by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Aug 2, 2022 | Fight the Good Fight
It’s 2 am and I am up with a migraine but at least I have figured out why. Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with iron deficiency anemia due to malabsorption syndrome. I was pretty sick by the time I sought help because the onset of the anemia was insidious (5+ years)...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jul 12, 2021 | Nutrition & Wound Healing
I have previously discussed the fact that my electronic health record (EHR) incorporated the Nestle Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) so that it only takes me a few seconds to do a proper nutritional screen and it can be done while I’m in the room with the patient....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 26, 2021 | Don't Miss This
This is a 37 yo man with a non-healing wound at the site of a left chest catheter port. He has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the port for his chemotherapy was removed 4 weeks after it was put in because it looked infected. He has had an extensive region of erythema and...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 19, 2021 | Nutrition & Wound Healing, PAD Hall of Shame
This is a retired physician in his 90’s whose mind is as sharp as a tack. He’s got congestive heart failure (CHF) and leg edema so severe that his skin is splitting open. He’s a chair sleeper in part because he has orthopnea (shortness of breath lying down), but also...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 13, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight
This is a 70-year-old man with a dehisced flap on the plantar surface of the left foot after a melanoma excision 6 weeks earlier. Based on the photos that he showed me from his phone, the cancer surgeon struggled to close the large defect on the bottom of his foot...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 27, 2020 | COVID-19, Do the Right Thing: Thoughts on Quality, Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing, Skin Perfusion Pressure (SPP)
If you are a wound management practitioner, then like me, you’ve continued to care for patients during the pandemic. It wasn’t easy before COVID-19 and it’s even harder now. My clinic is only able to see half the volume (due to the time required for COVID-19...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 23, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Nutrition & Wound Healing
On Saturday May 19th I joined Drs. Jay Shah, Noel Oliveira and Rafael Rafols at the Texas Medical Association (TMA) meeting in San Antonio, Texas for the first ever wound care CME event at a TMA meeting. We focused on wound care for the primary care physician, and it...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 7, 2017 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Nutrition & Wound Healing, Quality Payment Program
What you put IN the patient may be as important as what you put ON them I have been focusing more on nutrition with my patients. It’s so easy to overlook nutritional issues. Recently I saw a fairly young woman who suffered from juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis and...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Apr 21, 2023 | Fight the Good Fight
I got a shock the first time I took off a patient’s dressing and found something like this over a wound. The patient had cut open a large leaf from her Aloe Vera plant and was using it as a wound treatment. I will admit that her innovation was driven in part by the...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 10, 2023 | Fight the Good Fight
My friend and colleague, Dr. Mark Melin has been talking a lot about the endothelial glycocalyx (GCX) and why it matters to patients with lympho-venous disease and chronic ulceration. I’d been smiling and nodding, pretending that I understood what he was talking...
