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A Country Doctor Reads: May 4, 2019

Published May 4, 2019 A Country Doctor Reads Leave a Comment

Delays in B-12 deficiency diagnosis -WSJ

This was interesting. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the difficulties and delays in getting diagnosed with B-12 deficiency. It often takes years:

www.wsj.com/articles/vitamin-b-12-deficiency-the-serious-health-problem-thats-easy-to-miss-11556589900

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Review article: metoclopramide and tardive dyskinesia – RAO – 2010 – Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics – Wiley Online Library

All of a sudden, I am reading a lot about tardive dyskinesia. I’ve been thinking about it in the context of being a side effect of metoclopramide.

Gastroparesis is frustrating to treat. Metoclopramide has been around since 1979, and I have certainly prescribed it often. But now there are all these warnings about Tardive Dyskinesia. Erythromycin is an option, not always well tolerated, and now the price of it has gone from $4 to $600 per month. Over the years, one motility drug after another has entered the market and been withdrawn due to side effects. There has also been Domperidone, not available in this country but in Canada (I have a Border License), but now I hear that it isn’t available there either.

So I wanted to get a handle on how prevalent Tardive Dykinesia from metoclopramide really is. I found a ten year old piece that said 1-15%. Guess how many cases I have seen over the years. Answer: Not a single one.

In the past 5 years, guidelines from two national organizations on the treatment of gastroparesis suggested that the frequency of TD with metoclopramide use is 1–15%.3, 4 However, clinical experience suggests that the risk of TD is much less. There are several potential explanations for the discrepancy between the stated prevalence and clinical experience: First, TD may not be encountered by gastroenterologists because it is actually rarer than the minimum 1% frequency. Second, gastroenterologists may miss the complication. Third, the patient may seek advice from another physician such as a neurologist.

— Read on onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2036.2009.04189.x

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The Empty Promise of Suicide Prevention – The New York Times

Last Sunday’s NYT had a thought provoking piece by Dr. Amy Barnhorst at UC Davis. She suggests that real suicide prevention would be bettering people’s social circumstances and decreasing access to lethal means. She also quotes statistics that 50% of suicides are impulsive actions and 25% of people who kill themselves contemplate their decision for less than five minutes.

According to a 2016 study, almost half of people who try to kill themselves do so impulsively. One 2001 study that interviewed survivors of near-lethal attempts (defined as any attempt that would have been fatal without emergent medical intervention, or any attempt involving a gun) found that roughly a quarter considered their actions for less than five minutes. This doesn’t give anyone much time to notice something is wrong and step in.

Nonetheless, mental health providers perpetuate the narrative that suicide is preventable, if patients and family members just follow the right steps. Suicide prevention campaigns encourage people to overcome stigma, tell someone or call a hotline. The implication is that the help is there, just waiting to be sought out.

But it is not that easy. Good outpatient psychiatric care is hard to find, hard to get into and hard to pay for. Inpatient care is reserved for the most extreme cases, and even for them, there are not enough beds. Initiatives like crisis hotlines and anti-stigma campaigns focus on opening more portals into mental health services, but this is like cutting doorways into an empty building.

And yet there are things we can do to prevent suicide. One of the few tried-and-true strategies is reducing people’s access to lethal tools, so that if they do sink into hopelessness, any attempt they make most likely won’t be fatal. If my first patient had had a gun in her house, she wouldn’t have made it to me. If my second patient had grabbed acetaminophen instead of ibuprofen, she might not have either. Averting death in that impulsive moment of despair is crucial to reducing suicide rates. Contrary to popular opinion, only a small fraction of people who survive one serious suicide attempt go on to die by another.

www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/opinion/sunday/suicide-prevention.html

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Am I Smarter than Geisinger and The Harvard Business Review?

I subscribe to HBR, even though many issues don’t apply a whole lot to what I do. But the March issue seemed irresistible: Transforming Health Care…

A big article about Geisinger looked especially promising:

But, their physician interim CEO is another one of those HUDDLE HIJACKERS who thinks that mucking up primary care providers’ fifteen minute visits with spotting care gaps is going to be the solution for improving health care. He, like many other pundits, must never have heard of computer reminders, Constant Contact and Mailchimp.

