Archive for the 'Disorders' Category

18
Dec

Cyclothymic Disorder

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Cyclothymic disorder consists of chronic cyclical episodes of mild depression and symptoms of mild mania.
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DSM IV Diagnostic Criteria

  • Many periods of depression and hypomania, occurring for at least 2 years. Depressive episodes do not reach severity of major depression.
  • During the 2 year period, the patient has not been symptom-free for more than 2 months at a time.
  • During the 2 year period, no episodes of major depression, mania or mixed states were present.
  • Symptoms are not accounted for by schizoaffective disorder and do not coexist with schizophrenia, schizophreniform disorder, delusional disorder, or any other psychotic disorder.
  • Symptoms are not caused by substance use or general medical condition.
  • Symptoms cause significant distress or functional impairment.

Clinical Features of Cyclothymic Disorder

  • Symptoms are similar to those of bipolar I disorder, but they are of a lesser magnitude and cycles occur at a faster rate.
  • Patients frequently have coexisting substance abuse and one third of patients develop a severe mood disorder (usually bipolar II).
  • Occupational and interpersonal impairment is frequent and usually a consequence of hypomanic states.
  • Cyclothymic disorder often coexists with borderline personality disorder.

Epidemiology of Cyclothymic Disorder

  • The prevalence is 1%, but cyclothymic disorder constitutes 5-10% of psychiatric outpatients.
  • The onset occurs between age 15 and 25, and women are affected more than men by a ratio of 3:2.
  • Thirty percent of patients have a family history of bipolar disorder.

Differential Diagnosis of Cyclothymic Disorder

Bipolar II Disorder. Patients with bipolar type II disorder exhibit hypomania and episodes of major depression.
Substance-Induced Mood Disorder/Mood Disorder Due to a General Medical Condition. See under dysthymic disorder and bipolar I.
Personality Disorders (antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic) can be characterized by marked shifts in mood. Personality disorders may coexist with cyclothymic disorder.

Treatment of Cyclothymic Disorder

Mood stabilizers are the treatment of choice, and Lithium is effective in 60% of patients. The clinical use of mood stabilizers is similar to that of bipolar disorder. (Also see “Psychiatric Therapy,” page ).
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Depressive episodes must be treated cautiously because of the risk of precipitating manic symptoms with antidepressants (occurs in 50% of patients). Antidepressants can also increase the rate of cycling. Patients are often treated concurrently with anti-manics and antidepressants.

Patients often require supportive therapy to improve their awareness of their illness and to deal with the functional consequences of their behavior.

16
Dec

Pelvic inflammatory disease

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With females, there is cervicitis, discharge and an inflamed, nontender cervix. Spread can occur to the rectum, which is usually totally asymptomatic. Then spread can occur beyond the mucosa of the urethra, of the cervix, of the rectum and of the pharynx. These can be totally asymptomatic and then spread can occur either via the bloodstream or by direct extension. In the female, contiguous spread can occur and produce pelvic inflammatory disease, salpingitis or can actually go all the way through the fallopian tube into the peritoneal cavity and produce the syndrome called Fitz-Hugh-Curtis syndrome. It can produce perihepatitis, occasionally perisplenitis, then there may be bacteremic spread. Bacteremia can produce skin lesions and arthritis. Endocarditis at one time was fairly common from the gonococcus; five percent of all cases of endocarditis were caused by the gonococcus back before antibiotics. Now, it is a rare occasion to see gonococcal endocarditis; it almost doesn’t happen anymore. The explanation is absolutely lacking – nobody understands it, because it is not related to canadian antibiotics therapy and it may well be that the gonococcus has evolved and changed in nature so that it is far less prone to cause endocarditis. Occasionally, the gonococcus can cause meningitis. Some of the cases of apparent meningococcal meningitis, when looked at carefully, turned out to be a gonococcus and not meningococcus.
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Pelvic inflammatory disease may be gonococcal, may be chlamydial or may be mixed aerobic and anaerobic organisms. What seems to happen is that the initial infection is usually either gonococcal or chlamydial and then the recurrent infections tend to be caused by genital organisms that are found normally in the vagina, mixed aerobes and anaerobes. Sometimes that first episode is barely symptomatic, so the first truly symptomatic episode that comes to the attention of the physician, seemingly the first episode, is actually caused by aerobic and anaerobic organisms. But the state is set by an initial gonococcal or chlamydial infection. There are greater than one million cases per year in the United States. One-third of these cases require admission to the hospital, which means that two-thirds of them can clearly be treated at home and ten percent go on to require a surgical procedure. One in four women with pelvic inflammatory disease will develop one or more chronic sequelae. Some of these sequelae are well known to you and they are all quite significant. There is a sevenfold increased risk of ectopic pregnancy because of the damage done to the fallopian tube. There is an eleven percent risk of infertility after only one episode.

