Psychosomatics
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Substance use disorders (SUDs) are known to cause or complicate treatment of many types of cancers. ⋯ Veterans with cancer and SUD showed a specific risk for liver disease and a higher use of opioids. Collaborative teams involving oncology, palliative care, and psychiatry may be best able to address the challenge of providing adequate and safe opiate pain control for this vulnerable population.
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Review Case Reports
Intentional Self-inflicted Burn Injuries: Review of the Literature.
Intentional self-inflicted burn injuries are a rare occurrence in the United States, but they represent a considerable portion of all burn injuries in the developing world. Compared to nonintentional burns, patients with intentional self-inflicted burns have increased rates of higher total body surface area involvement and associated complications, including overall mortality. ⋯ Nonlethal self-burns present a distinct subset of intentional self-burn injuries, often occurring in the context of significant personality pathology, or with potential secondary gain.
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Guidelines recommend daily delirium monitoring of hospitalized patients. Available delirium-screening tools have not been validated for use by nurses among diverse inpatients. ⋯ The Nu-DESC is a specific delirium detection tool, but it is not sensitive at the usually proposed cut point of ≥2. Using a threshold of ≥1 or adding a test of attention increase sensitivity with a minor decrease in specificity.
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Individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) are at high risk for depression and anxiety, which are associated with worse medical outcomes. Novel therapies for CF hold great promise for improving physical health, but the effects of these therapies on mental health remain poorly understood. ⋯ Although CFTR modulator therapies provide hope for improving clinical outcomes, worsening depression and anxiety occurs in some patients when starting these novel agents. This phenomenon may be multifactorial, with hypothesized contributions from CFTR modulator-psychotropic medication interactions, direct effects of CFTR modulators on central nervous system function, the psychologic effect of starting a potentially life-altering drug, and typical triggers of depression and anxiety such as stress, pain, and inflammation. The medical and psychiatric complexity of many individuals with CF warrants more direct involvement of mental health specialists on the multidisciplinary CF team. Inclusion of mental health variables in patients with CF registries will facilitate further examination at an epidemiologic level.