Another article looked interesting:

But it only depressed me. What kind of system is Employer Provided Health Care when it only provides for half the population? Seems like a no-brainer to me (a Swede who left that country’s version of Socialized Medicine, mind you) that this system has got to go away.

I think we need to really reinvent health insurance in this country. My recent experience with Martins Point and other managed Medicare plans is echoing in my mind (and now the CMO of Martins Point wants to talk to me….I wonder what that is all about).

The American health insurance system is perverse, that’s all there is to it. If you are insured by your employer, your plan offers a free physical (deemed a worthless thing to do by most clinical experts) and free random bloodwork ordered as part of that physical, but if you feel a lump in your breast or testicle, copays and deductibles apply. If you have Managed Medicare, you get free gym memberships and other flashy extras but God help you if you need a CT or MRI to look for cancer.

Today’s Doctors: Colleagues or Free Agents?

Published May 2, 2019 Progress Notes 8 Comments

My first job after residency was in a small mill town in central Maine. I joined two fifty something family doctors, one of whom was the son of the former town doctor. I felt like I was Dr. Kiley on “Marcus Welby, MD.” I didn’t have a motorcycle, but I did have a snazzy SAAB 900.

Will was a John Deere man, wore a flannel shirt and listened to A Prairie Home Companion. He was kind and methodical. Joe didn’t seem quite as rural, moved quicker and wore more formal clothes. I never could read his handwriting.

They each had their own patients, but covered seamlessly for each other. They were like a pair of spouses in the sense that they answered to each other as much as to their patients. They had to make everything work for the benefit of their shared practice, their shared livelihood. Their mutual loyalty was essential and obvious, although allowing for their differences in temperament and personalities.

Invited to stay on and enter into a partnership, I hesitated. How did I fit in? Could I follow in their footsteps and become an equal partner, covering for them and doing things similarly enough to fit in for the long haul?

In the end I declined and became an employed physician in the clinic I have been the Medical Director of, with some side forays, for decades.

Here, we are all employees, strangers brought here by chance, held together more loosely. We are all choosing to get along, but there isn’t the marriage-like commitment that Will and Joe had. We don’t arbitrate our differences in the same way; we, as a larger group, have the option of “doing our own thing” to a greater degree.

We do feel a strong loyalty to our growing but still small organization. Incoming providers paint a picture of what it is like to work for practices owned by much larger organizations, and in those it seems less obvious that doctors feel a deep commitment to their corporate mission.

Answering to the administration as much as, or more than, our colleagues makes it possible for us not to be team players. It also sets the stage for possible professional isolation. We must consciously cultivate clinical interchange and a collegial atmosphere.

In spite of all the talk about team based care, medical providers today are terribly isolated. There is no doctors lounge anywhere anymore. We are all collaborating with other staff categories, but not so much with each other.

There are virtual options for camaraderie and professional sharing, but with long clinic days and “pajama time” work from home, do we feel we have the time and energy for that?

I think we need to find ways to interact with each other at work. I seriously believe that this would be an investment with potentially huge return. Instead of working and eating at our desks or holing up to stare at our smartphones, and instead of giving up our lunches for structured meetings, we could eat lunch together and talk about tough cases, new things we’d like to try and challenges we face as modern medical providers.

If we talk more with each other, we can also develop a more shared vision of what we want out of our jobs for ourselves and our patients.

I’m talking about bringing back the Doctors Lounge…

The ABCs of Beginning a Clinical Encounter

Published April 29, 2019 Progress Notes 23 Comments

You’re running late and many things didn’t go right today. You knock on the door and enter the exam room with an apology. If you’re like me, you have a few papers and an iPad or a laptop in your hand. You sit down and open the patient’s chart in your device or perhaps on the big desktop, eyes not exactly locked on the patient.

Only after getting to where you need to be in the computer do you really look the patient in the eyes. Your body language has been one of hurry and distraction. Now you try to repair the damage of that, so you try to show you’re settling down now, at least for a few moments. You might sigh, move your arms in a gesture of relaxation and say something to get the history taking underway.

