The American journal of medicine
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Review
Medically unexplained neurologic symptoms: a primer for physicians who make the initial encounter.
Medically unexplained symptoms are ubiquitous in clinical practice. Medical use costs of medically unexplained symptoms are projected at approximately $256 billion per year. When initially seen, these symptoms are often baffling, not only to the patients but also to the physicians who encounter them. ⋯ All this burdens the patients with unnecessary costs, financially and emotionally. This primer discusses historical perspectives of these and the changing nomenclature, and outlines how to think about these complex symptoms and neurologic findings that will enable a positive diagnosis rather than a diagnosis of exclusion. We also offer useful heuristic principles of their management so that physician-patient relationships can be better maintained and the quality of life of these patients can be improved by way of some simple, economic approaches.
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Fevers of unknown origin remain one of the most difficult diagnostic challenges in medicine. Because fever of unknown origin may be caused by over 200 malignant/neoplastic, infectious, rheumatic/inflammatory, and miscellaneous disorders, clinicians often order non-clue-based imaging and specific testing early in the fever of unknown origin work-up, which may be inefficient/misleading. Unlike most other fever-of-unknown-origin reviews, this article presents a clinical approach. Characteristic history and physical examination findings together with key nonspecific test abnormalities are the basis for a focused clue-directed fever of unknown origin work-up.
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Cerebral edema due to exercise-associated hyponatremia and cardiac arrest due to atherosclerotic heart disease cause rare marathon-related fatalities in young female and middle-aged male runners, respectively. Studies in asymptomatic middle-aged male physician-runners during races identified inflammation due to skeletal muscle injury after glycogen depletion as the shared underlying cause. Nonosmotic secretion of arginine vasopressin as a neuroendocrine stress response to rhabdomyolysis mediates hyponatremia as a variant of the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion. ⋯ High short-term risk for atherothrombosis during races as shown by stratification of biomarkers in asymptomatic men may render nonobstructive coronary atherosclerotic plaques vulnerable to rupture. Pre-race aspirin use in this high-risk subgroup is prudent according to conclusive evidence for preventing first acute myocardial infarctions in same-aged healthy male physicians. On the basis of validated clinical paradigms, taking a low-dose aspirin before a marathon and drinking to thirst during the race may avert preventable deaths in susceptible runners.
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Patients complaining of pain or fatigue in the absence of known physical diseases constitute a high percentage of those seeking general medical care. Depending upon the type of physician/specialist consulted, those individuals may receive disease labels that range from an implied psychological origin such as somatoform or psychosomatic disease, or to a presumed physical disease such as fibromyalgia. Although all these conditions are regularly associated with fatigue, we have provided a new label suggesting another disease category, "systemic exertion intolerance disease," which replaces the previous "chronic fatigue syndrome." All these conditions have common, overlapping features that usually consist of both fatigue and pain, and, in the absence of definitive objective confirmation, might be best classified under one heading such as somatic symptom disorder. Management of these disorders is challenging, but suggestions for proper identification and treatment are presented.