Internal Medicine Videos & books

2022-04-11 09:49:36 51) A 65-year-old man presents to your office for evaluation of abdominal pain. The patient states that he has epigastric pain that radiates to his back. The pain is worse with eating and improves with fasting. The pain has been present for 6 months and is… Open / Comment

2022-04-11 09:48:11 51) A 65-year-old man presents to your office for evaluation of abdominal pain. The patient states that he has epigastric pain that radiates to his back. The pain is worse with eating and improves with fasting. The pain has been present for 6 months and is gradually worsening. The patient has lost 15 lbs but feels his oral intake has been adequate. He complains of greasy stools and frequent thirst and urination. Examination reveals a thin male with temporal wasting and moderate abdominal pain with palpation. The patient consumes approximately 10–15 beers per day and smokes a pack of cigarettes per day for the past 20 years.
What would be the best initial test to do in this patient? Open / Comment

2022-04-07 12:09:01 The patient has a peptic stricture, seen in the setting of long-standing untreated gastroesophageal reflux with esophagitis. The history of progressive solid food dysphagia without weight loss is typical. Tobacco, alcohol, thiazide diuretics, and spicy foods do not predispose to benign esophageal strictures. The patient has developed a peptic stricture, a serious complication of GERD. The patient needs esophageal dilation (either with mechanical or pneumatic dilators) and maximal acid suppression. PPI therapy is superior to histamine receptor antagonist therapy in terms of healing erosive esophagitis. Patients with long-standing GERD are at increased risk of developing Barrett esophagus, a risk factor for esophageal adenocarcinoma. GERD is not a risk factor for esophageal squamous cell cancer, gastric cancer, or duodenal cancer. Patients with chronic H. pylori infection (which this patient did not have) are at increased risk for a form of gastric lymphoma known as a MALT-oma. Open / Comment

2022-04-06 12:08:48 50) A 50-year-old female presents to your office for evaluation of solid food dysphagia without weight loss. Symptoms have been present for 6 months and are progressive. The patient has had two episodes of near impaction, but copious water ingestion and repeated… Open / Comment

2022-04-06 12:07:26 50) A 50-year-old female presents to your office for evaluation of solid food dysphagia without weight loss. Symptoms have been present for 6 months and are progressive. The patient has had two episodes of near impaction, but copious water ingestion and repeated swallows allowed the food bolus to pass. She has never had to present to the ER for disimpaction. She drinks five to six beers per day, loves spicy foods, and smokes a pack of cigarettes daily with a total lifetime history of 30 pack-years. She has had intermittent heartburn symptoms for years and has not sought treatment. She takes hydrochlorothiazide for hypertension. Review of symptoms reveals chronic cough. Physical examination is unremarkable. Upper endoscopy reveals a distal esophageal stricture with inflammatory changes. Esophageal biopsies reveal benign mucosa with chronic inflammation. Gastric biopsies are unremarkable. Helicobacter pylori testing is negative.
What is the most likely etiology of the patient’s stricture? Open / Comment

2022-04-02 13:48:01 The patient should undergo screening colonoscopy, especially with his strongly positive family history of first-degree relatives developing colon cancer before age 50. Colonoscopy is the only test that can directly evaluate the entire colon and rectum. Most polyps can be removed completely at colonoscopy, and large lesions or masses can be directly biopsied. Virtual colonoscopy and barium enema combined with flexible sigmoidoscopy are good tests, but any positive findings on either of these tests would warrant further examination with colonoscopy. Barium enema alone is insufficient for screening. Fecal occult blood testing is helpful as a screening tool, but would be inadequate alone in this patient given his family history. The patient satisfies criteria for HNPCC, a syndrome seen in patients with germline mutations in DNA mismatch repair (MMR) genes. He has three first-degree relatives with cancer of the colorectum, endometrium, small bowel, ureter, or renal pelvis (all of whom are first-degree relatives of each other). The colorectal cancers involve at least two generations and at least one case was diagnosed before age 50. FAP involves a mutation of the APC gene and results in dense colonic polyposis, mandibular osteomas, and universal colon cancer at a young age unless colectomy is performed. PeutzJeghers syndrome results in hamartomatous polyps of the gut as well as mucocutaneous pigmentation changes. Cronkhite-Canada syndrome manifests as GI polyposis, alopecia, cutaneous hyperpigmentation, malnutrition, and dystrophic fingernails. Turcot syndrome is a variant of FAP in which patients can also develop medulloblastoma, glioblastoma multiforme, and hypertrophy of retinal pigmented epithelium. Open / Comment

2022-04-01 13:46:44 49) A61-year-old man comes to your office for a checkup. He currently feels well and has no focal complaints. He has a past medical history significant for wellcontrolled hypertension, and his gallbladder was removed 3 years ago in the setting of acute cholecystitis.… Open / Comment

2022-04-01 13:45:10 49) A61-year-old man comes to your office for a checkup. He currently feels well and has no focal complaints. He has a past medical history significant for wellcontrolled hypertension, and his gallbladder was removed 3 years ago in the setting of acute cholecystitis. He does not smoke and drinks one to two alcoholic beverages per day. Family history is remarkable for colon cancer in his mother at age 45 and a brother at age 49. He has a sister who developed endometrial cancer at age 53 .He has never undergone colon cancer screening and is interested in pursuing this.
Which colorectal cancer screening test would be best for this patient? Open / Comment

2022-03-27 18:51:01 Oral corticosteroids are a mainstay of firstline treatment for moderate-to-severe ulcerative colitis. Starting doses of 40 mg PO daily of prednisone, with a slow taper, are often effective in reducing colonic inflammation, although some patients are unable to wean steroids or maintain remission once achieved. The patient does not have dysplasia in any biopsy specimens, nor does he have signs of systemic toxicity, so a colectomy would be premature. Oral metronidazole is ineffective in ulcerative colitis. Cortisone enemas would be helpful if the patient had isolated left-sided disease, but it is doubtful that enema therapy would reach his hepatic flexure. Intravenous cyclosporine would be used in severe colitis as a last measure before colectomy but this patient is not yet sick enough to warrant such therapy. PSC occurs in approximately 3% of patients with ulcerative colitis and is its major liver complication. It is a chronic inflammatory condition of the biliary tree. It can typically manifest with elevated alkaline phosphatase and bilirubin levels, and results in diffuse stricturing and pruning of the biliary tree. Wilson disease, hereditary hemochromatosis and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency are not associated with ulcerative colitis and are not cholestatic liver diseases. Primary biliary cirrhosis could account for these laboratory findings, but is rare in both males and patients with ulcerative colitis. Patients with PSC are at increased risk of developing cholangiocarcinoma but not the other liver tumors mentioned. Patients with celiac sprue are at increased risk for small bowel cancers (adenocarcinoma, lymphoma). Patients with FAP are at increased risk to develop desmoid tumors. Open / Comment

2022-03-26 18:50:53 48) A 24-year-old male medical student is admitted to the hospital for the evaluation of a 3-month history of bloody stools. The patient has approximately six blood stained or blood streaked stools per day, associated with relatively little, if any, pain.… Open / Comment