Telemedicine and Acute Stroke Treatment

My community hospital is holding its quarterly physician staff meeting and one of the items on the agenda will be a bylaw change which will permit outside physicians, not credentialed or vetted by our hospital credentials committee, to perform video consults on patients within our hospital. Hospital administration is pushing this bylaw change, and since there has been a quiet coup which has transferred medical staff power from the community’s practicing physicians to the hospital employed and paid physicians, it is a foregone conclusion that it will easily pass.

The bylaw change is being requested because the hospital would like to continue to reap the benefits of being an ischemic stroke comprehensive treatment center and offering the health benefits to the community despite not being able to meet the criteria. If a patient presents to the emergency department within four hours of developing ischemic stroke symptoms they must be offered the administration of a “clot busting “drug Alteplase (t-pa). The patient must not have any bleeding tendencies and no evidence of active bleeding or a mass or tumor on head CT scan and must be examined by a neurologist within 45 minutes of arrival.

The problem is that most community based neurologists with outpatient office practices and hospital staff privileges cannot and will not drop everything they are doing and run to the emergency department to evaluate a new patient each time a stroke protocol patient arrives. When given an ultimatum by the hospital administration, that they must take call and be available within 45 minutes, our community neurologists en masse relinquished their hospital privileges.

The hospital countered by bringing in several research oriented academic neurologists and neurosurgeons to man the beautiful new Neuroscience Institute and provide coverage of the ED for the stroke protocol. Few if any of these physicians were able to develop and maintain a practice within the community and they have since left. The Emergency Department is staffed by employed board certified emergency physicians who are well qualified to diagnose an ischemic stroke and administer t-pa. They refuse to do so citing the liability of a poor outcome as the reason. Despite data indicating the benefits of t-pa administration in these situations, the 6 out of 100 chances of a bleed in the brain plus the 1 in 6 chance of death is enough to deter their participation.

You would think that since the hospital hires these physicians the logical choice would be to fire them and hire a group that will provide the state of the art care in a timely fashion. This has not occurred. You would think that the state legislature would grant the ED physicians sovereign immunity from medical malpractice suits if the patient meets the criteria for the ischemic stroke protocol and the patient is given appropriate informed consent for the procedure but this common sense legislation has not been developed or passed.

The hospital has chosen a different pathway. They are opting to hire neurologists from a university medical center who will provide video consults on ischemic stroke patients from an offsite location. Robots will actually examine the patient and televise the data back to the telemedicine center after an emergency department physician performs a brief initial evaluation. The neurologist off site will then provide the needed neurology consult to proceed with the injection of the clot buster.

I suspect the mechanism will work like this. A patient or family member will call EMS via 911 and be taken to the Emergency Department. A triage nurse will ask all the questions to qualify the patient for the t-pa protocol; a robot will examine the patient and transmit via TV the data to an offsite neurologist while an ER physician does an exam. A CT scan of the head and brain will be performed. If no bleed is discovered or tumor or mass that could bleed, t-pa will be administered by the pharmacy and nursing staff. Further intervention by an interventional radiologist and or neurosurgeon may then occur.

At no point in this protocol does it call for the patient’s primary care doctor or cardiologist or usual neurologist to be called. We will be called once the procedure is complete because neither the ER physician or the neurosurgeon or the interventional radiologist will want to admit the patient to neurology ICU. While our surgical ICU and Medical ICU/CCU are covered 24 hours per day by an outsourced hired intensivist group, the neuro ICU does not have that type of coverage.

I can hear it now, my phone ringing and upon picking it up I hear the voice of a clerk in the Emergency Department, “Hello Dr Reznick, Dr. Whateverhisorhername wishes to speak to you about patient Just Had A Stroke.” I get put on hold for five minutes and then in a flat nasal voice, “Hello Steve your patient came in earlier by EMS with symptoms of an acute ischemic stroke. They met the t-pa ischemic stroke criteria and were treated. Unfortunately, they had a major hemispheric bleed with mass effect and edema and are now unresponsive and intubated on a ventilator. We need you to come in and admit him and care for him.”

