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Is ‘Med Ed’ changing for better or worse?
The next generation of physicians is learning much differently from how established doctors once did. Training has shifted from an acute focus on disease to a wider approach that considers patients within the larger context of their community and society. Although many, like myself, see this as progress, others have expressed doubts about this and many other changes.
Amid the madness that is the year 2020, I’m grateful to have a moment to reflect on this subject. Five years ago, in celebration of Medscape’s 20th anniversary, I spoke with various leaders in medical education to learn how med ed had evolved since they were in school. Since then, I’ve gone from student to faculty. This year, for Medscape’s 25th anniversary, I reached out to current medical trainees to reflect on how much things have changed in such a short time.
From adjustments forced on us by COVID-19 to trends that predated the pandemic – including an increased emphasis on social justice and a decreased emphasis on other material – becoming a doctor no longer looks like it did just a half-decade ago.
Social justice is now in the curricula
More than ever, medical training has shifted toward humanism, population health, and social justice. Students are now being shown not only how to treat the patient in front of them but how to “treat” the larger communities they serve. Research skills around social drivers of health, such as structural racism, are increasingly becoming status quo.
In reflecting on her current experience, Emily Kahoud, a third-year medical student at New Jersey Medical School, Newark, told me about a course she took that was devoted to health equity. She applauded how her professors have incorporated this education into their courses. “It’s so nice and refreshing to be in a community that appreciates that.”
I, too, have seen this change firsthand. In addition to caring for patients and teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I work with a team that develops curricula around social justice. We strive to integrate this material into existing courses and rotations. I believe that this is not only the right thing to teach trainees in order to help their future patients, but that it also reduces harm that many students experience. The “hidden curriculum” of medical school has long marginalized anyone who isn’t White and/or male.
Children, women, and the elderly were often referred to as “special populations” during my training. Even now, content about social and structural drivers of health is still most often relegated to separate courses rather than integrated into existing material. I hope to help improve this at my institution and that others are doing the same elsewhere.
If the current students I spoke with are any indication, further integration will be a welcomed change. Travis Benson, a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, Boston, appreciates where medical training is headed. Specifically, he is interested in inequities in the care of transgender patients. He says he has loved what his school has done with education on issues not previously considered part of med ed. “In the first week of school, we go on tours and spend time in community health centers and learn about the ‘Family Van,’ a mobile health care clinic that offers free care. I even had an opportunity to have a longitudinal clinic experience at a jail.”
While some critics argue that this learning goes too far, others argue that it has not gone far enough fast enough. In general, I consider the progress made in this area since my time in med school to be a very good thing. Medical students are now being taught to think about the science of medicine in the context of the larger human condition.
More technology, less preclinical time and cost
Beyond evolution in curricular content, technical and logistical changes have dramatically reshaped med ed. Since I started my training in 2012, most medical schools now no longer formally require students to attend lectures. Instead, they make them available online for students to view on demand. This undoubtedly makes schedules more flexible, allows students to learn at their own pace, and helps accommodate students with different needs.
Another big change: Preclinical years may now be as short as 1.5 years or less. This is a big draw for some students. Most choose to go to medical school to take care of patients. Shortening the preclinical years means students have more time immersed in patient care and less time dealing with medical minutiae.
That also means that they can spend more time thinking about professional development. Ramie Fathy, a fourth-year student, told me, “I came to Penn [University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia] because of the shortened preclinical curriculum. That allowed more time on the back end to explore different specialties.” Although some established doctors worry about what scientific details may be left out, providing more hands-on experience sure seems like a good thing to me. Learning from textbooks can only take you so far in this profession.
Another, and more expected, development is the use of ever-advancing technology. Some schools now offer 3D virtual modeling for the study of anatomy, as well as a myriad of electronic visual aids for subjects like pathology and microbiology. Adapting to technological changes can be challenging, however, especially because more nontraditional students are being admitted to medical school each year.
Kahoud is one such nontraditional – older – student. She had some concerns about reliance on newer resources going in. “It [medical school] has become increasingly dependent on technology, even before COVID,” she said. “When you are not well versed in these tools it can definitely be a struggle.”
Thanks to the pandemic, remote learning is now the name of the game for many. As a result, instructors have had to amend their teaching styles to suit distance education, various untested applications and programs have been integrated into the curriculum, and students and administrators alike have had to find alternative ways to build a sense of community.
Is this a glimpse at the future for med ed? And if so, what may be lost or gained from this transition? Tino Delamerced, a third-year student at the Brown University, Providence, R.I., shared a likely very widely held hope: “If the preclinical years can be totally remote permanently, then can tuition be cheaper?”
Med ed debt keeps growing and remains a huge deterrent for potential students, especially those who are the first in their family to pursue medicine, come from a disadvantaged background, or have other people for whom they are financially responsible. Is it possible that the restrictions of COVID-19 could finally lead to cost cutting?
A bigger solution – free medical school – predated the pandemic. Institutions such as New York University have completely eliminated tuition, whereas others such as the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (my alma mater) have limited the amount of debt with which a student graduates. You can imagine my frustration that the debt limit policy was enacted after I graduated.
Still, as optimistic as some have been at this movement that developed in the past 5 years, many think this specific evolution is little more than a “pipe dream.”
Current students score big with USMLE change
Beyond med school cost, another universally despised part of medical training that has seen a dramatic change is the licensing examination. My dedicated study period for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 was my worst time of medical school. Well, it was second to holding a retractor in the operating room for hours at a time.
Like everyone, I suspected that Step 1 would not be an accurate indicator of my ability to actually care for patients. As a practicing physician, I can now tell you for sure that this is the case. How lucky for the next generation, then, that the test is going to a pass/fail grading system.
Step 1 has always been important, as residency programs rely on the score to weed out applicants. Even if that screening emphasis simply gets shifted to scores on other examinations, this change still feels like progress. As Fathy told me, “There will likely be more emphasis on USMLE Step 2. But I think, based on practice questions I’ve done, that is more relevant to clinical abilities.” From my new vantage point, I can confirm that.
Not everyone is excited, though. Delamerced told me that he fears that the pass/fail Step 1 score may disparately affect students outside of allopathic medical schools. He said that the new scoring system “does not allow students to distinguish themselves via a standardized test score. That may hurt IMGs or DO students.”
Even then, Delamerced conceded that the change has some clear benefits. “For med students’ mental health, it’s probably a good thing.” From a population-based perspective, a medical student’s mental health often declines throughout school. Standardized exams are not the only cause, but we all know that it is a big contributor. The Step 1 switch can only help with that.
Finish faster or learn more?
In addition to evolution in the content and methods used to teach and assess current med students, the duration of med ed has also changed. Today’s students can choose to complete medical school in less than 4 years.
At the school where I work, the Fully Integrated Readiness for Service Training (FIRST) program allows certain students to complete their education in just 3 years. This program is for students who already know early on that they want to pursue a specialty included on our curated list. The goal of the program is to ultimately train physicians in family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, or general surgery in order to provide crucial care to those who need it most in our state.
Other medical schools offer accelerated MD programs for students based on various admissions criteria and specialty interest. The benefit of these programs is that shortening training time cuts down on debt for students.
Accelerated MD programs also aim to quickly increase the number of practicing physicians. This is especially important for primary care, which expects to see a growing gap in the years to come. That aim has come under some criticism, as some believe that the 4-year program was the standard for a reason. But when I reflect on it, I often wonder whether my fourth year was really worth $60,000. I spent a lot of that year traveling for residency interviews and watching Netflix between clinic electives.
Instead of finishing medical school faster, some students now have an opportunity to integrate additional training and education. Benson told me that, at Harvard, many students take a year off to pursue other opportunities. He said, “About 40% of students end up taking a fifth year to do either a master’s degree, global health, or research.” Benson said the additional learning opportunities are broad. “Some classmates even go to other schools altogether to get additional education.” Widened areas of learning are likely to produce better doctors, in my opinion.
This chance to look back on medical education has shown me that the ways in which it has changed rapidly in just the past few years are largely positive. Although COVID-19 has been an unwanted bane, it has also forced schools to integrate new technology and has placed an even brighter spotlight on health inequities and other areas in which education further improved. I hope that, when I look back on med ed in another 5 years, it has grown even more flexible and nimble in meeting the ever-changing needs of students and patients alike.
Alexa Mieses Malchuk, MD, MPH, was born and raised in Queens, New York. Social justice is what drew her to family medicine. As an academic physician at the University of North Carolina, she practices inpatient and outpatient medicine and serves as a medical educator for students and residents.
This article first appeared on Medscape.com.
The next generation of physicians is learning much differently from how established doctors once did. Training has shifted from an acute focus on disease to a wider approach that considers patients within the larger context of their community and society. Although many, like myself, see this as progress, others have expressed doubts about this and many other changes.
Amid the madness that is the year 2020, I’m grateful to have a moment to reflect on this subject. Five years ago, in celebration of Medscape’s 20th anniversary, I spoke with various leaders in medical education to learn how med ed had evolved since they were in school. Since then, I’ve gone from student to faculty. This year, for Medscape’s 25th anniversary, I reached out to current medical trainees to reflect on how much things have changed in such a short time.
From adjustments forced on us by COVID-19 to trends that predated the pandemic – including an increased emphasis on social justice and a decreased emphasis on other material – becoming a doctor no longer looks like it did just a half-decade ago.
Social justice is now in the curricula
More than ever, medical training has shifted toward humanism, population health, and social justice. Students are now being shown not only how to treat the patient in front of them but how to “treat” the larger communities they serve. Research skills around social drivers of health, such as structural racism, are increasingly becoming status quo.
In reflecting on her current experience, Emily Kahoud, a third-year medical student at New Jersey Medical School, Newark, told me about a course she took that was devoted to health equity. She applauded how her professors have incorporated this education into their courses. “It’s so nice and refreshing to be in a community that appreciates that.”
I, too, have seen this change firsthand. In addition to caring for patients and teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I work with a team that develops curricula around social justice. We strive to integrate this material into existing courses and rotations. I believe that this is not only the right thing to teach trainees in order to help their future patients, but that it also reduces harm that many students experience. The “hidden curriculum” of medical school has long marginalized anyone who isn’t White and/or male.
Children, women, and the elderly were often referred to as “special populations” during my training. Even now, content about social and structural drivers of health is still most often relegated to separate courses rather than integrated into existing material. I hope to help improve this at my institution and that others are doing the same elsewhere.
If the current students I spoke with are any indication, further integration will be a welcomed change. Travis Benson, a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, Boston, appreciates where medical training is headed. Specifically, he is interested in inequities in the care of transgender patients. He says he has loved what his school has done with education on issues not previously considered part of med ed. “In the first week of school, we go on tours and spend time in community health centers and learn about the ‘Family Van,’ a mobile health care clinic that offers free care. I even had an opportunity to have a longitudinal clinic experience at a jail.”
