JAMA Clinical Reviews

Very few people who think they are allergic to penicillin actually are. Yet, even if someone reports a remote and vague history of penicillin allergy, these very useful medications will not be given. This forces many patients to use antibiotics that may be too broad spectrum, not very effective, or expensive. Three major societies have come together to agree on an approach for assessing if penicil...

When flying and they call "Is there a licensed medical professional on board," should physicians respond? If so, what should they do? Are they liable if things go wrong? We interview Christian Martin-Gill, MD, MPH, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, who is an expert on in-flight emergencies and authored a JAMA review on the topic.

The statistical concept of Bayes comes up in clinical medicine all the time. It simply means that what you know about something factors into how you analyze it. This contrasts with the commonly used statistical approach called frequentist analysis of hypothesis testing, in which it is assumed that every situation is unique and not influenced by the past. Bayesian analysis accounts for how prior in...

Within the last 2 years, major guidelines have been issued from US-based and European organizations that differ in their recommendations for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. Experts from both sides of the Atlantic--Paul Whelton, MD, from the United States and Bryan Williams, MD, from Europe--discuss the similarities and differences in these guidelines and the basis for the differences....

What is it like to go through alcohol withdrawal at home? What is it like for a mother to sit by her son's side while he goes through withdrawal and supporting him? Why does someone who doesn't have any particular reason to drink misuse alcohol? The answers to these questions can be found by listening to a narrative from one patient and his mother about his descent into alcohol misuse, his experie...

What if the patient you are managing in the ICU is not asleep when you thought they were? Patients relate their very disturbing stories about what they experienced while in an ICU and their treating clinicians thought they were asleep.

Venous thromboembolic disease is common. There are many steps necessary to establish a diagnosis or treat this disease. These are summarized in this JAMA Clinical Reviews podcast and interview with Philip S. Wells, MD, from the Department of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and author of a recent JAMA review on the topic.

Alcohol withdrawal is a serious problem that can lead to mortality. How to predict if it will occur when a patient who is misusing alcohol is admitted to the hospital is challenging. This Rational Clinical Examination article reports results of a systematic review of the literature to determine the best way to predict the occurrence of alcohol withdrawal. Read the article: Will This Hospitalized P...

In 2015, JAMA published results of a randomized clinical trial showing that antibiotic treatment for acute appendicitis was feasible. Doubters of the efficacy of antibiotics for treating appendicitis were concerned about what the long-term recurrence rate would be for those patients treated without surgery. The 5-year results of the study are now presented, showing that only about 40% of patients...

There are new findings about another form of Borrelia: Borrelia miyamotoi. This form of Borrelia causes a relapsing fever but is spread in the same way that Lyme disease is. To help understand these new findings we spoke with Eugene Shapiro, MD, from the Department of Pediatrics and Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at Yale.

In this JAMA Clinical Reviews podcast, we talk to Eugene D. Shapiro, MD, from Yale University School of Medicine for an update on Lyme disease, including new ideas about its diagnosis and treatment.

Syphilis is on the rise despite prior successful efforts to control it. Why is it coming back and what needs to be done about it? Dr Charles Hicks from UC San Diego explains. This podcast coincides with updated syphilis screening recommendations from the USPSTF that were published in the September 4, 2018 issue of JAMA.

Up to 7% of the entire US population has alcohol use disorder. It's important for every clinician to understand how to approach patients to question them about their use of alcohol and to establish a diagnosis when alcohol use disorder is present. Dr Henry Kranzler, from the University of Pennsylvania, is an authority on managing alcohol use disorder and discusses its diagnosis and treatment in th...

Bleeding is one of the most common preventable causes of death. It is common, yet most people don't know what to do about it when they see it. The Stop the Bleed campaign is an effort to educate the public should they encounter people who are bleeding. Simple maneuvers can have a great beneficial effect. In this JAMA Clinical Reviews podcast, we hear from people with substantial experience in mana...

As the AIDS crisis unfolded, each discovery seemed to lead to a new mystery. Who was at risk? Why was this disease of immune activation so hard for the body to fight? Most important, what could be done to stop it? In the conclusion of this JAMA Clinical Reviews series, we'll continue the story of the small team of CDC clinicians on the frontlines of the AIDS epidemic as they worked to stem the flo...

When AIDS first appeared in the gay community in 1981, it was terrifying for patients and clinicians alike. Nobody knew exactly what was going on. But using basic epidemiologic methods, a small team of public servants at the CDC raced against the clock to unravel the mystery, doing their best to minimize the damage of this rapidly spreading disease.

Misplaced fears about IUDs have caused them to be avoided by many women, despite the fact that they are very safe and among the most effective means for contraception. In this JAMA Clinical Reviews podcast, we review long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) and how contraceptive practices were affected by the Dalkon Shield tragedy.

Health care spending in the United States is out of control. The most significant aspect of medical care driving this spending is pharmaceuticals; within pharmaceuticals the greatest increases have been in spending for diabetes medications. The cost of insulin analogs has increased 5- to 6-fold in the last 10 years for no particular reason. More than 90% of US patients who use insulin use these an...

The American College of Physicians just changed its guidance for how aggressively to treat type 2 diabetes, relaxing the HbA1c goal to something below 8 rather than 6.5 or 7 as other organizations recommend. This has stirred up substantial controversy. The rationale behind this decision is presented in this podcast. Related article

For many years guidelines have recommended against obtaining ECGs for low-risk patients undergoing routine health examinations. Yet about a fifth of all patients having these exams get an ECG. Why? Are clinicians just stubborn or uninformed or are the guidelines missing something clinicians are concerned about? Read the article: The Screening ECG and Cardiac Risks  

Many attempts to replace the trachea have failed in the past. The most spectacular failure was fraudulent research done in Europe by a high-profile surgeon who was eventually charged with scientific misconduct. JAMA now reports a clinical series of successful tracheal transplants done in France. How do we know the procedures described in JAMA really worked? The answer is provided in this podcast.

The controversy continues about the efficacy of PSA screening for prostate cancer. New recommendations were just issued from the USPSTF about who should be screened for prostate cancer and when. But not everyone agrees with these recommendations. Ballentine Carter, MD, from the Department of Urology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, discusses the new recommendations and provides an expert u...

Peanut allergy is common. But it is more common in countries that delay the introduction of peanuts into the diets of infants. Guidelines in the United States previously recommended delayed introduction of peanuts for infants, which resulted in an increased prevalence of peanut allergy. New recommendations now recommend early introduction of peanuts into infants' diets to minimize the risk of deve...

Acute respiratory disease syndrome is characterized by respiratory failure that occurs after someone is acutely ill, usually from a disease that does not primarily involve the lungs. Its cause, diagnosis, and treatment are reviewed in this JAMA Clinical Reviews Podcast for the February 20, 2018 issue

Douglas H. Smith, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Neurosurgery and Center for Brain Injury and Repair, and Randel Swanson II, DO, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania's Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation department, summarize findings from a clinical evaluation of US government personnel reporting neurologic symptoms after exposure to directional auditory and sensory phen...