I will vote in protest against this bylaw. I will lobby for recruiting neurologists who are hospital based who will actually see the patient and care for them. I will lobby for a new state law to provide sovereign immunity for ED physicians treating ischemic strokes according to the internationally recognized protocol. I will lobby for our medical and surgical residents on site and in the hospital to be permitted to administer t-pa after meeting the appropriate criteria. I will not support out of the area physicians making the final call and leaving our local physicians to deal with their results.

My First Day on the Job …

There has been a great deal of discussion about doctors’ in training work hours and work load. In June of 1976 I reported to the Jackson Memorial Hospital complex three days in advance of my start date for orientation. I was given a tour of the facility, filled out countless forms and waivers, received my ID badge and was ultimately sent to the Department of Medicine to receive my assignment.

Sitting in the conference room and looking at the patient assignment and ward team assignment list I found myself at the bottom of the list. “Elective Rotation – Steven Reznick MD Neurology.” While all my colleagues in the internal medicine training program left to meet their new residents and meet and learn their patients I was sent to the neurology department in the next building to perform neurology consultations. When I got to the Neurology Office the Chief Resident laughed at me. “Reznick you are on elective. There is no night call. You start in three days. Go home and enjoy your last three days of freedom. Be here at this office at 9 a.m. and we will see what if any consults we have to do.”

Three days later at 7 a.m., filled with anxiety, I arrived at the neurology office which was locked and closed. At 8 a.m. a secretary arrived, showed me where to sit and I waited. At 8:50 a.m. no one had arrived yet on the medical staff and she received a phone call. “Dr. Reznick that call was from your chief resident in Internal Medicine. He needs to see you now in his office.” I asked directions on how to get there and off I went.

The Chief Resident had just completed his three years in internal medicine and was now entering an administrative and research year. He greeted me with, “Reznick I am not sure how you managed to be so unlucky but I have to reassign you from elective to Ward Team III on South Wing 8. You have eighteen patients on your service and you do not have the luxury of three days to learn them. By the way, here is the team pager and you are on call today and tonight.” “How did I get so lucky? “ I asked. “We originally had an anesthesia resident rotating through medicine but he decided after orientation that he did not want to be a doctor so he just left.”

The Chief gave me directions to SW-8, which was at least air conditioned, and off I trudged. Upon arrival I went to the nursing station, introduced myself to the charge nurse and asked if my ward team was around. “They are not back from morning report yet but we need you in 828. The priest arrived fifteen minutes ago and they are waiting for you to terminate life supports.”

My first patient was 28 years old with widespread metastatic terminal breast cancer. After multiple seizures from brain metastases and an unsuccessful CPR attempt she was “brain dead” on a ventilator. Her family had chosen to terminate life supports and my role was to walk in, disconnect the ventilator and pronounce her dead when she stopped breathing. I walked in, introduced myself, shook hands all around and listened to the family talk about my new patient. When it was time the nurse and priest walked to the ventilator and disconnected it with me holding my hands so I did not feel like I was doing this alone. The nurse adjusted the morphine drip and the patient peacefully and calmly ceased breathing. I listened for a heartbeat, felt no pulse, saw no respirations and spoke to each family member and the priest as my pager screeched, “Call 4125 MICU for a transfer.” I found a phone and called. AC, an intern said, “Hi Steve. We are transferring a 23 year old with rhabdomyolysis and acute tubular necrosis (kidney failure) just off peritoneal dialysis with calcium of 16 out to the floor because we need a bed for a younger more salvageable patient. Can you come get him please?”

The charge nurse on SW-8 gave me directions to the MICU and it took me five minutes to walk there. Out in the hallway was a large stretcher with an even larger gentleman on it with two IV lines running almost wide open and three volumes of charts each larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. There were no transporters or orderlies to move the patients at this large public hospital so I was left to push the bed along the course I had just walked to get back to SW-8. We walked through non air conditioned East Wing which was considerably more difficult pushing a stretcher than on the original trip.

