SAN FRANCISCO — Skepticism and clinical reasoning can be powerful teaching tools for the next generation of primary care physicians, according to a speaker here. Robert M. Centor, MD, MACP, chair emeritus of the ACP Board of Regents and professor emeritus at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, offered a presentation on clinical reasoning at the annual ACP Internal Medicine meeting. Healio spoke with Centor to learn more about the presentation, tips to help teach clinical reasoning, the value of skepticism and more. Healio: Why did you decide to present on this topic? Why is it important for
CHICAGO — Improving the gap between biological and chronological ages was associated with a decreased risk for stroke and improved brain health, according to a poster presented at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting. “It’s exciting to think that working to modify our biological age could be a pathway to preserving brain health,” Cyprien Rivier, MD, MSc, instructor, department of neurology, Yale School of Medicine, said in a press release. “Lifestyle habits that support cardiovascular and metabolic health, like a healthy diet, regular exercise, adequate sleep and good blood pressure
Anti-inflammatory treatment with prednisolone on top of standard care in young patients with Kawasaki disease did not reduce risk for coronary lesions, researchers reported. Current guideline recommendations to initiate anti-inflammatory therapy to reduce coronary aneurysm risk may not apply to high-risk Chinese patients with Kawasaki disease, according to data published in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Kawasaki disease is an acute vasculitis of unclear cause that mainly affects children younger than 5 years of age. Although reported worldwide, it is most prevalent in Asia, particularly
The number of U.S. individuals aged under 18 years breathing unhealthy, polluted air where they lived between 2022 and 2024 totaled 33.5 million, or 46% of this population, according to a press release from the American Lung Association. Considering all ages, the number of Americans breathing unhealthy, polluted air where they lived totaled 152 million (44%). In last year’s State of the Air report, this total was slightly higher at 156 million. “We have more work to do to clean up the air that everyone breathes, but right now the EPA is making significant rollbacks to critical and lifesaving
NEW ORLEANS — Automated physician alerts improved the rate of referral for prompt intervention when valvular heart disease was detected on echocardiography, a speaker reported. Automated alerts via a natural language processing model (Tempus Next, Tempus AI) could improve care of aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation and reduce disparities in referral rates for repair or replacement, according to the results of the multicenter, cluster-randomized, superiority ALERT clinical trial presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session and simultaneously published in the Journal
CHICAGO — Elevated ozone levels during the 2023 Canadian wildfires were significantly linked to higher stroke incidence, according to data presented at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting. “We found that, on days with heavier wildfire smoke and worse air quality, more people had strokes, and those strokes were often more serious,” Elizabeth Cerceo, MD, DCM, FACP, FHM, FEFIM, executive director of climate health and director of medical humanities at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, told Healio regarding her presentation. “The findings suggest that wildfire smoke is a real
Physicians have more than four times greater odds of experiencing moral distress than the general U.S. working population. An AMA survey of more than 9,000 individuals showed nearly 40% of physicians report high levels of moral distress, yet most U.S. adults experience none at their occupation. Physicians who reported high levels of moral distress had a significantly higher likelihood of burnout symptoms and intent to leave the profession. “Physicians want to do what they believe is right for patients. That’s what we want all health care professionals to do, prioritize patient care,” Michael A.
SAN DIEGO — Developments in nutrition methodologies have led to contention about certain dietary approaches, according to the keynote speaker at the Obesity Medicine Association’s annual conference. “In some ways, we are living in the best of times, as we have witnessed unprecedented break-throughs in obesity medicine” via developments in GLP-1 receptor agonists and disease prediction tools, Frank Hu, MD, PhD, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said. But “in other ways, we are in the worst of times as we are facing global
Elevated lipoprotein(a) was associated with increased risk for dangerous blood clotting among premenopausal women and postmenopausal women taking menopausal hormone therapy, according to a UK Biobank study. Circulating estrogen levels may contribute to the prothrombotic effects of Lp(a), increasing risk for venous thromboembolism among women with already elevated Lp(a), according to data presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session and simultaneously published in the European Heart Journal. “The hematology community hasn’t widely adopted Lp(a) as a clotting risk factor
Use of sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors was linked to significantly reduced risk for adverse kidney, cardiovascular and hepatic outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes and cirrhosis, according to a study conducted in Taiwan. “These protective associations were consistent across the full spectrum of cirrhosis causes, including viral hepatitis, alcoholic liver disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and remained robust after multivariate adjustment,” Mu-Chi Chung, MD, of Taichung Veterans General Hospital, and colleagues wrote. “These findings extend the established cardiorenal
