2014 M hyperthermia (MH) occurs when a patient who has inherited a causative mutation (usually in RYR1, the gene on chromosome 19 that encodes for the ryanodine receptor) is exposed to one or both anesthetic-triggering agents (i.e., volatile anesthetics and succinylcholine).1 MH is just as likely to occur in a healthy patient who receives anesthesia in a freestanding ambulatory surger...

Why should we care about palliative care for AIDS in the era of antiretroviral therapy?

I nitially, in the now distant early years of the AIDS epidemic in the developed world, AIDS care was palliative care. As HIV/AIDS therapies have evolved rapidly since the mid-1990s, the focus of clinical care has increasingly been on antiretroviral therapy and the complex decision making that surrounds its use. While the growing ‘‘medicalisation’’ of AIDS is in part because of the advent of ef...