Annals of internal medicine
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Restrictive covenants (RCs) are clauses placed into employment agreements across various industries, and they are frequently used in health care-specifically within physician contracts. Given the most recent guidance and rule determined by the Federal Trade Commission in April 2024, the relevancy of RCs in health care has come under even more scrutiny in the latter half of 2024. This review will focus on the history of RC law and review the value of these clauses from the perspectives of the employer, practicing physician, and patient. We also provide the stakeholder responses to both the ban and the subsequent blockage of enforcement by a Texas federal court in August of 2024.
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Functional capacity is critical to preoperative risk assessment, yet guidance on its measurement in clinical practice remains lacking. ⋯ None. (Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/ah7u5).
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Meta Analysis
In persons exposed to influenza, zanamivir, oseltamivir, laninamivir, and baloxavir reduce symptomatic seasonal influenza.
Zhao Y, Gao Y, Guyatt G, et al. Antivirals for post-exposure prophylaxis of influenza: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. Lancet. 2024;404:764-772. 39181596.
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Although medical devices are widely used in clinical practice, clinicians and the public have limited access to information on how devices are tested, regulated, and used, posing challenges to patient safety. This article uses Cook Medical's Celect inferior vena cava (IVC) filter, a medical device used for prevention of pulmonary embolism, as a case study of the transparency gap in medical device regulation. Recently unsealed court documents from litigation related to Celect reveal that the device's clinical study protocol did not follow U. ⋯ Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidance for IVC filter testing and that study outcome definitions for IVC perforation had lower sensitivity for detecting adverse events than those recommended by professional societies. Furthermore, a comparison of court documents and the public record indicates that adverse events and patient deaths were misreported to FDA reviewers and were inaccurately reported in the published literature and on the device label, providing patients and clinicians with inaccurate information about the device's safety. The Celect IVC filter case demonstrates the need for regulatory reforms to ensure that critical safety data are accessible to the FDA, clinicians, and patients to inform decision making.