SAN FRANCISCO — Incretin-based obesity medications may result in higher muscle-related loss vs. other weight loss strategies, according to data published in Annals of Internal Medicine. The findings “suggest that while weight loss led to known losses of muscle-based parameters, the proportion of muscle lost relative to total weight lost was higher in those taking incretins, and even higher in studies using semaglutide and tirzepatide,” John A. Batsis, MD, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Healio. “In addition, our analysis did not find any studies
SAN FRANCISCO — Human-generated notes were deemed higher-quality and preferable to AI scribes in a new study that debuted today at the annual American College of Physicians meeting. Ashok Reddy, MD, MS, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a health services researcher at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Puget Sound, presented the findings in ACP’s plenary session. “We all know the problem. Every one of us has probably stayed late at the clinic — or, more likely, headed home to finish our notes at night. Ambient AI scribes promise to help,”
NEW ORLEANS — Two studies presented at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Session offered insights into how to diagnose and treat patients with heart disease but not blocked arteries. In the HARP trial, researchers found that using optical coherence tomography (OCT) plus cardiac MRI led to a causal diagnosis in 79% patients with MI with nonobstructive coronary arteries (MINOCA). In the DISCOVER-INOCA trial, standardized invasive coronary function testing determined that 94% of patients with ischemia with nonobstructive coronary arteries (INOCA) had a coronary vasomotor disorder and
SAN DIEGO — GLP-1 receptor agonists are a gamechanger in obesity care, but researchers are still working to better understand their effects, according to Vyvyane Loh, MD. At Obesity Medicine Association’s annual meeting, Loh — founder of Wellth-e, an educational platform focused on human performance medicine — offered attendees a deeper look at these medications. A key focus of her presentation was chronic suppression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) with GLP-1 receptor agonists, which Loh said could have health implications beyond weight loss, such as muscle growth and brain development. Healio spoke
President Donald J. Trump announced Thursday that he is nominating Erica Schwartz, MD, JD, MPH, to lead the CDC. Schwartz was Deputy Surgeon General during Trump’s first presidential term. She served as a physician in the U.S. Coast Guard for 24 years and as chief medical officer and director of health, safety and work life from 2015 to 2019, according to personal details published online by the Butterfly Network, a health care company where she served on the board of directors. “She is a STAR!” Trump wrote in his announcement on Truth Social. For much of Trump’s second term, non-experts have
Endovascular therapy after deep vein thrombosis for patients with post-thrombotic syndrome and iliac vein obstruction improved symptoms and patient-reported quality of life vs. standard care, researchers reported. Elevated bleeding events after endovascular therapy (EVT) represented a trade-off between stent placement and standard care in patients with post-thrombotic syndrome and iliac vein obstruction, although bleeding severity for the most part was low, according to the results of the phase 3, multicenter, open-label, assessor-masked, randomized controlled C-TRACT trial published in The
A once-daily oral GLP-1 was noninferior to insulin glargine for reducing cardiovascular risk among adults with type 2 diabetes and overweight or obesity at high risk for CV events, according to topline results from the ACHIEVE-4 trial. As Healio previously reported, orforglipron (Foundayo, Eli Lilly) was approved by the FDA on April 1 for the treatment of overweight or obesity. In ACHIEVE-4, researchers compared orforglipron to insulin glargine among 2,749 adults with type 2 diabetes plus overweight or obesity who had increased risk for CV events. All adults took between one and three oral
Nearly half of physicians who graduated with MDs in 2025 carry debt that surpasses the $200,000 cap on medical student loans proposed by the U.S. Department of Education, according to an analysis co-authored by a former CDC director. The proposed cap is part of the negotiated rulemaking process to implement the student loan provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) Act of 2025 signed by President Donald Trump. In an editorial published on April 7 in Annals of Internal Medicine, Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, who served as director of the CDC from 2021 to 2023, and Nicole C. McCann, BA,
People reporting a high level of loneliness, but not those with social isolation, had elevated risk for developing valvular heart disease, according to the results of a prospective cohort study. “Degenerative valvular heart disease is becoming more common as populations age,” Zhaowei Zhu, MD, PhD, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University in Changsha, China, said in a press release. “Our findings suggest that loneliness may be an independent and potentially modifiable risk factor for degenerative valvular heart disease. Identifying
NEW ORLEANS — Monthly olezarsen reduced triglycerides and apolipoprotein B in patients with hypertriglyceridemia but may have no impact on coronary plaque progression at 1 year, a speaker reported. Olezarsen (Tryngolza, Ionis Pharmaceuticals), an antisense oligonucleotide designed to target apolipoprotein C-III messenger RNA, may also have no impact on low-attenuation, calcified or total plaque volume in patients with moderate hypertriglyceridemia at CV risk or those with severe hypertriglyceridemia, according to results of the Essence-TIMI 73b Imaging Study presented at the American
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