On the way I introduced myself to Frank, my new patient and began to take a history. Poor Frank was a furniture mover who developed a fever and chills while moving a piano up some stairs and, when he got home and went to bed, had terrible muscle pain. He was too weak to get up so he called 911 and was brought to the hospital three months earlier. For some reason his muscles had decomposed due to the infection, heat and bad luck. The dissolving muscle enzymes were like molasses as they passed through the filtration of the kidneys clogging them up and sending him into acute and life threatening kidney failure. He had survived dialysis and infection and was now being bumped out of the unit for a “younger more salvageable patient.”

When I got back to SW-8 and placed him on his bed I sat down with his chart, overwhelmed and considered using the same option that the anesthesia resident had exercised. I was reading and crying when I felt a hand on my shoulder, looked up and my new resident introduced himself. “You have had a tough morning. Let’s go to the blackboard and talk about hypercalcemia and how to treat it. I bet you know far more than you think you do. I have you covered, don’t worry.”

We were almost through his chalk talk and were about to examine the patient when the beeper screeched again. “Please call 4225, the ER. We have a GI bleeder and he is your admission if he doesn’t arrest before you get here.” John, my resident, jumped up and screamed, “Follow me.” He was running full speed, down the stairs and towards the ER. It was a ½ mile run if not more. When we arrived, sweaty and panting for breath we noticed a jaundiced man surrounded by doctors and nurses with blood spurting upwards from his mouth like an oil well that had just been opened wide. John pushed them aside, felt for a pulse and said to me, “Start CPR.” I got up on the stretcher and started compressions with each compression producing a geyser of blood out of his mouth and on to my white coat and clothes. There were no goggles. There was no barrier protection. “Stop compressions, “he ordered. “There is no pulse or blood pressure, let’s call it.” “Time of death 9:55 a.m.” John directed me to the chart where I wrote a brief note, called the next of kin and informed them and then changed into clean scrubs. “We have about an hour or two now before another admission so let’s go back to the floor, finish up with your surviving patient and get to learn the others.”

At 7 p.m., having rounded with me on all my new patients, John asked me if I had eaten all day and did I live alone. I told him I had not eaten anything since coffee in the neurology office and I was married. He suggested I call home and tell my wife that I wasn’t coming home that night. “Let’s get you to the cafeteria, get you some nourishment and let me introduce you to the resident covering you and Dr Homer tonight.” Since I was not assigned to patient care at orientation, I had not been issued meal tickets. I had about five dollars in my wallet so John gave me some of his meal tickets for a meal. John was a saint. My covering resident was his equal. “Pat” called me a “thoroughbred stallion who needed to be brought along slowly.” She gave me her pager number and told me to call her if I got an admission or if I had a patient care issue. The two other interns on our team were excellent. They made me a summary of their patients and wandered home at about 8 p.m.

The time from 8 p.m. until 3 a.m. was a vast blur. There was an admission of an elderly gentleman with pneumonia. It required drawing all his bloods, labeling the tubes and carrying them to the lab. I had to wheel him to x-ray for a chest x-ray (there were no CT Scans yet), obtain a sputum specimen and gram stain it for Tuberculosis. There were the three blood cultures to draw, starting the IV line and antibiotics and of course writing the admission note and orders and dictating them. There were countless calls from nurses about infiltrated IV lines to be restarted, headaches, fevers requiring me to show up and draw blood cultures, family members calling to discuss their loved ones status.

At 2:30 a.m. I wandered into the ER because I was up for the next admission. “Pat” looked at me and said, “Go into the lounge, lie down and take a nap. Give me your pager. If anything comes up I will wake you. You need a nap.” That simple act of kindness and consideration and a 30 minute nap was like a shot of Café Cubano and adrenaline and, when 7 a.m. work rounds began with my ward team back on site with my resident John, I was relatively fresh to face a new day. I passed the pager to Phil, the other intern, as he asked me, “How did it go?” Somehow I mustered up a “No sweat especially with resident coverage from John and Pat.  John is covering you tonight so I expect you will be fine!”