28
Nov

Our primary hypothesis

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Our primary hypothesis was that FM patients would perform more like older adults than their age-matched controls on many cognitive tasks. And the reason we gave them three blocks of tasks is that patients frequently complain about fatigue and we had the idea that maybe in the first block the patients would look very much like their age-matched controls but by the third block when fatigue set in they would look much more like older adults. However, I’ll tell you that they were insensitive to that and there are no differences in the FM patients or the young or old patients across the blocks, so I actually won’t be talking about the blocking variable. I’ll just be talking about the performance average across the different blocks.
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Let me tell you a little bit about the tasks that we gave these patients, and I do have samples of these as we go along. First we measured speed of processing. This is a very simple task. I’ll show it to you in a moment. But it basically measures how rapidly people can process information and I believe that is a fundamental building block of all cognition that predicts on complex memory function, complex decision-making. Speed of processing is important. It is very easily measured and it is very age-sensitive. And I’ll show you how age-sensitive it is in a moment. Vocabulary is an estimate of world knowledge. You know, we gave people three tasks – synonyms, simple vocabulary and antonyms – that is not age-sensitive. People tend to continue their knowledge across the life-span and it measures their vocabulary and other measures of knowledge did not show age-related declines. Third very central measures that we use is something that we call “working memory”. Think of working memory as your online processing capacity. It’s how much information you can manipulate and store at any given time. It’s sort of the horsepower of your cognitive system. How much mental energy you bring to bear to a situation. We did expect the FM patients to be impaired on working memory and certainly older adults. That particular task is very sensitive to frontal function is a task where you give people three letters, F,A and F one at a time and you ask them in 60 seconds or two minutes to generate as many words as they can think of that begin with the letter F.
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Performance on that task goes down with age, fairly dramatically. It’s also a measure of the ability to coordinate and retrieve information. The subject’s list of words and you later ask them to remember those words. That requires both organization, frontal function again, as well as consolidation and storage, so it’s hippocampal. And then finally recognition memory is primary sensitive to hippocampal function. Subjects just simply see a list of words that they study and then they see another list and they are asked to say yes or no to each word that they see. Did they see it before? So they don’t actively have to retrieve anything. They just have to say if the work appears familiar. So that’s just sort of an overall battery of tests that we gave the subjects.

29
Oct

Acid-Base Disorders 5

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I have included in your syllabus a list of syndromes that have renal disease in them and I’m going to highlight some of them here, not all of them, but highlight a few of them and show you some pictures. One or two of them you may see in the photo-quiz outside. I wonder how they got there? So we’ll just go through a few syndromes that will both help you clinically and might help you on the Boards.

