May 1, 1998

Premature infants require special care in the physician's office after hospital discharge. Care of these infants should be planned to promote normal growth and minimize morbidity and mortality.

The BATHE technique is a psychotherapy model that allows the physician to assess the background situation, the patient's affect, the most troubling problem and the patient's manner of handling the problem. It concludes with a physician response that conveys empathy.

Slipped capital femoral epiphysis has a good prognosis if stable and diagnosed early. When the condition is unstable, the prognosis is poor because of the high risk of avascular necrosis. Early radiographic clues are the metaphyseal blanch sign and Klein's line.

Symptoms alone often do not distinguish cystitis and upper urinary tract infections. An altered vaginal flora is associated with most forms of vaginitis and recurrent cystitis.

Stuttering in children may be a self-limited disorder, or it may require treatment, including speech therapy and psychologic counseling.

The Guidelines for Adolescent Preventive Services (GAPS) may increase awareness of high-risk health behaviors in young adults, enabling physicians to provide appropriate intervention that may prevent premature morbidity and mortality.

Assessment of the patient's risk for coronary heart disease helps the physician determine which treatment should be initiated, what the target low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level should be and how often to perform lipid analysis.

Many medications that are now available without a prescription were previously classified as prescription products. Reclassified products have had clinical and economic effects on health care in the United States.

(Great Britain—The Practitioner, January 1998, p. 16.) Excessive use of alcohol may be undiagnosed or may present as a range of physical conditions (irritability, insomnia, diarrhea, nausea) or social consequences (broken relationships, “accidents,” lawbreaking). The assessment…

An ever-increasing demand for high-quality patient education materials led AFP to venture into publishing patient information handouts a few years ago. What we soon discovered was that developing educational materials for patients is a lot different from editing and writing…

Selected policy and health issues news briefs from AAFP News Now.

The crying we do at movies is not the same as the crying we do when recalling personal emotionally-charged events, according to a study reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers identified certain brain regions that are activated depending on whether an…

After reading the article by Montalto on implementing the Guidelines for Adolescent Preventive Services (GAPS) in this issue of American Family Physician,1 the family physician is likely to ask: Should we begin implementing these guidelines in our practice? The answer: Not yet…

“Has Dr. Hartman been putting Clomid in the coffee maker again?” inquired a curious patient after hearing the news that SEF was expecting twins. One could certainly wonder what the chances are of two female physicians in a small practice each having twins. Recent data have…

For several months, a 17-year-old male athlete noticed that his feet had an itchy, burning sensation at the heels and toes. His foot odor had become so malodorous (somewhat akin to rotting fish) that he would not remove his shoes except immediately before washing his feet…

The American College of Physicians (ACP) has developed a guideline for the laboratory evaluation of Lyme disease. The two-part guideline is published in the December 1997 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. Part 1 is a position paper that summarizes the ACP recommendations…

The Committee on Nutrition of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has developed a statement on cholesterol levels in children, which is published in the January 1998 issue of Pediatrics. The report reviews the scientific evidence for recommendations of dietary changes in…

Routine supplementation of vitamin A during pregnancy is not recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), according to an ACOG committee opinion (number 196, January 1998). ACOG believes that the dietary intake of vitamin A in the United States…

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Slipped capital femoral epiphysis (or SCFE, for short) is a hip problem that starts if part of the growing end (the epiphysis) of the thigh bone (the femur) slips off from the top of the thigh bone. [ corrected] SCFE may occur in one or both legs. SCFE may develop in one leg…

If you have a vaginal infection or inflammation, you may feel pain when urine passes over the inflamed tissue. And if the urethra is inflamed, you could feel pain as the urine passes through it. (The urethra is the tube that carries urine from your bladder.) You might be…

Many fatal diseases in adults got started with poor health habits at a young age. For example, if you use tobacco as a teenager, you're more likely to get heart disease, cancer or stroke when you're an adult. Tobacco can also give you bad breath, wrinkles and stained teeth…

Fats in the blood are called lipids. Lipids join with protein in your blood to form lipoproteins. Lipoproteins make energy for your body, so they're important to the cells in your body.