PGY-2

Posts authored during my second year of internal medicine residency training.

A Thoughtful Gift!

Medical residency training is an amazing opportunity, filled with a lot of stressful scenarios that test your knowledge and grit.  I have had the pleasure of working with some excellent Fellows in the various subspecialty fields, including one in particular from the Critical Care Medicine department.  Knowing that I am pursuing a Gastroenterology fellowship position, he went …

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ACLS Protocols

As a senior internal medicine resident on night float and overnight call, I’m responsible for running to codes and rapid responses.  Rapid responses at my institution are critical patient situations that require urgent bedside attention for things like symptomatic supraventricular tachycardia, new typical chest pain, hemodynamic instability, etc.  Today after work, I wanted to brush up …

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HFpEF Treatment

These patients tend to be very VOLUME SENSITIVE. Daily weight checks – get an accurate bathroom scale. No medications have proven mortality benefit. Treat causes Hypertension – lower the patient’s blood pressure Tachycardia – AV nodal blockade depending on etiology.   Bibliography ACP MKSAP 17:  Cardiovascular Medicine, pp. 32-34 Image credit (follow link)

HFrEF Medical Treatment

Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction (also known as systolic heart failure) is broken up into two phases of treatment:  the acute (on presentation to the hospital) and chronic (long-term to prevent re-hospitalization). Acute Exacerbation Treatment DIURETIC (urinate off all the excess fluid in a volume-overloaded patient) ACE inhibitor or Angiotensin Receptor Blocker (ARB) contraindicated if …

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