Syndrome number one, which I don’t have a picture of, is branchio-otorenal syndrome, BOR syndrome. You get dysplasia; unilateral renal agenesis is the renal anomalies, and other findings are branchial fistulas and in particular, preauricular pits and hearing losses. Those are underlined because those are the associations that you want to make. If you see somebody with a little pit in front of their ear and hearing loss, look for renal problems. Potter’s syndrome: renal failure, oligohydramnios. Remember that oligohydramnios tends to be associated with pulmonary hypoplasia. Because there’s not enough amniotic fluid to expand the lungs. You also get small posterior-set ears, micrognathia, beaked nose, wide set eyes. Here is a picture of Potter’s facies. These babies are usually stillborn. Micrognathia, look at the ears. Look how low set they are. This is what the kidneys look like; cystic dysplasia. Another picture of Potter’s facies. Ears are low set, not so low set, beaked nose, micrognathia. Pulmonary hypoplasia is the association.

Prune-belly syndrome; the renal abnormalities, dilated urinary tract, dysplastic, aplastic, multicystic and hydronephrotic kidneys. Underline absence of abdominal musculature, cryptorchidism. That’s called the triad because there are three of them. Cryptorchidism, absence of abdominal musculature, renal abnormalities. The triad.

Alport’s syndrome has glomerular lesions, hematuria and decreased GFR. Underline anterior lenticonus, cataracts, sensorineural deafness. First, lets look at prune-belly syndrome. Here is the prune-belly. Lacks abdominal musculature. Testes are not palpable. Renal abnormalities. Prune-belly syndrome. By the way, what do you notice? Is this a boy or a girl? Boy. Prune-belly syndromes are almost always in boys. And we can talk at some point about why that is, but it’s almost always in boys. Write it down. There are only about five reported cases in girls. And if they ask you that, tell them you want your money back. Prune-belly syndrome, boy, cryptorchidism, absence of abdominal musculature, renal problems. Hearing. Sensorineural high tone hearing loss. Cataract. This is the only condition, the only condition, that gives you anterior lenticonus. Everything else is posterior lenticonus in ophthalmology. This plus the characteristic glomerular lesion is Alport’s syndrome. I’ll go back and remind you, Alport’s syndrome; anterior lenticonus, cataracts, glomerular lesions, hematuria, decreased GFR.

Okay, we have a few more to go. This is a sort of characteristic … you see this little bulls-eye when you do your funduscopic? This is pretty characteristic. This is the lenticonus because what’s happening is you are looking in and the conical-shaped lens is like this, so you are going in and making your cuts in and I’ve never seen it described anywhere, but I’ve seen it a zillion times. And this is what it looks like. It almost looks circumferential. Bulls-eye in nature.
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Tuberous sclerosis; you’ve heard about tuberous sclerosis. The renal abnormalities, renal angiomyolipoma, cystic kidneys and renal cell carcinoma. An important clinical link and association. Other features, underline adenoma sebaceae, underline CNS tubers, retinal phacoma and of course some of the skin, the shagreen patches, the White Mountain ash spots. We’ll talk about Drash syndrome, which is diffuse mesangial sclerosis, nephrotic syndrome in end-stage renal disease. The association here is Wilms tumor and male pseudohermaphroditism. So let’s first … looks like I have Drash syndrome up here first. Here’s mesangial sclerosis, diffuse mesangial sclerosis and ambiguous genitalia. If you get a patient, a case, with nephrotic syndrome and ambiguous genitalia like this, what study do you want to do? A renal ultrasound because you want to look for Wilms tumor. And that’s the link and association, a very important link and association here. This is named after Alan Drash, the first person. It’s also called Denny’s Drash syndrome, nephrotic syndrome in childhood, diffuse mesangial sclerosis, Wilms tumor, male pseudohermaphroditism. So these are males that have ambiguous genitalia. The females do not.

Finally, what is this? Recognizable? Anaphylactoid purpura, right. Remember, it is usually classically over the lower limbs and buttocks. It is alliterative, palpable purpura. Write down, as a link and association, palpable purpura. Because you can feel it. Little lumps. Palpable purpura on the lower extremities, crampy abdominal pain, arthralgia, peak at 4-5 years of age. It’s mediated by IgA immune complexes. Histology in the kidney, mesangial proliferation and/or epithelial crescents. The worse the biopsy the worse the prognosis. If you have nephrotic syndrome and nephritis, that is the worst outcome. We biopsy them and if we see crescents, that’s the issue.