We got very little sleep during my internship (PGY1) and residency training. We worked 100 plus hours weekly. The patients we saw were mostly severely ill and complex. We did all the lab work ourselves in the ER house staff lab. We started all the IV’s, drew all the bloods, and transported the patients ourselves. The work was physical, demanding, cerebral, emotional and exhausting. Every new patient was seen by an ER physician and attending, an intern, a medical student, a covering resident.

They were reassessed at 7 a.m. on work rounds with your resident and ward team plus often the chief resident. At 9 a.m. you presented the new admissions to a faculty member and the entire residency class at morning report. At 10 a.m. you presented the case to your team attending physician on attending physician rounds. This faculty member reviewed the case, examined the patients and wrote a note documenting agreement with the care plan. At noon your resident presented the case to the Chief of Staff at Chief of Staff Rounds. By 1:00 p.m. the problems and decision making had been reviewed and discussed by six or seven physicians. Sleep was not an issue in decision making because we had so many immediate layers of patient decision making reviews.

Our overworked supervising residents for the most part were caring and helped us out if we were exhausted or in over our heads. Our chief residents were available around the clock if we needed extra help.

I do not want today’s doctors to have to work as hard and perform the menial tasks that I was required to do for any reason let alone because I went through it and survived. I do not believe that the layers of supervision and questioning of your decisions allows for sleep deprived errors and mistakes if everyone is doing their job appropriately. I do feel fortunate that I learned to stain specimens and look at them under the microscope and run electrolytes on flame photometers and learn how to set up cultures of blood and urine on culture plates then read them. It taught me the time involved and the limitations of the test plus the margins for error.

I do believe the high volume of severely ill individuals I cared for broke me down and made me a dehumanized efficient machine. I was fortunate that caring faculty built me up and reminded me why I went into this profession to begin with.

Last week a prospective new patient came by to meet me at my office and see if he wanted to join my practice. During the discussion he lifted his shirt and showed me some scars on his abdomen. “You don’t remember me? You gave me those scars inserting catheters to do peritoneal dialysis on me on SW-8 on your first month as a doctor. I remember how frightened you were that you would hurt me or kill me. I was suffering from kidney failure and high calcium after my muscles broke down from an infection. You treated me for six weeks after I left the ICU and transferred me to an acute rehabilitation hospital where I learned to walk again. I live in this area now and I found you on line and want to be your patient again.”

It’s incredible how life always seems to come around full circle!

The Artificial Sweetener Conundrum

Years ago I attended a Weight Watchers meeting in Brooklyn, NY with the lecturer being their public founder Jean Nidetch. She joked about her sugar free gum, sugar free soda and sugar free snacks contributing to “artificial diabetes.” She drew a big laugh but little did she know her comedy may have a ring of the truth to it.

Researchers have now published reputable data that drinking a diet soda daily greatly increases your chances of having a stroke or developing dementia. In an observational study, researchers using data from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort noticed that individuals who drank diet soda and used artificial sweeteners were at an increased risk of ischemic stroke and all cause dementia when compared to individuals of similar age and risk factor stratification that did not use artificial sweeteners. Their data was published in the neurology journal Stroke. This is an observational study which cannot show cause and effect but uses the analogy and theory “where you see smoke there is fire”.

In an unrelated study, researchers looking at how we metabolize sugars noted that consuming artificial sweeteners may lead to larger food and beverage intake and ultimate weight gain. The data was not much better when they looked at individuals who consumed real sugar in sugary drinks. They noted that sugary drinks accelerated the process of aging in cells. This was somewhat in conflict with the original study referenced in which consumption of sugary beverages did not appear to have an association with stroke or dementia.