While some critics argue that this learning goes too far, others argue that it has not gone far enough fast enough. In general, I consider the progress made in this area since my time in med school to be a very good thing. Medical students are now being taught to think about the science of medicine in the context of the larger human condition.
More technology, less preclinical time and cost
Beyond evolution in curricular content, technical and logistical changes have dramatically reshaped med ed. Since I started my training in 2012, most medical schools now no longer formally require students to attend lectures. Instead, they make them available online for students to view on demand. This undoubtedly makes schedules more flexible, allows students to learn at their own pace, and helps accommodate students with different needs.
Another big change: Preclinical years may now be as short as 1.5 years or less. This is a big draw for some students. Most choose to go to medical school to take care of patients. Shortening the preclinical years means students have more time immersed in patient care and less time dealing with medical minutiae.
That also means that they can spend more time thinking about professional development. Ramie Fathy, a fourth-year student, told me, “I came to Penn [University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia] because of the shortened preclinical curriculum. That allowed more time on the back end to explore different specialties.” Although some established doctors worry about what scientific details may be left out, providing more hands-on experience sure seems like a good thing to me. Learning from textbooks can only take you so far in this profession.
Another, and more expected, development is the use of ever-advancing technology. Some schools now offer 3D virtual modeling for the study of anatomy, as well as a myriad of electronic visual aids for subjects like pathology and microbiology. Adapting to technological changes can be challenging, however, especially because more nontraditional students are being admitted to medical school each year.
Kahoud is one such nontraditional – older – student. She had some concerns about reliance on newer resources going in. “It [medical school] has become increasingly dependent on technology, even before COVID,” she said. “When you are not well versed in these tools it can definitely be a struggle.”
Thanks to the pandemic, remote learning is now the name of the game for many. As a result, instructors have had to amend their teaching styles to suit distance education, various untested applications and programs have been integrated into the curriculum, and students and administrators alike have had to find alternative ways to build a sense of community.
Is this a glimpse at the future for med ed? And if so, what may be lost or gained from this transition? Tino Delamerced, a third-year student at the Brown University, Providence, R.I., shared a likely very widely held hope: “If the preclinical years can be totally remote permanently, then can tuition be cheaper?”
Med ed debt keeps growing and remains a huge deterrent for potential students, especially those who are the first in their family to pursue medicine, come from a disadvantaged background, or have other people for whom they are financially responsible. Is it possible that the restrictions of COVID-19 could finally lead to cost cutting?
A bigger solution – free medical school – predated the pandemic. Institutions such as New York University have completely eliminated tuition, whereas others such as the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (my alma mater) have limited the amount of debt with which a student graduates. You can imagine my frustration that the debt limit policy was enacted after I graduated.
Still, as optimistic as some have been at this movement that developed in the past 5 years, many think this specific evolution is little more than a “pipe dream.”
Current students score big with USMLE change
Beyond med school cost, another universally despised part of medical training that has seen a dramatic change is the licensing examination. My dedicated study period for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 was my worst time of medical school. Well, it was second to holding a retractor in the operating room for hours at a time.
Like everyone, I suspected that Step 1 would not be an accurate indicator of my ability to actually care for patients. As a practicing physician, I can now tell you for sure that this is the case. How lucky for the next generation, then, that the test is going to a pass/fail grading system.
Step 1 has always been important, as residency programs rely on the score to weed out applicants. Even if that screening emphasis simply gets shifted to scores on other examinations, this change still feels like progress. As Fathy told me, “There will likely be more emphasis on USMLE Step 2. But I think, based on practice questions I’ve done, that is more relevant to clinical abilities.” From my new vantage point, I can confirm that.
Not everyone is excited, though. Delamerced told me that he fears that the pass/fail Step 1 score may disparately affect students outside of allopathic medical schools. He said that the new scoring system “does not allow students to distinguish themselves via a standardized test score. That may hurt IMGs or DO students.”
Even then, Delamerced conceded that the change has some clear benefits. “For med students’ mental health, it’s probably a good thing.” From a population-based perspective, a medical student’s mental health often declines throughout school. Standardized exams are not the only cause, but we all know that it is a big contributor. The Step 1 switch can only help with that.
Finish faster or learn more?
In addition to evolution in the content and methods used to teach and assess current med students, the duration of med ed has also changed. Today’s students can choose to complete medical school in less than 4 years.
At the school where I work, the Fully Integrated Readiness for Service Training (FIRST) program allows certain students to complete their education in just 3 years. This program is for students who already know early on that they want to pursue a specialty included on our curated list. The goal of the program is to ultimately train physicians in family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, or general surgery in order to provide crucial care to those who need it most in our state.
Other medical schools offer accelerated MD programs for students based on various admissions criteria and specialty interest. The benefit of these programs is that shortening training time cuts down on debt for students.
Accelerated MD programs also aim to quickly increase the number of practicing physicians. This is especially important for primary care, which expects to see a growing gap in the years to come. That aim has come under some criticism, as some believe that the 4-year program was the standard for a reason. But when I reflect on it, I often wonder whether my fourth year was really worth $60,000. I spent a lot of that year traveling for residency interviews and watching Netflix between clinic electives.
Instead of finishing medical school faster, some students now have an opportunity to integrate additional training and education. Benson told me that, at Harvard, many students take a year off to pursue other opportunities. He said, “About 40% of students end up taking a fifth year to do either a master’s degree, global health, or research.” Benson said the additional learning opportunities are broad. “Some classmates even go to other schools altogether to get additional education.” Widened areas of learning are likely to produce better doctors, in my opinion.
This chance to look back on medical education has shown me that the ways in which it has changed rapidly in just the past few years are largely positive. Although COVID-19 has been an unwanted bane, it has also forced schools to integrate new technology and has placed an even brighter spotlight on health inequities and other areas in which education further improved. I hope that, when I look back on med ed in another 5 years, it has grown even more flexible and nimble in meeting the ever-changing needs of students and patients alike.
Alexa Mieses Malchuk, MD, MPH, was born and raised in Queens, New York. Social justice is what drew her to family medicine. As an academic physician at the University of North Carolina, she practices inpatient and outpatient medicine and serves as a medical educator for students and residents.
This article first appeared on Medscape.com.
The next generation of physicians is learning much differently from how established doctors once did. Training has shifted from an acute focus on disease to a wider approach that considers patients within the larger context of their community and society. Although many, like myself, see this as progress, others have expressed doubts about this and many other changes.
Amid the madness that is the year 2020, I’m grateful to have a moment to reflect on this subject. Five years ago, in celebration of Medscape’s 20th anniversary, I spoke with various leaders in medical education to learn how med ed had evolved since they were in school. Since then, I’ve gone from student to faculty. This year, for Medscape’s 25th anniversary, I reached out to current medical trainees to reflect on how much things have changed in such a short time.
From adjustments forced on us by COVID-19 to trends that predated the pandemic – including an increased emphasis on social justice and a decreased emphasis on other material – becoming a doctor no longer looks like it did just a half-decade ago.
Social justice is now in the curricula
More than ever, medical training has shifted toward humanism, population health, and social justice. Students are now being shown not only how to treat the patient in front of them but how to “treat” the larger communities they serve. Research skills around social drivers of health, such as structural racism, are increasingly becoming status quo.
In reflecting on her current experience, Emily Kahoud, a third-year medical student at New Jersey Medical School, Newark, told me about a course she took that was devoted to health equity. She applauded how her professors have incorporated this education into their courses. “It’s so nice and refreshing to be in a community that appreciates that.”
I, too, have seen this change firsthand. In addition to caring for patients and teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I work with a team that develops curricula around social justice. We strive to integrate this material into existing courses and rotations. I believe that this is not only the right thing to teach trainees in order to help their future patients, but that it also reduces harm that many students experience. The “hidden curriculum” of medical school has long marginalized anyone who isn’t White and/or male.
Children, women, and the elderly were often referred to as “special populations” during my training. Even now, content about social and structural drivers of health is still most often relegated to separate courses rather than integrated into existing material. I hope to help improve this at my institution and that others are doing the same elsewhere.
If the current students I spoke with are any indication, further integration will be a welcomed change. Travis Benson, a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School, Boston, appreciates where medical training is headed. Specifically, he is interested in inequities in the care of transgender patients. He says he has loved what his school has done with education on issues not previously considered part of med ed. “In the first week of school, we go on tours and spend time in community health centers and learn about the ‘Family Van,’ a mobile health care clinic that offers free care. I even had an opportunity to have a longitudinal clinic experience at a jail.”
While some critics argue that this learning goes too far, others argue that it has not gone far enough fast enough. In general, I consider the progress made in this area since my time in med school to be a very good thing. Medical students are now being taught to think about the science of medicine in the context of the larger human condition.
More technology, less preclinical time and cost
Beyond evolution in curricular content, technical and logistical changes have dramatically reshaped med ed. Since I started my training in 2012, most medical schools now no longer formally require students to attend lectures. Instead, they make them available online for students to view on demand. This undoubtedly makes schedules more flexible, allows students to learn at their own pace, and helps accommodate students with different needs.
Another big change: Preclinical years may now be as short as 1.5 years or less. This is a big draw for some students. Most choose to go to medical school to take care of patients. Shortening the preclinical years means students have more time immersed in patient care and less time dealing with medical minutiae.
That also means that they can spend more time thinking about professional development. Ramie Fathy, a fourth-year student, told me, “I came to Penn [University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia] because of the shortened preclinical curriculum. That allowed more time on the back end to explore different specialties.” Although some established doctors worry about what scientific details may be left out, providing more hands-on experience sure seems like a good thing to me. Learning from textbooks can only take you so far in this profession.
Another, and more expected, development is the use of ever-advancing technology. Some schools now offer 3D virtual modeling for the study of anatomy, as well as a myriad of electronic visual aids for subjects like pathology and microbiology. Adapting to technological changes can be challenging, however, especially because more nontraditional students are being admitted to medical school each year.
Kahoud is one such nontraditional – older – student. She had some concerns about reliance on newer resources going in. “It [medical school] has become increasingly dependent on technology, even before COVID,” she said. “When you are not well versed in these tools it can definitely be a struggle.”
Thanks to the pandemic, remote learning is now the name of the game for many. As a result, instructors have had to amend their teaching styles to suit distance education, various untested applications and programs have been integrated into the curriculum, and students and administrators alike have had to find alternative ways to build a sense of community.
Is this a glimpse at the future for med ed? And if so, what may be lost or gained from this transition? Tino Delamerced, a third-year student at the Brown University, Providence, R.I., shared a likely very widely held hope: “If the preclinical years can be totally remote permanently, then can tuition be cheaper?”
Med ed debt keeps growing and remains a huge deterrent for potential students, especially those who are the first in their family to pursue medicine, come from a disadvantaged background, or have other people for whom they are financially responsible. Is it possible that the restrictions of COVID-19 could finally lead to cost cutting?
