Internal medicine journal
-
Asthma is a common but complex heterogenous inflammatory airway disorder. Despite significant developments in our understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment of asthma, it remains a major cause of mortality and morbidity. ⋯ This has revolutionised asthma management, allowing risk stratification of patients, targeted use of biologic agents to modify cytokine responses that drive asthma and improved patient outcomes. Patient education and engagement are critical to the management of this disease in an era of personalised medicine and a rapidly changing global environment.
-
Internal medicine journal · Sep 2022
"Improving the quality of care for adolescents and young adults on an adult medical ward".
Adolescents and young adults have health needs that are distinctly different from children and adults. A lack of education and training is reported by clinicians to be one of the main barriers to providing comprehensive developmentally appropriate care to young people, including the provision of confidential healthcare and taking a holistic approach. ⋯ Key components of comprehensive developmentally appropriate healthcare were not regularly carried out by staff on an adult medical ward. These findings suggest that further education and training, and service improvements are needed in tertiary adult hospital settings.
-
Internal medicine journal · Sep 2022
The Serum Anion Gap Revisited: A Verified Reference Interval for Contemporary Use.
The anion gap (AG) is often used to evaluate acid-base disorders. The reference interval for normal AG is used to differentiate between raised (gap) or normal AG (non-gap) acidosis. Historically accepted AG values may not be valid with the evolution of modern analytical techniques and the reference interval requires revalidation. ⋯ The AG reference interval of 10-18 mmol/L is valid for laboratories with similar reference intervals for electrolytes. Lower values expected with current laboratory techniques were not observed. The median AG of 13 mmol/L may be used to differentiate gap acidosis, non-gap acidosis or mixed acid-base disorders.
-
Internal medicine journal · Sep 2022
Patients characteristics and health outcomes in patients hospitalized with hypomagnesemia: a retrospective study from a single center in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Magnesium is an essential cation in the human body involved in many processes in the human body. Hypomagnesium has been linked to many poor health outcomes. ⋯ Hypomagnesaemia was a common and undertreated condition in hospitalised patients and was associated with poor health outcomes. Therefore, hospitals should develop guidelines for replacing and monitoring magnesium levels during hospitalisation, achieving better outcomes.