Gastroenterology

Inpatient management of patients with increasingly virulent community acquired and nosocomial infections, ranging from bacteremia to C. difficile colitis, presents hospitalists with challenging choices.

Many accepted practices in hospital medicine, ranging from electrolyte management to the components of a syncope workup, may have scant or equivocal evidence to support their use.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today expanded approval of Simponi (golimumab) to treat moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that affects some 620,000 Americans.

Researchers using fMRI to study neural activity in IBS patients report that the processing and perception of visceral stimuli can be modulated by psychological and cognitive treatment.

Patients who have IBD, even those who are in clinical remission, often exhibit symptoms consistent with IBS, which can complicate the assessment and management of IBD and lead to unnecessary interventions.

Nearly one in 10 patients have asymptomatic Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) colonization at the time of hospital admission.

Gastric bypass surgery alters the hormones and amino acids produced during digestion, possibly elucidating the mechanisms through which the surgery eliminates symptoms of type 2 diabetes.

Phase III study results show patients with chronic non-cancer pain and opioid-induced constipation (OIC) experienced improvements in spontaneous bowel movement frequency and other symptoms of OIC.

For eight inpatient surgical procedures, mortality is similar at critical access hospitals (CAHs) and non-CAHs, but costs are higher at CAHs.

The donor mortality rate during living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is 0.2 percent, regardless of program experience.