A bigger solution – free medical school – predated the pandemic. Institutions such as New York University have completely eliminated tuition, whereas others such as the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (my alma mater) have limited the amount of debt with which a student graduates. You can imagine my frustration that the debt limit policy was enacted after I graduated.
Still, as optimistic as some have been at this movement that developed in the past 5 years, many think this specific evolution is little more than a “pipe dream.”
Current students score big with USMLE change
Beyond med school cost, another universally despised part of medical training that has seen a dramatic change is the licensing examination. My dedicated study period for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 was my worst time of medical school. Well, it was second to holding a retractor in the operating room for hours at a time.
Like everyone, I suspected that Step 1 would not be an accurate indicator of my ability to actually care for patients. As a practicing physician, I can now tell you for sure that this is the case. How lucky for the next generation, then, that the test is going to a pass/fail grading system.
Step 1 has always been important, as residency programs rely on the score to weed out applicants. Even if that screening emphasis simply gets shifted to scores on other examinations, this change still feels like progress. As Fathy told me, “There will likely be more emphasis on USMLE Step 2. But I think, based on practice questions I’ve done, that is more relevant to clinical abilities.” From my new vantage point, I can confirm that.
Not everyone is excited, though. Delamerced told me that he fears that the pass/fail Step 1 score may disparately affect students outside of allopathic medical schools. He said that the new scoring system “does not allow students to distinguish themselves via a standardized test score. That may hurt IMGs or DO students.”
Even then, Delamerced conceded that the change has some clear benefits. “For med students’ mental health, it’s probably a good thing.” From a population-based perspective, a medical student’s mental health often declines throughout school. Standardized exams are not the only cause, but we all know that it is a big contributor. The Step 1 switch can only help with that.
Finish faster or learn more?
In addition to evolution in the content and methods used to teach and assess current med students, the duration of med ed has also changed. Today’s students can choose to complete medical school in less than 4 years.
At the school where I work, the Fully Integrated Readiness for Service Training (FIRST) program allows certain students to complete their education in just 3 years. This program is for students who already know early on that they want to pursue a specialty included on our curated list. The goal of the program is to ultimately train physicians in family medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, or general surgery in order to provide crucial care to those who need it most in our state.
Other medical schools offer accelerated MD programs for students based on various admissions criteria and specialty interest. The benefit of these programs is that shortening training time cuts down on debt for students.
Accelerated MD programs also aim to quickly increase the number of practicing physicians. This is especially important for primary care, which expects to see a growing gap in the years to come. That aim has come under some criticism, as some believe that the 4-year program was the standard for a reason. But when I reflect on it, I often wonder whether my fourth year was really worth $60,000. I spent a lot of that year traveling for residency interviews and watching Netflix between clinic electives.
Instead of finishing medical school faster, some students now have an opportunity to integrate additional training and education. Benson told me that, at Harvard, many students take a year off to pursue other opportunities. He said, “About 40% of students end up taking a fifth year to do either a master’s degree, global health, or research.” Benson said the additional learning opportunities are broad. “Some classmates even go to other schools altogether to get additional education.” Widened areas of learning are likely to produce better doctors, in my opinion.
This chance to look back on medical education has shown me that the ways in which it has changed rapidly in just the past few years are largely positive. Although COVID-19 has been an unwanted bane, it has also forced schools to integrate new technology and has placed an even brighter spotlight on health inequities and other areas in which education further improved. I hope that, when I look back on med ed in another 5 years, it has grown even more flexible and nimble in meeting the ever-changing needs of students and patients alike.
Alexa Mieses Malchuk, MD, MPH, was born and raised in Queens, New York. Social justice is what drew her to family medicine. As an academic physician at the University of North Carolina, she practices inpatient and outpatient medicine and serves as a medical educator for students and residents.
This article first appeared on Medscape.com.
Patients can read your clinical notes starting Nov. 2
Starting Nov. 2, all patients in the United States will have immediate access to clinical notes and thus will be able to read their doctors’ writings, as well as test results and reports from pathology and imaging.
The 21st Century Cures Act mandates that patients have fast, electronic access to the following types of notes: consultations, discharge summaries, history, physical examination findings, imaging narratives, laboratory and pathology report narratives, and procedure and progress notes.
But this federal mandate, called “open notes” by many, is potentially confusing and frightening for patients, say some physicians. Others worry that the change will increase workload as clinicians tailor notes for patients and answer related questions.
The law means that inpatient and outpatient notes will be released immediately and that patients will have immediate access to testing and imaging results, including results from sexually transmitted disease tests, Pap tests, cancer biopsies, CT and PET scans, fetal ultrasounds, pneumonia cultures, and mammograms.
Such notes could contain sensitive information, and there is concern that patients could be shocked, confused, or annoyed by what they read, even with more run-of-the-mill notes.
Champions of open notes say that the benefits, including better provider-patient communication, greatly outweigh such risks.
“This is about convenience – a bit like online banking,” commented Charlotte Blease, PhD, resident scholar at OpenNotes, an advocacy nonprofit organization headquartered at the Beth Israel–Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “But it’s a culture shift for doctors,” she said in an interview.
“It turns physician paternalism on its head,” said C. T. Lin, MD, chief medical information officer, UCHealth, Denver. The change requires “some letting go of old traditions” in medicine, he wrote in an August blog post, referring to the fact that a computer screen – and not a physician – may tell patients about a new health problem.
Dr. Lin summarized the experience at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, which has allowed patients to have access to oncology notes for the past 5 years: “No issues and highly appreciated by patients. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
A new audience
Other institutions have also been voluntarily implementing open notes.
UC Davis Health in Sacramento, Calif., has run an optional program for the past year. However, only about two dozen of approximately 1,000 staff physicians opted in to the program.
“This illustrates the point that it’s a new thing that physicians aren’t used to doing. They’ve traditionally written notes for the benefit of their colleagues, for billing, for their own reference,” Scott MacDonald, MD, an internist and electronic health record medical director at UC Davis Health, told this news organization.
“They’ve never –until recently – had the patient as one of the audiences for a note,” he said.
Liam Keating, MD, an otolaryngologist in Martinez, Calif., recalls that he once wrote “globus hystericus,” and the patient wanted to sue him for saying that the patient was hysterical. “I now just code ‘Globus’ (if I don’t jump straight to LPD [lateral pharyngeal diverticulum]),” he commented in response to a commentary on open notes.
Sensitive information occurs more often in certain specialties, for example, psychiatry, genetics, adolescent medicine, and oncology, experts say.
“Cancer is an area that is highly charged for patients and doctors alike,” Dr. MacDonald pointed out. When reading pathology or imaging notes, patients may learn that they have been diagnosed with cancer or that they have a recurrence “without the physician being able to contextualize it and explain things – that’s just new and scary,” he said.
California law dictates that providers cannot post cancer test results without talking with the patient first, said Dr. MacDonald, but not all states have such laws.
Adjustments needed – or not – with open notes
At UCHealth in Aurora, Colo., Robert Breeze, MD, vice-chair of neurosurgery, said he has adjusted his practice to accommodate open notes and to anticipate trouble spots.*
“When I order imaging or send pathology specimens, I have already discussed with the patient the possibilities, including cancer, and what we will do next. Patients deeply appreciate these discussions, before they see the results,” he commented in an institutional white paper issued in anticipation of the changes on Nov. 2.
This is called precounseling, said Trent Rosenbloom, MD, MPH, director of patient portals at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn., which has been a pioneer in information sharing with patients. Their system does delay the release of information in the case of “complicated” results, such as from cancer biopsies, he said in an interview.
However, Christiaan Hoff, MD, PhD, a surgeon at the Medical Center Leeuwarden (the Netherlands), wonders how important it is for the physician to be present when the patient receives bad news, including news about cancer. “We may overestimate our added value in these situations,” he suggested.
“Our empathy may not outweigh” the disadvantages of the situation, and the “finer points of our explanation will often go unnoticed” by the stressed patient, he commented. Dr. Hoff was also responding to the commentary about open notes.
In that commentary, Jack West, MD, a medical oncologist at City of Hope Cancer Center, Duarte, Calif., was concerned about misunderstandings. Oncology is complex, and patients can struggle to understand their prognosis and planned treatment efficacy, especially in cases of metastatic disease, he wrote.
This concern is somewhat refuted by a study published Oct. 5 in Cancer Cell. Responses to two surveys involving 96 oncology clinicians at three U.S. centers found that almost half (44%) believed that their patients “would be confused” by open notes.
However, only 4% of the 3,418 cancer patients from the same surveys reported being confused by open notes. (A majority of participants had more than a high school education, and English was their primary language.)
“Patient and clinician views about open notes in oncology are not aligned, with patients expressing considerably more enthusiasm,” wrote the authors, led by Liz Salmi, senior strategist at OpenNotes, who has been treated for brain cancer.
“All clinicians are anxious at first,” Ms. Salmi told this news organization. “Those patients who have more serious or chronic conditions … are more likely to read their notes.”
The survey results echo the early experience reported from Sweden, where open notes was launched in 2012. “Patients have loved it from the beginning,” said Maria Haggland, PhD, of Uppsala MedTech Science Innovation Center.
However, when the scheme first launched, it was considered to be “very controversial,” and “there were a lot of complaints, from health care professionals, especially,” she added.
Over time, clinicians have embraced open notes, and the program has 7.2 million patient accounts in a country of 10 million people, she observed during an Oct. 5 webinar on open notes.
More work for already overworked clinicians?
An outstanding concern about open notes is that it will cause more work for health care professionals.
Traditionally, doctors have written notes using medical lexicon, including a lot of abbreviations and jargon for efficiency’s sake. Now that patients will read the notes, will clinicians have to spell out things in lay terms, alter their writing so as not to offend, and generally do more work?
William Harvey, MD, chief medical information officer, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, acknowledged that that may be the case.
In a forthcoming note to staff about the Nov. 2 start of open notes, Dr. Harvey will include a reminder to accommodate the patient as a reader. But that may or may not mean an increase in work volume, depending on the provider. “Clinical note writing is highly personal. There’s an art to it,” he said in an interview. “So it’s hard to give standard advice.”
Steven Reidbord, MD, a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco and a lecturer at California Pacific Medical Center, is particularly concerned about the impact of open notes on progress notes, which he calls a tool to develop strategies and make observations while working with a patient.
By watering down the language for patients, “you are trading away the technical precision and other advantages of having a professional language,” he told this news organization.
“These notes serve many masters already,” he said, referring to purposes such as utilization review and billing. “The more masters they serve, the less useful they are to get medical work done.”
Dr. MacDonald, the medical information officer, said the new law doesn’t mandate a change in writing style.
In a study published last year, researchers analyzed notes written by oncologists before and after adoption of open notes. They found that, on average, clinicians did not change their note writing. The investigators analyzed more than 100,000 clinical notes written by 35 oncologists at a single center.