29
Oct

Acid-Base Disorders 4

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Type II RTA is different than type I RTA. It’s not that you can’t excrete hydrogen ions. It’s that the kidneys leak bicarbonate. There is a low threshold in the blood for spilling bicarbonate in the urine. Normally you and I start to spill about 22 … or kids, actually, start to spill 22-24. In type II RTA they start to spill at 15-16, so they begin to lose their bicarbonate with relatively low serum bicarbonates. The clinical findings, again, hyperchloremia. I can’t stress enough, hyperchloremia – metabolic acidosis. With what in the potassium? Low potassiums, low or normal. That’s the way to recognize this. High chlorides, low or low normal potassium with an acidosis. The urine pH is greater than 5.5 when the bicarbonates, or the serum bicarbonates or the CO2 is normal. But it can decrease to less than 5.5 when you get very acidotic. Because then you get underneath the threshold and the body is able to reabsorb all the bicarbonate, and in this situation the distal tubule is working fine. It’s only the proximal tubule that is messed up and spilling all the bicarbonate. The K can be low or normal. Never high. This is seen usually with Fanconi’s syndrome, but it may be isolated.

So what is the Fanconi’s syndrome? The Fanconi’s syndrome is a disease of the proximal tubule, that has all of the listed criteria, or many of the listed criteria; proximal RTA, they have amino aciduria, glucosuria, phosphaturia and hypophosphatemia and hypokalemia. They have uricosuria. They spill uric acid and decreased plasma uric acid. They have rickets, growth retardation, polyuria, dehydration, and sometimes low molecular weight globulin proteinuria.

What are examples? This is the one they will ask you. Number one, cystinosis. Most frequent cause. Galactosemia, Wilson’s disease are others. Glycogen storage disease, Wilson’s disease, galactosemia, but cystinosis, nephropathic cystinosis, is the archetypal one. Here are some other selected causes. The full group is in your syllabus; heavy metal poisoning, cisplatin, biphosphamide, and then some other nephrologic ones, and glue-sniffing. Now if you have an isolate, those with Fanconi’s syndrome, I’ve listed some causes of isolated proximal RTA that are shown here. It is highly unlikely they will ask you any of these. And they are listed here: sporadic, genetic, carbonic anhydrase inhibition.

How do you evaluate type II RTA? Again, hyperchloremia, metabolic acidosis. But the anion gap is negative. Remember I told you that for distal RTA the anion gap was positive. This one is not a problem with making ammonia. This is a problem just with leaking lots of bicarb. So the anion gap is negative. The urine pH is greater than 5.5 when the plasma bicarb is what is normal to you and me, but when the plasma bicarb falls below the threshold, the urine pH is low.

I am going to … this is another way to evaluate it. Again, this is something that pediatric nephrologists do. It’s a fractional excretion but instead of a fractional excretion of sodium, it’s a fractional excretion of bicarbonate. And we can do this, and this allows us to do that. Again, they will not be asking you that.

A quick word about type IV RTA. There is no type III. There was a mistake. Somebody made a mistake and so they called… we called just type IV. Type IV is so-called low-renin hypo-renin hypoaldosteronism. This again is a non-anion gap acidosis but it has hyperkalemia. Urine pH can look like type II RTA with a pH less than 5.5. Highly unlikely that they will ask you about this. Very unusual. It’s caused by true aldosterone deficiency, conditions which decrease renin secretion and conditions where the kidney cannot respond to mineralocorticoids. This is a reiteration; the diagnostic workup of suspected RTA. We look first for he serum anion gap. We see whether it is elevated. The metabolic acidosis is elevated. If it is you work up for a gap acidosis. If there is a normal gap, you want to evaluate for RTA. Then I put in how you go with RTA’s, either type II or type I and type IV. I’m going to skip over this, and I’m going to skip over metabolic alkalosis except to remind you that the laboratory studies for metabolic alkalosis will show you that besides a blood pH that is high, there is a low chloride, a low potassium, increased bicarbonate or CO2 in the blood. The few physical signs; tetany. Underline tetany and convulsions. This is one of the things that can give you tetany and convulsions, metabolic alkalosis.

