Many ICU patients suffer from anemia. Some are chronically anemic, and others develop anemia due to their acute illness (such as bleeding, for example). Multiple specialty societies have developed guidelines over when to transfuse red blood cells, a…
In my conversation with Dr. Elaine Chen of Rush University Medical Center, who is both an Intensive Care and Palliative Care physician, I asked her how being a Palliative Care specialist has helped her as a Critical Care physician. The thing that st…
I recently sat down with Dr. Sergio Zanotti, Chief Medical Officer for Sound Critical Care and had a wonderful conversation (link at the end of the post) about the pandemic, healthcare, and medicine in general. One of many insights he gave me that t…
As I do my appeal letter work, I frequently come across a justification for the denial that says something like this: “A payer may use its own criteria to establish a diagnosis.” And the cite an AHA Coding Clinics article from Q4 2016, p…
It is a very common theme in art (movies, books, etc) to feature a doctor who thinks he is God. We doctors, especially those of us who practice in the Intensive Care Unit, make life and death decisions in a matter of seconds. Many times, the d…
I have lost count of the number of times I have had patients with advanced cancer who get critically ill with any number of illnesses: infections, blood clots, collapse of lungs, among others. And more often than not, it falls to me, as the critical…
In August 2024, an article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “Cognitive Motor Dissociation in Disorders of Consciousness.” It showed that 25% of patients who were deemed “unresponsive” actuall…
I had a patient who presented to my emergency department after suffering a seizure. The workup showed that his sodium level was dangerously low, and that was the most likely cause. How did this happen? He rode his motorcycle, helmet on,…
Hemothorax is a collection of blood in the thoracic cavity. Many times, this occurs in the setting of chest trauma, either penetrating (i.e., gun shot wounds) or blunt (i.e., a car accident). When a significant collection of blood occurs in the …
Critical illness is the scariest moment in someone’s life. All of the sudden, frequently without warning, a person can go from normal to fighting for their very survival. Combating this type of illness is the honor of a lifetime for me, and it…