SGIM Bottom Line Podcast

Bill talks to Bottom Line author Dr. Stephanie Wheeler and guest expert Dr. Gregory Gardner, professor of rheumatology at University of Washington, about why you might not want to get your knees injected. Unless you’re going to Italy! It makes sense in context. Produced by Dr. Eric LaMotte.

Dr. Eric LaMotte leads the conversation as Bottom Line Summary author Dr. Jeff Tice and Dr. Erin Michos of the department of cardiology at Johns Hopkins talk about the disappointing news that Vitamin D does not cure cancer. Were why surprised? Kind of, actually! “Vitamin D as a primary prevention does not reduce the risk of cancer or cardiovascular events over five years in men over the ages or 50 year or women over the ages of 55 years.”

Bottom Line author Benjamin Oldfield and SPACE trial author Erin Krebs join Bill Fuller to talk about Dr. Krebs landmark study of opioids versus nonopioid management of chronic pain. Also there’s a cat. Also there’s a debate over pizza. “Among patients with moderate to severe chronic back pain, or hip or knee osteoarthritis pain, treatment with opioids was not superior to treatment with non-opioid medications for improving pain-related function over 12 months.” See the complete Bottom Line Summary at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31342325

Coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring is a non-invasive way to visualize calcified atherosclerotic plaque in the coronary arteries. But, so what? Physicians have struggled with what to do with this information and how we might incorporate CAC scores into clinical practice. The BioImage study [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109716336087?via%3Dihub]may provide some insight with a prospective cohort study designed to see whether CAC scores predict incident ASCVD in patients at high risk according to the ACC/AHA pooled cohort equation. Cardiologist Dr. Josh Levenson of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center takes us through what the evidence means to him and what this trial does to impact ASCVD prevention practices. Come listen to his interview with SGIM EBM Subcommittee Bottom Line author Clark Veet and podcast host Bill Fuller. Here’s the SGIM EBM Subcommittee’s Bottom Line [https://www.sgim.org/File%20Library/JGIM/Web%20Only/Bottom%20Line/CaScoreTheBottomLine.pdf]. Questions or comments about the bottom line? E-mail Clark Veet at veetca@upmc.edu [veetca@upmc.edu]. As always, feel free to reach out to Bill Fuller [wsf2112@cumc.columbia.edu]if you have comments on the podcast itself or would like to get involved!

An introduction to our newest efforts to make the latest evidence underlying the practice of internal medicine interesting and accessible for everyone.