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Showing posts from April, 2018

How the best of care can be terrible without bedside ultrasound

I just read a "Clinical Problem Solving" case from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). It was entitled Stream of Consciousness  and it told the story of a 65 year old man who was a patient at the Brigham and Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School, arguably one of the finest medical institutions in the world. These cases are presented in single paragraphs to a clinical expert physician who then comments about his or her thought processes and discusses how he or she would have handled the situation. In this narrative the patient presented to a different hospital in New England with kidney failure and a gradual onset of confusion in the setting of very high blood pressure. He was then transferred to the Brigham and Women's Hospital for further evaluation and treatment. He had lab tests of all color and stripe along with MRI and CT scans of his brain which showed some disconcerting spots. He had a lumbar puncture and his high blood pressure was treated. Ev