Dr. Slovis
Emergency physicians are always fighting against time limits, whether they are treating critically ill patients or trying to sustain their knowledge of the latest medical literature across the myriad disciplines they encounter. At least with cardiology literature, Corey M. Slovis, MD, FACEP, is willing to help.
Currently the chairman of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, Dr. Slovis said his interest in cardiology began during his initial training in internal medicine at Emory University, a major cardiovascular center. After his switch to emergency medicine, he realized, “cardiology is one of those areas that has just exploded as far as new information, change in practice, and, worst of all, it may have the largest number of journal articles devoted to that certain topic area in emergency medicine.”
In his presentation, “Cruising the Literature: Cardiology 2014,” Dr. Slovis will be discussing key cardiology literature from 2014 chosen from more than 20 cardiology journals. He picked the articles for his talk based on two criteria: their academic importance and their timely applicability to the emergency department.
“I’d like to combine interest, entertainment, factual knowledge, and things you can take back to change how you practice tomorrow,” said Dr. Slovis.
The literature topics will include cardiac and coronary artery CT scanning, new recommendations for treating blood pressure, optimal pulmonary resuscitation, and the safety of hands-on defibrillation, among others. The national recommendations for treating high blood pressure, for example, now recommend not using beta blockers as a first-line management and have increased the blood pressure goal for people older than age 60 to 150/90, affecting a physician’s practice.
The final topic Dr. Slovis will discuss is how to increase life expectancy in both patients and their physicians. Some studies do not just affect how physicians treat patients but also “how they treat themselves,” he said.
Francesca Baratta is a freelance writer based in New Jersey.
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