So far, you’re failing. I do that often, too.

Here’s what we all know we need to do, but often don’t; we should follow these ABCs:

A – Attention:

Clear your mind. It doesn’t matter what happened in the other room with the other patient, or on the phone with the insurance company or the smug specialist or ER doc who pointed out the diagnosis you missed. Open the door (I always knock first) and immediately look at the patient. Make eye contact and observe them. Pay attention to how they look, what they are signaling. The computer can wait; a few moments of focused attention will usually save you time in the end. After all, red or teary eyes, a leg cast, a big bruise or change in grooming can make the visit go in a direction you wouldn’t have expected from he listed chief complaint. How many times have we heard a patient comment about another doctor: He didn’t pay attention to me. Do we always do that ourselves if we’re rushed or preoccupied?

B – Behavior:

Behave like a doctor. I keep saying that. But the clinical encounter is like a dance, where either one of us can lead, and we lead a little too often. Behave in a way that signals respect, interest and both confidence and humility. Behave like someone who serves, guides and helps the patient heal. Behave in a way that behooves a doctor. You have paid attention to the patient. What did you see? What does he or she need, or need you to be like, in this moment?

C – Connection:

The goal of contemplating how a good clinical encounter should begin is to establish connection. Learning about someone, counseling someone, treating someone, comforting someone all require having a connection with that person. They tell you that strangers you meet like you better if you invite them to talk about themselves. Making connections with patients requires showing genuine interest, inviting disclosure and reciprocating just enough to show that you are a real person, but not so much that you seem too fallible or self absorbed. It is better to talk about your interests than about yourself. Sharing about pets, children and hobbies that don’t portray you as uppety is safest.

In the fast paced, high pressure day to day work we do, I sometimes catch myself not engaging quite enough with my patients. Even after forty years of doing this, I need to remind myself to start every patient encounter off in a way that sets the stage for making clinical and interpersonal progress. My demeanor builds relationship equity over time so that if I sometimes don’t live up to my ambition and miss one of my ABCs, my patients are a little more likely to overlook it.

A Country Doctor Reads: April 27, 2019

Published April 27, 2019 A Country Doctor Reads Leave a Comment

Hypertension Hot Potato — Anatomy of the Angiotensin-Receptor Blocker Recalls | NEJM

I had not seen any numbers on the magnitude of the cancer risk in the angiotensin receptor blocker recall avalanche. A couple of days ago the New England Journal of Medicine published the number – one new case of cancer per 8000 users of maximum doses for four years:

Although not all products containing valsartan, irbesartan, or losartan that are marketed in the United States have been recalled, the scope of the exposure, the scale of the 20 recalls, and their impact on patient care are substantial (see timeline). FDA officials believe that U.S. patients have been ingesting ARBs containing carcinogenic impurities for approximately 4 years; they estimate that for every 8000 patients taking the highest dose of an affected product for the full 4 years, one new cancer above the background incidence would be expected.
— Read on http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1901657

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What we need to talk about when we talk about health – The Lancet

What is it then that we need to talk about when we talk about health? We need to talk about health as a public good, and recognise that health, like all public goods, is inseparable from politics. The reason we have libraries, public parks, a system of public education, and other such goods is because we elected leaders who made political choices to create and maintain these institutions. Public goods were once the centre of political gravity in the USA. Programmes like the New Deal and the Great Society were attempts to leverage a spirit of collective investment into a network of polices and institutions that promote wellbeing at every level of American life. In recent decades, however, the legacy of these programmes have come under attack by a political philosophy that prizes unfettered individualism above all else, even health. This philosophy, which notably informed the Reagan and Thatcher era and has now been eagerly embraced by US President Donald Trump, sees government as a largely harmful influence, and led to a campaign of roll-back and privatisation that has been good for corporations and unfriendly to the policies and institutions that promote health. In the USA, for example, the current administration has, in the name of freeing up the markets, pursued an aggressive dismantling of environmental standards, placing profits over health. It has undermined collective investment in areas like public housing, which it has sought to keep from people in need, and education, which it has worked to privatise. At nearly every turn, it has embraced an ethos of “you’re on your own”, rather than “we’re all in this together”. While the latter may sound idealistic, even utopian, it is nothing of the kind. In fact, it is the only way we can organise ourselves, as a society, if we wish to be healthy. This is especially true at a time of nationalist retrenchment, Brexit, and building walls. When we reject collective effort in favour of ever-deeper divides, we open the door to sickness and shut it to health. More…