Clearly the data is confusing as to what to do. Once again moderation with diets with controlled portion size, limited chemical and antibiotic exposure and; rich in vegetables as well as fruits and nuts with a high quality protein seems to be the direction to go. No matter who studies the Mediterranean type diet the results are favorable.

Once again I lobby for nutritional training in the elementary, middle and high schools with healthy cooking and preparation classes as a sound investment for a healthier population in the future. The classes should go as far as teaching students how to create their own gardens and grow some fruits and vegetables on their own for home consumption. We may not be able to impact the adult population in mass but at least let’s give the children a chance.

Ambulatory Blood Pressure Checkups versus Clinic Blood Pressures

General internists and family practitioners have very little equipment to use in diagnosing our patients other than a light, a reflex hammer, a stethoscope, an EKG machine, a spirometer (to test breathing) and a pulse oximeter. Some offices still have an x- ray suite today but that is less common in small independent practices.

The ambulatory blood pressure cuff is a device introduced as a way to test whether patients with office-based hypertension had an isolated anxiety elevation of their blood pressure because of the physician’s “white coat” or an ongoing problem that needed to be addressed. The monitor itself is a routine blood pressure cuff with a computer device and timed inflation and deflation mechanism. It was designed to take six blood pressure readings per hour while you were awake and four readings per hour during the night.

Patients are asked to bathe and groom themselves prior to arriving for an appointment and we then placed the cuff on their arm and activated the device. They returned it the next morning and we connected the recording chip to our computer. We received multiple readings per hour and the machine calculated average blood pressure readings, made graphs and answered the question of what type of blood pressure elevation we had seen in our office.

We have performed hundreds of these procedures on patients and it is extremely rare to see a report of a sustained or average elevation of the systolic or diastolic blood pressure in a range that requires the use of medication. We only use the ambulatory monitor on patients who took their blood pressures at home and said it was normal but always had a dramatic elevation while in the doctor’s office.

I was entirely surprised to read the article in Circulation which looked at employees of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Columbia who had ambulatory blood pressures compared with “clinic” blood pressures. 893 individuals wore the ambulatory monitor and were compared to 942 who had clinic blood pressures taken. These were all young healthy individuals with none taking blood pressure treatments.

They found that the ambulatory monitor readings were higher (average 123/77) compared to clinic readings which averaged 116/ 75. The average BP was 10 mm higher in young healthy adults with a normal body mass index. This elevated ambulatory blood pressure was found to be most pronounced in young healthy individuals with the difference being less apparent with increasing age.

While the result was surprising it still supports the use of the machine in our older population of individuals who come in with a story of elevated blood pressures in the doctor’s office but normal blood pressures at home. We will continue to use the machine for just that purpose.

International Panel Questions the Wisdom of Strict Sodium Guidelines

A technical paper published in the online version of the European Heart Journal suggested that individuals should strive to keep their sodium intake to less than 5 grams per day. This is in marked contrast to the recommendations of the American Heart Association of 1.5 grams per day and American College of Cardiology recommendations of 2.3 grams per day. The authors of the papers included some of the world’s experts on the topic of hypertension including Giuseppe Mancia, MD, Suzanne Oparil, MD and Paul Whelton, MD.  They agreed that consuming more than five grams per day was associated with an increased cardiovascular risk. They believe there is no firm evidence that lowering the sodium intake to below 2.3 or 1.5 grams per day reduces cardiovascular disease without putting you at risk of developing other health issues from having too little sodium.

The report triggered a firestorm of controversy in the hypertension and cardiovascular field with proponents on each side of the issue. Both sides agreed that we need more meticulous research to determine the best lower end of daily sodium intake because current information makes recommending one level or another a guess at best with little data to back you up. That leaves clinicians and patients scrambling for clarity and the media reporting this paper in a manner threatening to further erode the public’s confidence in the scientific method and physicians in general.