Advocates for open notes emphasize that there are benefits for clinicians.
“Doctors are overworked. They’re overburdened. But empowered patients can help the doctor,” said OpenNotes’ Dr. Blease. She cited survey data that show that patients better understand their treatment plan and medication, which can cut down on physician workload.
Open notes are “what you make of it,” said Marlene Millen, MD, an internist at UC San Diego Health, which has had a pilot program for 3 years. Each day, Dr. Millen discusses a shared note with two or three patients. “I actually end all of my appointments with, ‘Don’t forget to read your note later,’ ” she told this news organization.
“I was a little afraid of this initially,” she said, but within the first 3 months of the pilot, about 15 patients gave her direct feedback on how much they appreciated her notes. “It seemed to really reassure them that they were getting good care.”
The persons quoted in this article have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Correction, 10/23/20: An earlier version of this article misstated the campus' location.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Starting Nov. 2, all patients in the United States will have immediate access to clinical notes and thus will be able to read their doctors’ writings, as well as test results and reports from pathology and imaging.
The 21st Century Cures Act mandates that patients have fast, electronic access to the following types of notes: consultations, discharge summaries, history, physical examination findings, imaging narratives, laboratory and pathology report narratives, and procedure and progress notes.
But this federal mandate, called “open notes” by many, is potentially confusing and frightening for patients, say some physicians. Others worry that the change will increase workload as clinicians tailor notes for patients and answer related questions.
The law means that inpatient and outpatient notes will be released immediately and that patients will have immediate access to testing and imaging results, including results from sexually transmitted disease tests, Pap tests, cancer biopsies, CT and PET scans, fetal ultrasounds, pneumonia cultures, and mammograms.
Such notes could contain sensitive information, and there is concern that patients could be shocked, confused, or annoyed by what they read, even with more run-of-the-mill notes.
Champions of open notes say that the benefits, including better provider-patient communication, greatly outweigh such risks.
“This is about convenience – a bit like online banking,” commented Charlotte Blease, PhD, resident scholar at OpenNotes, an advocacy nonprofit organization headquartered at the Beth Israel–Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “But it’s a culture shift for doctors,” she said in an interview.
“It turns physician paternalism on its head,” said C. T. Lin, MD, chief medical information officer, UCHealth, Denver. The change requires “some letting go of old traditions” in medicine, he wrote in an August blog post, referring to the fact that a computer screen – and not a physician – may tell patients about a new health problem.
Dr. Lin summarized the experience at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, which has allowed patients to have access to oncology notes for the past 5 years: “No issues and highly appreciated by patients. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
A new audience
Other institutions have also been voluntarily implementing open notes.
UC Davis Health in Sacramento, Calif., has run an optional program for the past year. However, only about two dozen of approximately 1,000 staff physicians opted in to the program.
“This illustrates the point that it’s a new thing that physicians aren’t used to doing. They’ve traditionally written notes for the benefit of their colleagues, for billing, for their own reference,” Scott MacDonald, MD, an internist and electronic health record medical director at UC Davis Health, told this news organization.
“They’ve never –until recently – had the patient as one of the audiences for a note,” he said.
Liam Keating, MD, an otolaryngologist in Martinez, Calif., recalls that he once wrote “globus hystericus,” and the patient wanted to sue him for saying that the patient was hysterical. “I now just code ‘Globus’ (if I don’t jump straight to LPD [lateral pharyngeal diverticulum]),” he commented in response to a commentary on open notes.
Sensitive information occurs more often in certain specialties, for example, psychiatry, genetics, adolescent medicine, and oncology, experts say.
“Cancer is an area that is highly charged for patients and doctors alike,” Dr. MacDonald pointed out. When reading pathology or imaging notes, patients may learn that they have been diagnosed with cancer or that they have a recurrence “without the physician being able to contextualize it and explain things – that’s just new and scary,” he said.
California law dictates that providers cannot post cancer test results without talking with the patient first, said Dr. MacDonald, but not all states have such laws.
Adjustments needed – or not – with open notes
At UCHealth in Aurora, Colo., Robert Breeze, MD, vice-chair of neurosurgery, said he has adjusted his practice to accommodate open notes and to anticipate trouble spots.*
“When I order imaging or send pathology specimens, I have already discussed with the patient the possibilities, including cancer, and what we will do next. Patients deeply appreciate these discussions, before they see the results,” he commented in an institutional white paper issued in anticipation of the changes on Nov. 2.
This is called precounseling, said Trent Rosenbloom, MD, MPH, director of patient portals at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn., which has been a pioneer in information sharing with patients. Their system does delay the release of information in the case of “complicated” results, such as from cancer biopsies, he said in an interview.
However, Christiaan Hoff, MD, PhD, a surgeon at the Medical Center Leeuwarden (the Netherlands), wonders how important it is for the physician to be present when the patient receives bad news, including news about cancer. “We may overestimate our added value in these situations,” he suggested.
“Our empathy may not outweigh” the disadvantages of the situation, and the “finer points of our explanation will often go unnoticed” by the stressed patient, he commented. Dr. Hoff was also responding to the commentary about open notes.
In that commentary, Jack West, MD, a medical oncologist at City of Hope Cancer Center, Duarte, Calif., was concerned about misunderstandings. Oncology is complex, and patients can struggle to understand their prognosis and planned treatment efficacy, especially in cases of metastatic disease, he wrote.
This concern is somewhat refuted by a study published Oct. 5 in Cancer Cell. Responses to two surveys involving 96 oncology clinicians at three U.S. centers found that almost half (44%) believed that their patients “would be confused” by open notes.
However, only 4% of the 3,418 cancer patients from the same surveys reported being confused by open notes. (A majority of participants had more than a high school education, and English was their primary language.)
“Patient and clinician views about open notes in oncology are not aligned, with patients expressing considerably more enthusiasm,” wrote the authors, led by Liz Salmi, senior strategist at OpenNotes, who has been treated for brain cancer.
“All clinicians are anxious at first,” Ms. Salmi told this news organization. “Those patients who have more serious or chronic conditions … are more likely to read their notes.”
The survey results echo the early experience reported from Sweden, where open notes was launched in 2012. “Patients have loved it from the beginning,” said Maria Haggland, PhD, of Uppsala MedTech Science Innovation Center.
However, when the scheme first launched, it was considered to be “very controversial,” and “there were a lot of complaints, from health care professionals, especially,” she added.
Over time, clinicians have embraced open notes, and the program has 7.2 million patient accounts in a country of 10 million people, she observed during an Oct. 5 webinar on open notes.
More work for already overworked clinicians?
An outstanding concern about open notes is that it will cause more work for health care professionals.
Traditionally, doctors have written notes using medical lexicon, including a lot of abbreviations and jargon for efficiency’s sake. Now that patients will read the notes, will clinicians have to spell out things in lay terms, alter their writing so as not to offend, and generally do more work?
William Harvey, MD, chief medical information officer, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, acknowledged that that may be the case.
In a forthcoming note to staff about the Nov. 2 start of open notes, Dr. Harvey will include a reminder to accommodate the patient as a reader. But that may or may not mean an increase in work volume, depending on the provider. “Clinical note writing is highly personal. There’s an art to it,” he said in an interview. “So it’s hard to give standard advice.”
Steven Reidbord, MD, a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco and a lecturer at California Pacific Medical Center, is particularly concerned about the impact of open notes on progress notes, which he calls a tool to develop strategies and make observations while working with a patient.
By watering down the language for patients, “you are trading away the technical precision and other advantages of having a professional language,” he told this news organization.
“These notes serve many masters already,” he said, referring to purposes such as utilization review and billing. “The more masters they serve, the less useful they are to get medical work done.”
Dr. MacDonald, the medical information officer, said the new law doesn’t mandate a change in writing style.
In a study published last year, researchers analyzed notes written by oncologists before and after adoption of open notes. They found that, on average, clinicians did not change their note writing. The investigators analyzed more than 100,000 clinical notes written by 35 oncologists at a single center.
Advocates for open notes emphasize that there are benefits for clinicians.
“Doctors are overworked. They’re overburdened. But empowered patients can help the doctor,” said OpenNotes’ Dr. Blease. She cited survey data that show that patients better understand their treatment plan and medication, which can cut down on physician workload.
Open notes are “what you make of it,” said Marlene Millen, MD, an internist at UC San Diego Health, which has had a pilot program for 3 years. Each day, Dr. Millen discusses a shared note with two or three patients. “I actually end all of my appointments with, ‘Don’t forget to read your note later,’ ” she told this news organization.
“I was a little afraid of this initially,” she said, but within the first 3 months of the pilot, about 15 patients gave her direct feedback on how much they appreciated her notes. “It seemed to really reassure them that they were getting good care.”
The persons quoted in this article have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Correction, 10/23/20: An earlier version of this article misstated the campus' location.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Starting Nov. 2, all patients in the United States will have immediate access to clinical notes and thus will be able to read their doctors’ writings, as well as test results and reports from pathology and imaging.
The 21st Century Cures Act mandates that patients have fast, electronic access to the following types of notes: consultations, discharge summaries, history, physical examination findings, imaging narratives, laboratory and pathology report narratives, and procedure and progress notes.
But this federal mandate, called “open notes” by many, is potentially confusing and frightening for patients, say some physicians. Others worry that the change will increase workload as clinicians tailor notes for patients and answer related questions.
The law means that inpatient and outpatient notes will be released immediately and that patients will have immediate access to testing and imaging results, including results from sexually transmitted disease tests, Pap tests, cancer biopsies, CT and PET scans, fetal ultrasounds, pneumonia cultures, and mammograms.
Such notes could contain sensitive information, and there is concern that patients could be shocked, confused, or annoyed by what they read, even with more run-of-the-mill notes.
Champions of open notes say that the benefits, including better provider-patient communication, greatly outweigh such risks.
“This is about convenience – a bit like online banking,” commented Charlotte Blease, PhD, resident scholar at OpenNotes, an advocacy nonprofit organization headquartered at the Beth Israel–Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “But it’s a culture shift for doctors,” she said in an interview.
“It turns physician paternalism on its head,” said C. T. Lin, MD, chief medical information officer, UCHealth, Denver. The change requires “some letting go of old traditions” in medicine, he wrote in an August blog post, referring to the fact that a computer screen – and not a physician – may tell patients about a new health problem.
Dr. Lin summarized the experience at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, which has allowed patients to have access to oncology notes for the past 5 years: “No issues and highly appreciated by patients. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
A new audience
Other institutions have also been voluntarily implementing open notes.
UC Davis Health in Sacramento, Calif., has run an optional program for the past year. However, only about two dozen of approximately 1,000 staff physicians opted in to the program.
