by Caroline Fife, M.D. | May 11, 2021 | Fight the Good Fight, Nutrition & Wound Healing
This is a man in his mid-eighties with severe peripheral edema and a nasty looking leg ulcer that’s been present for about 2 months. His edema began 2 years ago, some weeks after his wife died. It turns out that he’s lost at least 20 lbs. over the past year. When I...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 23, 2020 | Miscellaneous Musings
Please tell me you have it, too. At least then I won’t feel alone! I have trouble concentrating on tasks and I am inefficient with my time. People keep telling me, “Previously you said . . .” I don’t even remember TALKING about that, much less remember what I said. I...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Jun 17, 2019 | Don't Miss This
As any wound care practitioner knows, you can work your way through the Merck Manual of Rare Diseases every year because wounds are a SYMPTOM of disease. If there’s a rare condition, it will probably end up in the wound center. The question is whether we recognize it....
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 25, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care
Mysterious Sepsis in a Dialysis Patient I have been taking care of a young woman with Type 1 diabetes who lost her kidney transplant about a year ago. She suffers from all the complications of diabetes, and is on home peritoneal dialysis. When I first saw her, she had...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Mar 11, 2019 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Nutrition & Wound Healing
84 year old man with a history of lymphoma but is purportedly disease free. Severe peripheral edema began 2 years ago. He says he developed this very large ulcer after minor trauma. His skin perfusion pressure is normal (68 mmHg), he has a biphasic PVR and strong DP...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Oct 3, 2018 | Fight the Good Fight, Health Information Technology and Wound Care, Nutrition & Wound Healing, Quality Payment Program
What scares me is the fact that I didn’t really pay attention to this until I started developing quality measures for wound care. But now that I’m paying attention, the extent of it is terrifying. In one day I saw three patients who were starving, two of whom had on...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Sep 8, 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. Sometimes nutrition is the medicine. This is a wonderful patient over 90 years old who is still driving and mentally alert. He sustained...
by Caroline Fife, M.D. | Nov 19, 2015 | Cassandra Chronicles: Regulatory and Coverage Policy, Miscellaneous Musings, Nutrition & Wound Healing, Pressure Cooker: Rethinking Pressure Ulcers, US Wound Registry
http://www.vacadsci.org/vjsArchives/v8/8-1/Physicians.pdf In preparation for Thanksgiving, I thought I’d read a little more about medicine in the early colonies and chanced upon this article about physicians at early Jamestown. It makes for sad reading. There’s a lot...
