Notes from Dr. RW

This issue (in my mind at least) retains the number one spot it held in last year’s top ten list. And, like last year, the skeptics are sti...

Two facets of this issue were on the radar screen this year. One concerns what may be the biggest downside to the hospitalist model: the in...

Two papers in 2007 weighed in on this debate. First was this study from the Archives of Internal Medicine showing a statistically significa...

The Surviving Sepsis Guidelines (SSG) are now over 3 years old. I’m going to look into the crystal ball of recent evidence and make some pr...

Hospitals, scrambling for good public report cards, have implemented various core “quality measures” promulgated by Joint Commission, CMS an...

This year the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ( CMS ) revamped the prospective payment system and diagnosis related groups ( DRGs...

Cefepime ( Maxipime ) is one of the big gun beta-lactams we reach for in serious infections such as health care associated pneumonia and fev...

The buzz this year was about perioperative beta blockers, statins and stents. Perioperative beta blockers were already being questioned in ...

This year saw the publication of new guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of venous thromboembolism which can be accessed as free full...

About a decade ago people began to wake up to the fact that the medical profession was doing a poor job of treating pain. Treatment was all ...

It’s time again for a year-end wrap up of developments in the field of hospital medicine. What were the defining issues in 2007? Although th...

With a Christmas theme , of course.

Christmas at RW's place was special not only for the kids and grandkids--- but also for the dogs. It was a day of eating too much, no-br...

Think you can understand the stem cell debate? Not if you don’t know the biology. Some resources are here . Compiled by Life Sciences Educ...

I was cleaning out closets and ran across some very old drug company trinkets. Now, I'm not as old as these images would indicate. So...

I was about to cite a couple of new articles and an editorial from Circulation to seize a SITYS (see I told you so) moment when I found th...

It’s been well known for a while that transfusion can cause acute lung injury (ALI ). Now, a cohort study in Chest suggests that red cell t...

The old adage was “levophed, leave ‘em dead.” Now it’s “who’s the dope that started dopamine?” Although current evidence suggests superior...

In our recent Medscape Roundtable Discussion Roy Poses and I took the affirmative side of this debate while our colleague Nick Genes argued ...

See previous post here . One of the tricks of noninvasive ventilation is to monitor the patient for signs of failure so that if the patient ...