“This illustrates the point that it’s a new thing that physicians aren’t used to doing. They’ve traditionally written notes for the benefit of their colleagues, for billing, for their own reference,” Scott MacDonald, MD, an internist and electronic health record medical director at UC Davis Health, told this news organization.
“They’ve never –until recently – had the patient as one of the audiences for a note,” he said.
Liam Keating, MD, an otolaryngologist in Martinez, Calif., recalls that he once wrote “globus hystericus,” and the patient wanted to sue him for saying that the patient was hysterical. “I now just code ‘Globus’ (if I don’t jump straight to LPD [lateral pharyngeal diverticulum]),” he commented in response to a commentary on open notes.
Sensitive information occurs more often in certain specialties, for example, psychiatry, genetics, adolescent medicine, and oncology, experts say.
“Cancer is an area that is highly charged for patients and doctors alike,” Dr. MacDonald pointed out. When reading pathology or imaging notes, patients may learn that they have been diagnosed with cancer or that they have a recurrence “without the physician being able to contextualize it and explain things – that’s just new and scary,” he said.
California law dictates that providers cannot post cancer test results without talking with the patient first, said Dr. MacDonald, but not all states have such laws.
Adjustments needed – or not – with open notes
At UCHealth in Aurora, Colo., Robert Breeze, MD, vice-chair of neurosurgery, said he has adjusted his practice to accommodate open notes and to anticipate trouble spots.*
“When I order imaging or send pathology specimens, I have already discussed with the patient the possibilities, including cancer, and what we will do next. Patients deeply appreciate these discussions, before they see the results,” he commented in an institutional white paper issued in anticipation of the changes on Nov. 2.
This is called precounseling, said Trent Rosenbloom, MD, MPH, director of patient portals at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn., which has been a pioneer in information sharing with patients. Their system does delay the release of information in the case of “complicated” results, such as from cancer biopsies, he said in an interview.
However, Christiaan Hoff, MD, PhD, a surgeon at the Medical Center Leeuwarden (the Netherlands), wonders how important it is for the physician to be present when the patient receives bad news, including news about cancer. “We may overestimate our added value in these situations,” he suggested.
“Our empathy may not outweigh” the disadvantages of the situation, and the “finer points of our explanation will often go unnoticed” by the stressed patient, he commented. Dr. Hoff was also responding to the commentary about open notes.
In that commentary, Jack West, MD, a medical oncologist at City of Hope Cancer Center, Duarte, Calif., was concerned about misunderstandings. Oncology is complex, and patients can struggle to understand their prognosis and planned treatment efficacy, especially in cases of metastatic disease, he wrote.
This concern is somewhat refuted by a study published Oct. 5 in Cancer Cell. Responses to two surveys involving 96 oncology clinicians at three U.S. centers found that almost half (44%) believed that their patients “would be confused” by open notes.
However, only 4% of the 3,418 cancer patients from the same surveys reported being confused by open notes. (A majority of participants had more than a high school education, and English was their primary language.)
“Patient and clinician views about open notes in oncology are not aligned, with patients expressing considerably more enthusiasm,” wrote the authors, led by Liz Salmi, senior strategist at OpenNotes, who has been treated for brain cancer.
“All clinicians are anxious at first,” Ms. Salmi told this news organization. “Those patients who have more serious or chronic conditions … are more likely to read their notes.”
The survey results echo the early experience reported from Sweden, where open notes was launched in 2012. “Patients have loved it from the beginning,” said Maria Haggland, PhD, of Uppsala MedTech Science Innovation Center.
However, when the scheme first launched, it was considered to be “very controversial,” and “there were a lot of complaints, from health care professionals, especially,” she added.
Over time, clinicians have embraced open notes, and the program has 7.2 million patient accounts in a country of 10 million people, she observed during an Oct. 5 webinar on open notes.
More work for already overworked clinicians?
An outstanding concern about open notes is that it will cause more work for health care professionals.
Traditionally, doctors have written notes using medical lexicon, including a lot of abbreviations and jargon for efficiency’s sake. Now that patients will read the notes, will clinicians have to spell out things in lay terms, alter their writing so as not to offend, and generally do more work?
William Harvey, MD, chief medical information officer, Tufts Medical Center, Boston, acknowledged that that may be the case.
In a forthcoming note to staff about the Nov. 2 start of open notes, Dr. Harvey will include a reminder to accommodate the patient as a reader. But that may or may not mean an increase in work volume, depending on the provider. “Clinical note writing is highly personal. There’s an art to it,” he said in an interview. “So it’s hard to give standard advice.”
Steven Reidbord, MD, a psychiatrist in private practice in San Francisco and a lecturer at California Pacific Medical Center, is particularly concerned about the impact of open notes on progress notes, which he calls a tool to develop strategies and make observations while working with a patient.
By watering down the language for patients, “you are trading away the technical precision and other advantages of having a professional language,” he told this news organization.
“These notes serve many masters already,” he said, referring to purposes such as utilization review and billing. “The more masters they serve, the less useful they are to get medical work done.”
Dr. MacDonald, the medical information officer, said the new law doesn’t mandate a change in writing style.
In a study published last year, researchers analyzed notes written by oncologists before and after adoption of open notes. They found that, on average, clinicians did not change their note writing. The investigators analyzed more than 100,000 clinical notes written by 35 oncologists at a single center.
Advocates for open notes emphasize that there are benefits for clinicians.
“Doctors are overworked. They’re overburdened. But empowered patients can help the doctor,” said OpenNotes’ Dr. Blease. She cited survey data that show that patients better understand their treatment plan and medication, which can cut down on physician workload.
Open notes are “what you make of it,” said Marlene Millen, MD, an internist at UC San Diego Health, which has had a pilot program for 3 years. Each day, Dr. Millen discusses a shared note with two or three patients. “I actually end all of my appointments with, ‘Don’t forget to read your note later,’ ” she told this news organization.
“I was a little afraid of this initially,” she said, but within the first 3 months of the pilot, about 15 patients gave her direct feedback on how much they appreciated her notes. “It seemed to really reassure them that they were getting good care.”
The persons quoted in this article have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
Correction, 10/23/20: An earlier version of this article misstated the campus' location.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Genitourinary syndrome of menopause statement stresses treatment options
It’s important for clinicians to ask women whether they are experiencing symptoms of genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM) before and after menopause, according to a new statement from the North American Menopause Society.
Stephanie Faubion, MD, MBA, medical director of NAMS, presented the updated statement at the virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society.
“The one thing we tried to emphasize is proactive counseling and proactive inquiry, educating women when they hit perimenopause that this is a thing and that there are treatments,” Dr. Faubion said in an interview.
There’s the misperception that it’s just part of getting old, which it’s not,” said Dr. Faubion, who is also director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health in Rochester, Minn., and chair of the department of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.
Changes from previous statement
The GSM statement describes the symptoms and signs resulting from estrogen deficiency on the genitourinary tract, Dr. Faubion explained. The biggest change from the earlier version, published in 2013, is the condition’s new name. Formerly known as vulvovaginal atrophy, the condition’s new term was developed in 2014 and is now preferred by NAMS and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists because it’s more comprehensive. Rather than just a physical description of the condition, GSM encompasses the many related symptoms and the urinary tract changes that occur, and it clearly associates the condition with menopause.
“Women don’t always associate these changes with menopause and don’t recognize that there’s something that can be done about it,” Dr. Faubion said. “We like to emphasize that sex should never be painful, but it’s not just about sex. It’s about comfort.”
Other changes include a review of evidence related to vaginal laser therapy for GSM and the availability of Imvexxy vaginal inserts with lower doses (4 mcg and 10 mpg) of estrogen.
Etiology and diagnosis of GSM
The presence of endogenous estrogen keeps the vaginal lining thick, rugated, well vascularized, and lubricated. As estrogen levels decline during postmenopause, the epithelial lining becomes thinner, with reduced blood supply and loss of glycogen.
The most common symptoms of GSM include irritation of the vulva, inadequate vaginal lubrication, burning, dysuria, dyspareunia, and vaginal discharge, but the symptoms may not always correlate with physical findings. In women with surgical menopause, the symptoms tend to be more severe. The most distressing symptoms to women are often those that affect sexual function.
“Clinicians must be proactive in asking menopausal women if GSM symptoms are present, even before menopause begins,” Dr. Faubion said.
Taking a women’s history during evaluation may help identify contributing factors, other causes, or potentially effective treatments based on what has worked in the past. History should include a description of symptoms, their onset and duration, how distressing they are, and their effect on the woman’s quality of life. A sexual history, such as lubricants the woman has used, can also be useful in determining management strategies.
Signs of GSM include labial atrophy, vaginal dryness, introital stenosis, clitoral atrophy, phimosis of the prepuce, reduced mons pubis and labia majora bulk, reduced labia minora tissue and pigmentation, and changes in the urethra, including erythema of the urethral meatus and commonly a urethral caruncle, a benign outgrown of inflammatory tissue that likely results from low estrogen levels and can be treated effectively with topical hormonal therapies.
A diagnosis of GSM requires both physical findings and bothersome symptoms, though not necessarily specific vaginal maturation index or vaginal pH values. The differential diagnosis speaks to the importance of taking a good history: allergic or inflammatory conditions, infection, trauma, presence of a foreign body, malignancy, vulvodynia, chronic pelvic pain, or provoked pelvic floor hypertonia.
If first-line therapies of over-the-counter lubricants do not sufficiently treat GSM, other effective treatments include low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy, systemic estrogen therapy if other menopause symptoms are present, vaginal dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and ospemifene.
Management of GSM
First-line therapy of GSM involves over-the-counter lubricants and moisturizers, which are often adequate to alleviate or eliminate women’s symptoms. However, the panel that developed the statement found no evidence that hyaluronic acid was any more effective than other lubricants or moisturizers, and no herbal products were found to effectively treat GSM.
While emerging evidence suggests that energy-based therapies, such as treatments with vaginal laser or radiofrequency devices, show some promise, more evidence is needed to show safety and efficacy before the panel can recommend routine use.
When over-the-counter therapies are not effective, vaginal estrogen usually relieves GSM with little absorption and is preferred over systemic therapy if GSM is the only bothersome menopausal symptom. Options include topical creams, a slow-release estradiol intravaginal ring, and estradiol vaginal tablets and inserts.
“However, when systemic hormone therapy is needed to treat other menopause symptoms, usually a woman will derive benefit and resolution of the GSM at the same time,” Dr. Faubion said. “However, for some women, additional low-dose vaginal estrogen may be added to systemic estrogen if needed, and that could include vaginal DHEA.”
All the approved vaginal products have shown efficacy, compared with placebo in clinical trials, and a Cochrane review comparing the different therapies found them to be similarly efficacious in treating vaginal dryness and dyspareunia with no significant differences in adverse events.