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Pills or public health? – The BMJ

Once again, the Brits seem to show a more balanced view on how to treat lifestyle related chronic disease:

How best to tackle the rising tide of non-communicable disease linked to lifestyle, or, more accurately, linked to the environments in which people live? With pills or with traditional public health interventions: healthier food and cleaner air?

The push for pills is strong. As reported by the Science Media Centre, the expert response to NICE’s draft guideline on hypertension has been glowing (http://bit.ly/2IjMEgD). NICE wants to lower the threshold for starting treatment for mild hypertension. All six experts (of whom two declare industry ties and three give no statement of interests at all) welcome the draft guidance. One expert, also quoted in our own news report (doi:10.1136/bmj.l1105), suggests the guidance doesn’t go far enough.
— Read on www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1791

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Rate of Fentanyl Positivity Among Urine Drug Test Results Positive for Cocaine or Methamphetamine. | Substance Use and Addiction | JAMA Network Open |

It is well known that heroin is often spiked with fentanyl, sometimes of great potency, causing overdose deaths. But I have also seen fentanyl in urine drug screens done on patients who admit using cocaine and are very upfront about that. Spiking cocaine with fentanyl exposes opioid naive patients to serious risks. One patient, new to our Suboxone clinic was confronted with such a test result and said, indignantly, “I guess you can’t even trust your drug dealer anymore”.

An increasing number of UDT results positive for cocaine or methamphetamine were also positive for nonprescribed fentanyl. This provides additional insight into recently reported increases in cocaine- and methamphetamine-related overdoses. Stimulant users who may be opioid naive are at a heightened risk of overdose when exposed to fentanyl. Clinicians need to be aware that patients presenting for treatment of suspected drug overdose or substance use disorder may have been exposed, knowingly or unknowingly, to multiple substances, including the combination of stimulants and opioids.
— Read on jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2731684

Drug Rehab, Life Hab (ilitation)

Published April 22, 2019 Progress Notes Leave a Comment

We do two things when we treat young adults with opioid use disorder in our Suboxone clinic.

The obvious one is providing the chemical that attaches to certain opiate receptors and quiets cravings without feeding the reward cycle.

Because buprenorphine is also a Kappa antagonist, it has antidepressant and anxiolytics properties that traditional opioids don’t have.

By prescribing Suboxone, we help our patients’ brains return, partly or completely, to the way they functioned before they became habituated to opioids.

The other thing we try to do, although it isn’t just our job, but that of everyone who cares about a young adult in recovery, is habilitation.

Habilitation isn’t relearning what you used to know, but acquiring skills you never had in the first place.

We generally say that your emotional and character development stops when you become addicted. It can also arrest when you suffer trauma. The life lessons of cause and effect, immediate and delayed gratification, giving and taking, joy and sadness, self and community are all skipped over to some degree when you are on a chemical roller coaster or suppressed by the weight of emotional trauma.

In our group therapy, facilitators and participants challenge newcomers who feel the world owes them things they haven’t earned. We talk about sticking with a job you don’t like to build a resume for better jobs in the future. We talk about proving to the DHHS that you can be appropriate and responsible with your children. We talk about making new social contacts and friendships, developing new interests and about coping with stress, emptiness and disappointment.

We have also started a group for friends and families of people in recovery. This group, aided by veteran Suboxone patients, serves as a sounding board for our journey. Because it isn’t a paved highway – the prescription part is pretty straightforward, but the other part is different for every patient, every group and every community. It must be local, a grassroots effort.

A lot of interest and a lot of money is flowing into opiate dependence treatment right now, mostly the chemical part.

But once that happens we must face the next big challenge, which isn’t talked about much yet, of helping a large cohort of young adults catch up from a decade or two of skipping classes in the school of life.

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