28
Oct

Acid-Base Disorders 3

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Renal tubular acidosis. How do we recognize renal tubular acidosis? Number one, what I said before; first have a blood pH. You’ve got to have acidosis. I can’t tell you how often I have been consulted by some of you out there who will remain anonymous, in the audience, who say, “Low CO2, low bicarbonate, we obviously have an acidosis. Please evaluate the acidosis for us.” And it turns out, of course, that it’s a compensation because the blood pH, when we got it, was 7.6. So number one, be sure you know the acid-base status. Start stepwise. Start with your first step which is; know the primary disorder. Then these patients are hyperchloremic. They have a normal anion gap. Not a high anion gap. They have a relatively low serum K for the degree of acidosis, and this is true of type I and type II RTA’s. And they have an inappropriately high urinary pH. If you have all of these, you more than likely have an RTA. So these are the characteristics. This right here is something to look at. If you don’t look at anything else in RTA, look at this. Because this is the link, this is the association that will allow you to get it through the test.

Now there are different types. We nephrologists have an incredible amount of imagination and wit, so we of course call them type I and type II, with our great creativity. Type I is called distal RTA. It is caused by a problem in the distal tubule with the inability to decrease the urine pH to 5.5 during acidosis. Because the kidney can’t push out hydrogen ions out of the body. There is one of a number of molecular defects that cause the kidney to be unable to kick out hydrogen ions. You eat 3 milliequivalents per kilo of hydrogen ion per day in your phosphates and your sulfates and the things that you eat. You can’t get rid of them in RTA. Thus, you become a big walking hydrogen ion. The associated problems with type I – this is an important association – nephrocalcinosis. Another; we’ve said before, hypokalemia and low urinary citrate. Remember the two types of acidosis that give you low potassium, DKA – because you are peeing out all that K – and RTA. RTA, relative hypokalemia. It turns out that you get a secondary hyperaldosteronism and that’s why you get hypokalemia. What’s important to remember is low acidosis, low K; low or normal K – even a normal-ish K – you’ve got to really think about it because the K should be high when you are very acidotic. Think DKA or RTA.

How do you evaluate these patients? They have a hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis and they have a positive urinary anion gap. That’s because these patients don’t make very much ammonia. The urine – a lot of the positives that are over here to balance out the chlorides, etc. – is ammonia and usually the sodium plus potassium minus chloride normally is a negative number. But in distal RTA the sodium plus the potassium minus the chloride is a positive number in distal RTA. We’ll get to proximal RTA in a minute. And in normals, it’s a negative number. The urine pH, for the sake of this discussion here, is always greater than 5.5. There are situations where it may be below that but not in a million years will they ask you. So for the situation that we are talking about here, with regard to 98% of RTA’s, urine pH always greater than 5.5. You can bicarbonate load these patients and do a study called a urine PCO2 minus blood PCO2 and the values are given here. This is a question for pediatric nephrology Boards. Not for general peds Boards. You won’t get asked it.

The types; it is associated with many many things, and I’ve listed a number of them here. Genetically transmitted disease, autoimmune diseases and disorders associated with nephrocalcinosis. If you hear nephrocalcinosis and acidosis, think type I RTA, and there are a couple of situations here. Drugs that have tubular toxicity; we talked about hypokalemia with cisplatin and amphotericin. Amphotericin will also give you a situation of RTA. Amphotericin also gives you renal failure in very sick patients, but in patients that are not so sick and we are using lower doses of amphotericin, there is a tubular toxicity, and that’s amphotericin-B I’m talking about. Others include pyelonephritis obstruction and kidney transplant.