Preparing patients for the boxed warning
As vaginal estrogen doses are significantly lower than systemic estrogen, their safety profile is better, with serum estrogen levels remaining within the postmenopausal range when low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy is used. That said, some studies have shown that vaginal estrogen cream can be a large enough dose to involve systemic absorption and lead to symptoms such as vaginal bleeding, breast pain, and nausea.
However, package inserts for vaginal estrogen have the same boxed warning as seen in systemic hormone therapy inserts regarding risk of endometrial cancer, breast cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and “probable dementia” despite these conditions not being linked to vaginal estrogen in trials. Neither has venous thromboembolism been linked to vaginal estrogen.
“The panel felt it was very important that women be educated about the differences between low-dose vaginal estrogen and systemic estrogen therapy and be prepared for this boxed warning,” Dr. Faubion told attendees. “It’s really important to say: ‘You’re going to get this, it’s going to look scary, and there’s no evidence these same warnings apply to the low-dose vaginal estrogen products.’ ”
This point particularly resonated with NAMS attendee Juliana (Jewel) Kling, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, Scottsdale.
“The point about educating women about the differences between low-dose vaginal estrogen products and systemic treatments and being prepared for the boxed warning is important and I hope reaches many practitioners,” Dr. Kling said in an interview.
The panel did not recommend using progestogen with low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy or doing routine endometrial surveillance in women using vaginal estrogen. But endometrial surveillance may be worth considering in women with increased risk of endometrial cancer.
Estrogen insufficiency from premature menopause or primary ovarian insufficiency is linked to more severe sexual dysfunction, which can be particularly upsetting for younger women with vaginal atrophy and dyspareunia. A meta-analysis showed that vaginal estrogen appeared to slightly outperform over-the-counter lubricants in bringing back sexual function.
Undiagnosed vaginal or uterine bleeding is a contraindication for vaginal estrogen until the cause has been determined, and providers should use caution in prescribing vaginal estrogen to women with estrogen-dependent neoplasia. Dr. Faubion noted that GSM is common in women with breast cancer, especially if they are receiving endocrine treatments or aromatase inhibitors.
“For women with a hormone-dependent cancer, GSM management depends on each woman’s preference in consultants with her oncologist,” she said. GSM management in women with a nonhormone-dependent cancer, however, is no different than in women without cancer.
DHEA is a steroid that effectively improves vaginal maturation index, vaginal pH, dyspareunia, and vaginal dryness. The most common side effect is vaginal discharge.
Ospemifene, an estrogen agonist available in the United States but not in Canada, is the only oral product approved to treat vaginal dryness and dyspareunia. An observational study also found it effective in reducing recurrent UTIs. The most common side effect is vasomotor symptoms, and it should not be used in patients with breast cancer because it hasn’t been studied in this population.
“This updated information and position statement was needed and will be very clinically relevant in treating midlife women,” Dr. Kling said in an interview. “Dr. Faubion presented a high-level overview of the position statement with clinically relevant points, including treatment for sexual dysfunction related to GSM, GSM treatment in cancer patients, and emphasized the efficacy and low-risk safety profile of low-dose vaginal estrogen, compared to systemic [hormone therapy], for treatment of GSM.”
Dr. Faubion and Dr. Kling disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
It’s important for clinicians to ask women whether they are experiencing symptoms of genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM) before and after menopause, according to a new statement from the North American Menopause Society.
Stephanie Faubion, MD, MBA, medical director of NAMS, presented the updated statement at the virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society.
“The one thing we tried to emphasize is proactive counseling and proactive inquiry, educating women when they hit perimenopause that this is a thing and that there are treatments,” Dr. Faubion said in an interview.
There’s the misperception that it’s just part of getting old, which it’s not,” said Dr. Faubion, who is also director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health in Rochester, Minn., and chair of the department of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.
Changes from previous statement
The GSM statement describes the symptoms and signs resulting from estrogen deficiency on the genitourinary tract, Dr. Faubion explained. The biggest change from the earlier version, published in 2013, is the condition’s new name. Formerly known as vulvovaginal atrophy, the condition’s new term was developed in 2014 and is now preferred by NAMS and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists because it’s more comprehensive. Rather than just a physical description of the condition, GSM encompasses the many related symptoms and the urinary tract changes that occur, and it clearly associates the condition with menopause.
“Women don’t always associate these changes with menopause and don’t recognize that there’s something that can be done about it,” Dr. Faubion said. “We like to emphasize that sex should never be painful, but it’s not just about sex. It’s about comfort.”
Other changes include a review of evidence related to vaginal laser therapy for GSM and the availability of Imvexxy vaginal inserts with lower doses (4 mcg and 10 mpg) of estrogen.
Etiology and diagnosis of GSM
The presence of endogenous estrogen keeps the vaginal lining thick, rugated, well vascularized, and lubricated. As estrogen levels decline during postmenopause, the epithelial lining becomes thinner, with reduced blood supply and loss of glycogen.
The most common symptoms of GSM include irritation of the vulva, inadequate vaginal lubrication, burning, dysuria, dyspareunia, and vaginal discharge, but the symptoms may not always correlate with physical findings. In women with surgical menopause, the symptoms tend to be more severe. The most distressing symptoms to women are often those that affect sexual function.
“Clinicians must be proactive in asking menopausal women if GSM symptoms are present, even before menopause begins,” Dr. Faubion said.
Taking a women’s history during evaluation may help identify contributing factors, other causes, or potentially effective treatments based on what has worked in the past. History should include a description of symptoms, their onset and duration, how distressing they are, and their effect on the woman’s quality of life. A sexual history, such as lubricants the woman has used, can also be useful in determining management strategies.
Signs of GSM include labial atrophy, vaginal dryness, introital stenosis, clitoral atrophy, phimosis of the prepuce, reduced mons pubis and labia majora bulk, reduced labia minora tissue and pigmentation, and changes in the urethra, including erythema of the urethral meatus and commonly a urethral caruncle, a benign outgrown of inflammatory tissue that likely results from low estrogen levels and can be treated effectively with topical hormonal therapies.
A diagnosis of GSM requires both physical findings and bothersome symptoms, though not necessarily specific vaginal maturation index or vaginal pH values. The differential diagnosis speaks to the importance of taking a good history: allergic or inflammatory conditions, infection, trauma, presence of a foreign body, malignancy, vulvodynia, chronic pelvic pain, or provoked pelvic floor hypertonia.
If first-line therapies of over-the-counter lubricants do not sufficiently treat GSM, other effective treatments include low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy, systemic estrogen therapy if other menopause symptoms are present, vaginal dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and ospemifene.
Management of GSM
First-line therapy of GSM involves over-the-counter lubricants and moisturizers, which are often adequate to alleviate or eliminate women’s symptoms. However, the panel that developed the statement found no evidence that hyaluronic acid was any more effective than other lubricants or moisturizers, and no herbal products were found to effectively treat GSM.
While emerging evidence suggests that energy-based therapies, such as treatments with vaginal laser or radiofrequency devices, show some promise, more evidence is needed to show safety and efficacy before the panel can recommend routine use.
When over-the-counter therapies are not effective, vaginal estrogen usually relieves GSM with little absorption and is preferred over systemic therapy if GSM is the only bothersome menopausal symptom. Options include topical creams, a slow-release estradiol intravaginal ring, and estradiol vaginal tablets and inserts.
“However, when systemic hormone therapy is needed to treat other menopause symptoms, usually a woman will derive benefit and resolution of the GSM at the same time,” Dr. Faubion said. “However, for some women, additional low-dose vaginal estrogen may be added to systemic estrogen if needed, and that could include vaginal DHEA.”
All the approved vaginal products have shown efficacy, compared with placebo in clinical trials, and a Cochrane review comparing the different therapies found them to be similarly efficacious in treating vaginal dryness and dyspareunia with no significant differences in adverse events.
Preparing patients for the boxed warning
As vaginal estrogen doses are significantly lower than systemic estrogen, their safety profile is better, with serum estrogen levels remaining within the postmenopausal range when low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy is used. That said, some studies have shown that vaginal estrogen cream can be a large enough dose to involve systemic absorption and lead to symptoms such as vaginal bleeding, breast pain, and nausea.
However, package inserts for vaginal estrogen have the same boxed warning as seen in systemic hormone therapy inserts regarding risk of endometrial cancer, breast cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and “probable dementia” despite these conditions not being linked to vaginal estrogen in trials. Neither has venous thromboembolism been linked to vaginal estrogen.
“The panel felt it was very important that women be educated about the differences between low-dose vaginal estrogen and systemic estrogen therapy and be prepared for this boxed warning,” Dr. Faubion told attendees. “It’s really important to say: ‘You’re going to get this, it’s going to look scary, and there’s no evidence these same warnings apply to the low-dose vaginal estrogen products.’ ”
This point particularly resonated with NAMS attendee Juliana (Jewel) Kling, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, Scottsdale.
“The point about educating women about the differences between low-dose vaginal estrogen products and systemic treatments and being prepared for the boxed warning is important and I hope reaches many practitioners,” Dr. Kling said in an interview.
The panel did not recommend using progestogen with low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy or doing routine endometrial surveillance in women using vaginal estrogen. But endometrial surveillance may be worth considering in women with increased risk of endometrial cancer.
Estrogen insufficiency from premature menopause or primary ovarian insufficiency is linked to more severe sexual dysfunction, which can be particularly upsetting for younger women with vaginal atrophy and dyspareunia. A meta-analysis showed that vaginal estrogen appeared to slightly outperform over-the-counter lubricants in bringing back sexual function.
Undiagnosed vaginal or uterine bleeding is a contraindication for vaginal estrogen until the cause has been determined, and providers should use caution in prescribing vaginal estrogen to women with estrogen-dependent neoplasia. Dr. Faubion noted that GSM is common in women with breast cancer, especially if they are receiving endocrine treatments or aromatase inhibitors.
“For women with a hormone-dependent cancer, GSM management depends on each woman’s preference in consultants with her oncologist,” she said. GSM management in women with a nonhormone-dependent cancer, however, is no different than in women without cancer.
DHEA is a steroid that effectively improves vaginal maturation index, vaginal pH, dyspareunia, and vaginal dryness. The most common side effect is vaginal discharge.
Ospemifene, an estrogen agonist available in the United States but not in Canada, is the only oral product approved to treat vaginal dryness and dyspareunia. An observational study also found it effective in reducing recurrent UTIs. The most common side effect is vasomotor symptoms, and it should not be used in patients with breast cancer because it hasn’t been studied in this population.
“This updated information and position statement was needed and will be very clinically relevant in treating midlife women,” Dr. Kling said in an interview. “Dr. Faubion presented a high-level overview of the position statement with clinically relevant points, including treatment for sexual dysfunction related to GSM, GSM treatment in cancer patients, and emphasized the efficacy and low-risk safety profile of low-dose vaginal estrogen, compared to systemic [hormone therapy], for treatment of GSM.”
