December 17, 2025
POCUS training gets professional
Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is no longer the Wild West of academic internal medicine, with multiple recent guidance documents issued.
The perks of POCUS
Routine use of cardiopulmonary point-of-care ultrasonography (POCUS) led to a 30.3% reduction in expected length of stay in patients with undifferentiated dyspnea.
Precision immunotherapy improved sepsis outcomes, international trial finds
Sepsis patients with macrophage activation-like syndrome or sepsis-induced immunoparalysis who were randomized to immunotherapy had greater reductions in their Sequential Organ Failure Assessment scores than those receiving standard care, according to a placebo-controlled trial.
Ketamine, etomidate carry similar mortality risk when used for intubation, trial finds
Critically ill patients randomized to ketamine for anesthesia during tracheal intubation had similar inpatient mortality and higher risk of cardiovascular collapse during intubation than those who received etomidate, according to a new multicenter trial.
Antibiotics not tied to outcomes in inpatients with CAP and virus
A retrospective study of inpatients with possible community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and a positive respiratory virus test found no difference in length of stay or mortality risk between those who got zero to two days of antibiotics versus those who got five to seven days.
Algorithm reduced antipsychotic medication use for delirium in older patients
An algorithm developed by researchers in Switzerland shifted practice toward greater use of nonpharmacological interventions for delirium but did not reduce prevalence or duration of delirium on medical wards, a single-center study found.
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