As a practicing physician I will continue to recommend a common sense approach to salt intake. Those patients who have a history of congestive heart failure or hypertension which is volume related will still be encouraged to read the sodium content of the foods they are purchasing and try to avoid cooking with or adding sodium chloride to their food at the table. This will be especially important for patients with cardiomyopathies and kidney disease who are following their daily weights closely. For the rest of my patient population I will ask them to use salt judiciously and in moderation only. I will suggest not adding salt at the table and if they do to please add it in moderation. I will allow more salt intake in those patients who work outside all day and are exposed to our high temperatures and humidity.

Like everyone else, I will wait for the meticulous research studies to be performed over time to determine how low and high our sodium chloride consumption should be without hurting ourselves.

Flu Activity at Its Local Height. Flu Shot Effectiveness Set at 48%.

The most recent epidemiologic data from the Center for Disease Control states that this year’s flu shots reduced a patients chance of catching the flu by 48% compared to no vaccine at all. The party line is that those individuals who were vaccinated and still contract Influenza A or B get a milder version. In this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Brandon Flannery, PhD, of the CDC and associates believe the flu vaccine is about 43% effective against influenza A and 73% versus Influenza B. Most flu infections this season have been caused by Influenza A (H3N2). This particular virus has the ability to change its genetic composition frequently thus making updates to vaccines necessary more frequently than current manufacturing methods can accommodate.

We are heading into the peak weeks of Influenza A infection in Palm Beach County, Florida. Individuals with flu and upper respiratory tract infection type symptoms should see their doctor. An Influenza Nasal swab test can determine if you have the flu. It takes about fifteen minutes to learn the test result after obtaining a nasal swab. If you have the flu we can place you on a dose of Tamiflu to cut the duration and symptom spectrum of the infection. We can also recommend a ten day course for family members and intimate partners as an effective prevention against the disease. Call the office if you have any questions.

Hospitalized Seniors Say No One Coordinates Their Care

Anthem Healthcare had a survey conducted of over 1,000 senior citizens older than 65 years of age in the hospital between September 26 and October 13, 2016. This Harris Poll found that 85% of the participants had a real medical issue. The poll also indicated:

Sixty-four (64%) percent said they had at least three different health care providers (at one time these were called doctors.)

• Sixty-nine (69%) percent rely on a family member or themselves to organize and coordinate their care.
• Sixty-four percent (64%) of those recently hospitalized said no one helped coordinate their care after their hospital discharge for months at a time.
• Less than half of those surveyed (<50%) said that they were asked about medications or treatments provided by other physicians that might impact their current care. With no one checking drugs and drug interactions this raises major safety issues.

The findings are not surprising to me and reinforce why I limited my practice size and leave sufficient time to learn about who else is caring for my patients and what, and why, they are recommending their specific care plan. It requires reviewing medication lists painstakingly including accessing pharmaceutical data bases and asking patients and their caregivers to bring all their medications and supplements to the office in their original pill bottles. For instance, you can’t tell how much potentially dangerous fat soluble vitamins your patients are ingesting without reading the labels. You need to run the drug-drug interaction software to insure that medicine combinations are not making your patient ill

It’s important to know who else is providing care to this patient and why. As their primary care physician, you need to ask patients to request old medical records and request a consult summary from their other doctors.   You then need to invest the time necessary to review these documents.  It’s a two-way street; providing your patients’ other physicians with your office notes as well as lab and test results. Sometimes a phone call to another doctor is necessary to clarify treatment recommendations and to then assist and educate your patient concerning the reasoning and goals of the treatments.

Often, family conferences in person or by phone are needed to inform caring relatives about what support and assistance the patient requires and how they can be of help. It takes time listening to your patients’ concerns, advocating on their behalf and preventing well-meaning treatment from others from causing harm because they are unaware of the patient’s medication or problem list.

In today’s world, concierge and direct pay primary care practices are providing these services while polls sponsored by mega-health entities confirm those organizations are falling far short in doing so!