Dr. Faubion and Dr. Kling disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
It’s important for clinicians to ask women whether they are experiencing symptoms of genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM) before and after menopause, according to a new statement from the North American Menopause Society.
Stephanie Faubion, MD, MBA, medical director of NAMS, presented the updated statement at the virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society.
“The one thing we tried to emphasize is proactive counseling and proactive inquiry, educating women when they hit perimenopause that this is a thing and that there are treatments,” Dr. Faubion said in an interview.
There’s the misperception that it’s just part of getting old, which it’s not,” said Dr. Faubion, who is also director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health in Rochester, Minn., and chair of the department of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.
Changes from previous statement
The GSM statement describes the symptoms and signs resulting from estrogen deficiency on the genitourinary tract, Dr. Faubion explained. The biggest change from the earlier version, published in 2013, is the condition’s new name. Formerly known as vulvovaginal atrophy, the condition’s new term was developed in 2014 and is now preferred by NAMS and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists because it’s more comprehensive. Rather than just a physical description of the condition, GSM encompasses the many related symptoms and the urinary tract changes that occur, and it clearly associates the condition with menopause.
“Women don’t always associate these changes with menopause and don’t recognize that there’s something that can be done about it,” Dr. Faubion said. “We like to emphasize that sex should never be painful, but it’s not just about sex. It’s about comfort.”
Other changes include a review of evidence related to vaginal laser therapy for GSM and the availability of Imvexxy vaginal inserts with lower doses (4 mcg and 10 mpg) of estrogen.
Etiology and diagnosis of GSM
The presence of endogenous estrogen keeps the vaginal lining thick, rugated, well vascularized, and lubricated. As estrogen levels decline during postmenopause, the epithelial lining becomes thinner, with reduced blood supply and loss of glycogen.
The most common symptoms of GSM include irritation of the vulva, inadequate vaginal lubrication, burning, dysuria, dyspareunia, and vaginal discharge, but the symptoms may not always correlate with physical findings. In women with surgical menopause, the symptoms tend to be more severe. The most distressing symptoms to women are often those that affect sexual function.
“Clinicians must be proactive in asking menopausal women if GSM symptoms are present, even before menopause begins,” Dr. Faubion said.
Taking a women’s history during evaluation may help identify contributing factors, other causes, or potentially effective treatments based on what has worked in the past. History should include a description of symptoms, their onset and duration, how distressing they are, and their effect on the woman’s quality of life. A sexual history, such as lubricants the woman has used, can also be useful in determining management strategies.
Signs of GSM include labial atrophy, vaginal dryness, introital stenosis, clitoral atrophy, phimosis of the prepuce, reduced mons pubis and labia majora bulk, reduced labia minora tissue and pigmentation, and changes in the urethra, including erythema of the urethral meatus and commonly a urethral caruncle, a benign outgrown of inflammatory tissue that likely results from low estrogen levels and can be treated effectively with topical hormonal therapies.
A diagnosis of GSM requires both physical findings and bothersome symptoms, though not necessarily specific vaginal maturation index or vaginal pH values. The differential diagnosis speaks to the importance of taking a good history: allergic or inflammatory conditions, infection, trauma, presence of a foreign body, malignancy, vulvodynia, chronic pelvic pain, or provoked pelvic floor hypertonia.
If first-line therapies of over-the-counter lubricants do not sufficiently treat GSM, other effective treatments include low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy, systemic estrogen therapy if other menopause symptoms are present, vaginal dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), and ospemifene.
Management of GSM
First-line therapy of GSM involves over-the-counter lubricants and moisturizers, which are often adequate to alleviate or eliminate women’s symptoms. However, the panel that developed the statement found no evidence that hyaluronic acid was any more effective than other lubricants or moisturizers, and no herbal products were found to effectively treat GSM.
While emerging evidence suggests that energy-based therapies, such as treatments with vaginal laser or radiofrequency devices, show some promise, more evidence is needed to show safety and efficacy before the panel can recommend routine use.
When over-the-counter therapies are not effective, vaginal estrogen usually relieves GSM with little absorption and is preferred over systemic therapy if GSM is the only bothersome menopausal symptom. Options include topical creams, a slow-release estradiol intravaginal ring, and estradiol vaginal tablets and inserts.
“However, when systemic hormone therapy is needed to treat other menopause symptoms, usually a woman will derive benefit and resolution of the GSM at the same time,” Dr. Faubion said. “However, for some women, additional low-dose vaginal estrogen may be added to systemic estrogen if needed, and that could include vaginal DHEA.”
All the approved vaginal products have shown efficacy, compared with placebo in clinical trials, and a Cochrane review comparing the different therapies found them to be similarly efficacious in treating vaginal dryness and dyspareunia with no significant differences in adverse events.
Preparing patients for the boxed warning
As vaginal estrogen doses are significantly lower than systemic estrogen, their safety profile is better, with serum estrogen levels remaining within the postmenopausal range when low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy is used. That said, some studies have shown that vaginal estrogen cream can be a large enough dose to involve systemic absorption and lead to symptoms such as vaginal bleeding, breast pain, and nausea.
However, package inserts for vaginal estrogen have the same boxed warning as seen in systemic hormone therapy inserts regarding risk of endometrial cancer, breast cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and “probable dementia” despite these conditions not being linked to vaginal estrogen in trials. Neither has venous thromboembolism been linked to vaginal estrogen.
“The panel felt it was very important that women be educated about the differences between low-dose vaginal estrogen and systemic estrogen therapy and be prepared for this boxed warning,” Dr. Faubion told attendees. “It’s really important to say: ‘You’re going to get this, it’s going to look scary, and there’s no evidence these same warnings apply to the low-dose vaginal estrogen products.’ ”
This point particularly resonated with NAMS attendee Juliana (Jewel) Kling, MD, MPH, an associate professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic Arizona, Scottsdale.
“The point about educating women about the differences between low-dose vaginal estrogen products and systemic treatments and being prepared for the boxed warning is important and I hope reaches many practitioners,” Dr. Kling said in an interview.
The panel did not recommend using progestogen with low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy or doing routine endometrial surveillance in women using vaginal estrogen. But endometrial surveillance may be worth considering in women with increased risk of endometrial cancer.
Estrogen insufficiency from premature menopause or primary ovarian insufficiency is linked to more severe sexual dysfunction, which can be particularly upsetting for younger women with vaginal atrophy and dyspareunia. A meta-analysis showed that vaginal estrogen appeared to slightly outperform over-the-counter lubricants in bringing back sexual function.
Undiagnosed vaginal or uterine bleeding is a contraindication for vaginal estrogen until the cause has been determined, and providers should use caution in prescribing vaginal estrogen to women with estrogen-dependent neoplasia. Dr. Faubion noted that GSM is common in women with breast cancer, especially if they are receiving endocrine treatments or aromatase inhibitors.
“For women with a hormone-dependent cancer, GSM management depends on each woman’s preference in consultants with her oncologist,” she said. GSM management in women with a nonhormone-dependent cancer, however, is no different than in women without cancer.
DHEA is a steroid that effectively improves vaginal maturation index, vaginal pH, dyspareunia, and vaginal dryness. The most common side effect is vaginal discharge.
Ospemifene, an estrogen agonist available in the United States but not in Canada, is the only oral product approved to treat vaginal dryness and dyspareunia. An observational study also found it effective in reducing recurrent UTIs. The most common side effect is vasomotor symptoms, and it should not be used in patients with breast cancer because it hasn’t been studied in this population.
“This updated information and position statement was needed and will be very clinically relevant in treating midlife women,” Dr. Kling said in an interview. “Dr. Faubion presented a high-level overview of the position statement with clinically relevant points, including treatment for sexual dysfunction related to GSM, GSM treatment in cancer patients, and emphasized the efficacy and low-risk safety profile of low-dose vaginal estrogen, compared to systemic [hormone therapy], for treatment of GSM.”
Dr. Faubion and Dr. Kling disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Popularity of virtual conferences may mean a permanent shift
Fifteen days. That’s how much time the American College of Cardiology (ACC) had to convert its annual conference, scheduled for the end of March this year in Chicago, into a virtual meeting for the estimated 17,000 people who had planned to attend.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Illinois announced restrictions on the size of gatherings on March 13, causing the ACC to pivot to an online-only model.
“One big advantage was that we already had all of our content planned,” Janice Sibley, the ACC’s executive vice president of education, told Medscape Medical News. “We knew who the faculty would be for different sessions, and many of them had already planned their slides.”
But determining how to present those hundreds of presentations at an online conference, not to mention addressing the logistics related to registrations, tech platforms, exhibit hall sponsors, and other aspects of an annual meeting, would be no small task.
But according to a Medscape poll, many physicians think that, while the virtual experience is worthwhile and getting better, it’s never going to be the same as spending several days on site, immersed in the experience of an annual meeting.
As one respondent commented, “I miss the intellectual excitement, the electricity in the room, when there is a live presentation that announces a major breakthrough.”
Large medical societies have an advantage
As ACC rapidly prepared for its virtual conference, the society first refunded all registration and expo fees and worked with the vendor partners to resolve the cancellation of rental space, food and beverage services, and decorating. Then they organized a team of 15 people split into three groups. One group focused on the intellectual, scientific, and educational elements of the virtual conference. They chose 24 sessions to livestream and decided to prerecord the rest for on-demand access, limiting the number of presenters they needed to train for online presentation.
A second team focused on business and worked with industry partners on how to translate a large expo into digital offerings. They developed virtual pages, advertisements, promotions, and industry-sponsored education.
The third team’s focus, Ms. Sibley said, was most critical, and the hardest: addressing socio-emotional needs.
“That group was responsible for trying to create the buzz and excitement we would have had at the event,” she said, “pivoting that experience we would have had in a live event to a virtual environment. What we were worried about was, would anyone even come?”
But ACC built it, and they did indeed come. Within a half hour of the opening session, nearly 13,000 people logged on from around the world. “It worked beautifully,” Ms. Sibley said.
By the end of the 3-day event, approximately 34,000 unique visitors had logged in for live or prerecorded sessions. Although ACC worried at first about technical glitches and bandwidth needs, everything ran smoothly. By 90 days after the meeting, 63,000 unique users had logged in to access the conference content.
ACC was among the first organizations forced to switch from an in-person to all-online meeting, but dozens of other organizations have now done the same, discovering the benefits and drawbacks of a virtual environment while experimenting with different formats and offerings. Talks with a few large medical societies about the experience revealed several common themes, including the following:
- Finding new ways to attract and measure attendance.
- Ensuring the actual scientific content was as robust online as in person.
- Realizing the value of social media in enhancing the socio-emotional experience.
- Believing that virtual meetings will become a permanent fixture in a future of “hybrid” conferences.
