Introduction: Bilateral tubal ectopic pregnancy without prior fertility treatment is rare and, although true incidence is unknown, about 250 cases have been reported in medical literature so far. Its diagnosis is commonly made during surgery as pre-operative diagnosis is difficult. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of spontaneous bilateral tubal ectopic pregnancy in Ghana. Case Presentation: We report on a 25-year-old G2P1A who had an exploratory laparotomy done on account of a ruptured right ectopic pregnancy. Examination of the contralateral tube at surgery, however, revealed an unruptured ampullary ectopic pregnancy and diagnosis was thus revised to a bilateral tubal ectopic pregnancy. A right salpingectomy and left salpingostomy were carried out as she had future fertility wish. Conclusion: Bilateral tubal ectopic pregnancies present a number of diagnostic challenges pre-operatively and examination of the contralateral tube, especially for those cases requiring surgical intervention, cannot be over – emphasized in the management of tubal ectopic pregnancies in general.
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is the early warning system for vaccine safety in the U.S. While it's important for identifying vaccine side effects, the data it collects can be misunderstood.
Since her appointment in 2018, Texas Health and Human Services Inspector General Sylvia Hernandez Kauffman has homed in on using data analytics not only to prosecute fraud, waste, and abuse within the Medicaid program, but also to prevent it from happening in the first place. Texas Medicine spoke to Ms. Kauffman about what appears to be a shift in tone from this department as it also focuses on using the data it collects to educate physicians and other health care professionals on common billing mistakes.
When Andrew Indresano, MD, got a subpoena in January 2019, he found it "a little shocking" and "really invasive." The Fort Worth orthopedic surgeon wasn't even part of the personal-injury lawsuit for which he was being asked to produce a backward-looking swath of documents.
Barriers stand in the way of physicians playing a greater role in addressing the social determinants of health, but awareness of those factors is increasing, and progress is happening.
The new mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 are highly effective at giving people immunity against the disease. But as with all other vaccines, that immunity is not 100% for everyone who receives them.
PHYSICIAN WELL-BEING, which was at a crisis point heading into the COVID-19 pandemic, has only deteriorated since early 2020. But the Texas Medical Association and county medical societies are on the front lines, working together to support physicians as they contend with burnout, financial stress, and administrative burdens exacerbated by the public health emergency.
Before March 2020, remote patient monitoring (RPM) was a tool endocrinologist Thomas Blevins, MD, used to help patients with diabetes track and regulate blood sugar levels and report the results back to him. But when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many doctors to turn to telemedicine, Dr. Blevins and the nine other physicians on staff at Austin Diabetes and Endocrinology had to rev up their RPM use.
After growing up on a South Alabama cattle farm in the 1940s and '50s, Martha Pugh, MD, went on to have a 51-year career in a different male-dominated field: medicine. Often one of few women in the building, whether at medical school or in hospitals, Dr. Pugh - now 82 and retired - found common ground with her male peers and went on to become one of the Texas Medical Association's longest-serving members for 42 years.
TMA fights state budget cuts to preserve Texas' steady progress in building residency positions.
The Texas Alliance for Patient Access (TAPA) announced in early March that Sen. Kelly Hancock (R-North Richland Hills) and Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano) would soon file COVID-19 liability legislation that would enhance liability protections to shield more physicians from lawsuits for care delivered during pandemics, hurricanes, and other catastrophic events that inject chaos into their good-faith medical efforts.
Texas has taken some big steps to combat maternal death and illness in recent years. That was highlighted by one of the Texas Medical Association's biggest wins in the 2021 regular session of the Texas Legislature, when medicine's longtime advocacy resulted in an extension of Medicaid coverage for postpartum maternal care from two to six months under House Bill 133. This partial victory is just one of many that shows promise in addressing a major public health priority for TMA and the state.
In addition to the devastating COVID-19 surge fueled by the delta variant, pediatricians like Valerie Smith, MD, and other specialists caring for children point to a shadow pandemic among young patients. The proportion of mental health-related visits for children is on the rise.
A court decision siding with chiropractors is the latest of many scope tests in the legislature and the law.
"We believe that standardizing those kind of processes will be easier for [those] providing care. Because one of the things we hear a lot is this lack of harmonization of processes and procedures, whether that's in care or measures or processes. That is a really important part of it."
There are few issues in medicine and health care that are the subject of more controversy than the semantics of what wounds physicians. Are we suffering from "moral injury" or "burnout" or "compassion fatigue" or "vicarious trauma" or "depression?"