New ways of attracting and measuring attendance
Previous ways to measure meeting attendance were straightforward: number of registrations and number of people physically walking into sessions. An online conference, however, offers dozens of ways to measure attendance. While the number of registrations remained one tool – and all the organizations interviewed reported record numbers of registrations – organizations also used other metrics to measure success, such as “participation,” “engagement,” and “viewing time.”
ACC defined “participation” as a unique user logging in, and it defined “engagement” as sticking around for a while, possibly using chat functions or discussing the content on social media. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference in May, which attracted more than 44,000 registered attendees, also measured total content views – more than 2.5 million during the meeting – and monitored social media. More than 8,800 Twitter users posted more than 45,000 tweets with the #ASCO20 hashtag during the meeting, generating 750 million likes, shares, and comments. The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) annual congress registered a record 18,700 delegates – up from 14,500 in 2019 – but it also measured attendance by average viewing time and visits by congress day and by category.
Organizations shifted fee structures as well. While ACC refunded fees for its first online meeting, it has since developed tiers to match fees to anticipated value, such as charging more for livestreamed sessions that allow interactivity than for viewing recordings. ASCO offered a one-time fee waiver for members plus free registration to cancer survivors and caregivers, discounted registration for patient advocates, and reduced fees for other categories. But adjusting how to measure attendance and charge for events were the easy parts of transitioning to online.
Priority for having robust content
The biggest difficulty for most organizations was the short time they had to move online, with a host of challenges accompanying the switch, said the executive director of EULAR, Julia Rautenstrauch, DrMed. These included technical requirements, communication, training, finances, legal issues, compliance rules, and other logistics.
“The year 2020 will be remembered for being the year of unexpected transformation,” said a spokesperson from European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), who declined to be named. “The number of fundamental questions we had to ask ourselves is pages long. The solutions we have implemented so far have been successful, but we won’t rest on our laurels.”
ASCO had an advantage in the pivot, despite only 6 weeks to make the switch, because they already had a robust online platform to build on. “We weren’t starting from scratch, but we were sure changing the way we prepared,” ASCO CEO Clifford Hudis, MD, said.
All of the organizations made the breadth and quality of scientific and educational content a top priority, and those who have already hosted meetings this year report positive feedback.
“The rating of the scientific content was excellent, and the event did indeed fulfill the educational goals and expected learning outcomes for the vast majority of delegates,” EULAR’s Dr. Rautenstrauch said.
“Our goal, when we went into this, was that, in the future when somebody looks back at ASCO20, they should not be able to tell that it was a different year from any other in terms of the science,” Dr. Hudis said.
Missing out on networking and social interaction
Even when logistics run smoothly, virtual conferences must overcome two other challenges: the loss of in-person interactions and the potential for “Zoom burnout.”
“You do miss that human contact, the unsaid reactions in the room when you’re speaking or providing a controversial statement, even the facial expression or seeing people lean in or being distracted,” Ms. Sibley said.
Taher Modarressi, MD, an endocrinologist with Diabetes and Endocrine Associates of Hunterdon in Flemington, N.J., said all the digital conferences he has attended were missing those key social elements: “seeing old friends, sideline discussions that generate new ideas, and meeting new colleagues. However, this has been partly alleviated with the robust rise of social media and ‘MedTwitter,’ in particular, where these discussions and interactions continue.”
To attempt to meet that need for social interaction, societies came up with a variety of options. EULAR offered chatrooms, “Meet the Expert” sessions, and other virtual opportunities for live interaction. ASCO hosted discussion groups with subsets of participants, such as virtual meetings with oncology fellows, and it plans to offer networking sessions and “poster walks” during future meetings.
“The value of an in-person meeting is connecting with people, exchanging ideas over coffee, and making new contacts,” ASCO’s Dr. Hudis said. While virtual meetings lose many of those personal interactions, knowledge can also be shared with more people, he said.
The key to combating digital fatigue is focusing on opportunities for interactivity, ACC’s Ms. Sibley said. “When you are creating a virtual environment, it’s important that you offer choices.” Online learners tend to have shorter attention spans than in-person learners, so people need opportunities to flip between sessions, like flipping between TV channels. Different engagement options are also essential, such as chat functions on the video platforms, asking questions of presenters orally or in writing, and using the familiar hashtags for social media discussion.
“We set up all those different ways to interact, and you allow the user to choose,” Ms. Sibley said.
Some conferences, however, had less time or fewer resources to adjust to a virtual format and couldn’t make up for the lost social interaction. Andy Bowman, MD, a neonatologist in Lubbock, Tex., was supposed to attend the Neonatal & Pediatric Airborne Transport Conference sponsored by International Biomed in the spring, but it was canceled at the last minute. Several weeks later, the organizers released videos of scheduled speakers giving their talks, but it was less engaging and too easy to get distracted, Dr. Bowman said.
“There is a noticeable decrease in energy – you can’t look around to feed off other’s reactions when a speaker says something off the wall, or new, or contrary to expectations,” he said. He also especially missed the social interactions, such as “missing out on the chance encounters in the hallway or seeing the same face in back-to-back sessions and figuring out you have shared interest.” He was also sorry to miss the expo because neonatal transport requires a lot of specialty equipment, and he appreciates the chance to actually touch and see it in person.
Advantages of an online meeting
Despite the challenges, online meetings can overcome obstacles of in-person meetings, particularly for those in low- and middle-income countries, such as travel and registration costs, the hardships of being away from practice, and visa restrictions.
“You really have the potential to broaden your reach,” Ms. Sibley said, noting that people in 157 countries participated in ACC.20.
Another advantage is keeping the experience available to people after the livestreamed event.
“Virtual events have demonstrated the potential for a more democratic conference world, expanding the dissemination of information to a much wider community of stakeholders,” ESMO’s spokesperson said.
Not traveling can actually mean getting more out of the conference, said Atisha Patel Manhas, MD, a hematologist/oncologist in Dallas, who attended ASCO. “I have really enjoyed the access aspect – on the virtual platform there is so much more content available to you, and travel time doesn’t cut into conference time,” she said, though she also missed the interaction with colleagues.
Others found that virtual conferences provided more engagement than in-person conferences. Marwah Abdalla, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine and director of education for the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, felt that moderated Q&A sessions offered more interaction among participants. She attended and spoke on a panel during virtual SLEEP 2020, a joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society (SRS).
“Usually during in-person sessions, only a few questions are possible, and participants rarely have an opportunity to discuss the presentations within the session due to time limits,” Dr. Abdalla said. “Because the conference presentations can also be viewed asynchronously, participants have been able to comment on lectures and continue the discussion offline, either via social media or via email.” She acknowledged drawbacks of the virtual experience, such as an inability to socialize in person and participate in activities but appreciated the new opportunities to network and learn from international colleagues who would not have been able to attend in person.
Ritu Thamman, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, pointed out that many institutions have cut their travel budgets, and physicians would be unable to attend in-person conferences for financial or other reasons. She especially appreciated that the European Society of Cardiology had no registration fee for ESC 2020 and made their content free for all of September, which led to more than 100,000 participants.
“That meant anyone anywhere could learn,” she said. “It makes it much more diverse and more egalitarian. That feels like a good step in the right direction for all of us.”
Dr. Modarressi, who found ESC “exhilarating,” similarly noted the benefit of such an equitably accessible conference. “Decreasing barriers and improving access to top-line results and up-to-date information has always been a challenge to the global health community,” he said, noting that the map of attendance for the virtual meeting was “astonishing.”
Given these benefits, organizers said they expect a future of hybrid conferences: physical meetings for those able to attend in person and virtual ones for those who cannot.
“We also expect that the hybrid congress will cater to the needs of people on-site by allowing them additional access to more scientific content than by physical attendance alone,” Dr. Rautenstrauch said.
Everyone has been in reactive mode this year, Ms. Sibley said, but the future looks bright as they seek ways to overcome challenges such as socio-emotional needs and virtual expo spaces.
“We’ve been thrust into the virtual world much faster than we expected, but we’re finding it’s opening more opportunities than we had live,” Ms. Sibley said. “This has catapulted us, for better or worse, into a new way to deliver education and other types of information.
“I think, if we’re smart, we’ll continue to think of ways this can augment our live environment and not replace it.”
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Fifteen days. That’s how much time the American College of Cardiology (ACC) had to convert its annual conference, scheduled for the end of March this year in Chicago, into a virtual meeting for the estimated 17,000 people who had planned to attend.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Illinois announced restrictions on the size of gatherings on March 13, causing the ACC to pivot to an online-only model.
“One big advantage was that we already had all of our content planned,” Janice Sibley, the ACC’s executive vice president of education, told Medscape Medical News. “We knew who the faculty would be for different sessions, and many of them had already planned their slides.”
But determining how to present those hundreds of presentations at an online conference, not to mention addressing the logistics related to registrations, tech platforms, exhibit hall sponsors, and other aspects of an annual meeting, would be no small task.
But according to a Medscape poll, many physicians think that, while the virtual experience is worthwhile and getting better, it’s never going to be the same as spending several days on site, immersed in the experience of an annual meeting.
As one respondent commented, “I miss the intellectual excitement, the electricity in the room, when there is a live presentation that announces a major breakthrough.”
Large medical societies have an advantage
As ACC rapidly prepared for its virtual conference, the society first refunded all registration and expo fees and worked with the vendor partners to resolve the cancellation of rental space, food and beverage services, and decorating. Then they organized a team of 15 people split into three groups. One group focused on the intellectual, scientific, and educational elements of the virtual conference. They chose 24 sessions to livestream and decided to prerecord the rest for on-demand access, limiting the number of presenters they needed to train for online presentation.
A second team focused on business and worked with industry partners on how to translate a large expo into digital offerings. They developed virtual pages, advertisements, promotions, and industry-sponsored education.
The third team’s focus, Ms. Sibley said, was most critical, and the hardest: addressing socio-emotional needs.
“That group was responsible for trying to create the buzz and excitement we would have had at the event,” she said, “pivoting that experience we would have had in a live event to a virtual environment. What we were worried about was, would anyone even come?”
But ACC built it, and they did indeed come. Within a half hour of the opening session, nearly 13,000 people logged on from around the world. “It worked beautifully,” Ms. Sibley said.
By the end of the 3-day event, approximately 34,000 unique visitors had logged in for live or prerecorded sessions. Although ACC worried at first about technical glitches and bandwidth needs, everything ran smoothly. By 90 days after the meeting, 63,000 unique users had logged in to access the conference content.
ACC was among the first organizations forced to switch from an in-person to all-online meeting, but dozens of other organizations have now done the same, discovering the benefits and drawbacks of a virtual environment while experimenting with different formats and offerings. Talks with a few large medical societies about the experience revealed several common themes, including the following:
- Finding new ways to attract and measure attendance.
- Ensuring the actual scientific content was as robust online as in person.
- Realizing the value of social media in enhancing the socio-emotional experience.
- Believing that virtual meetings will become a permanent fixture in a future of “hybrid” conferences.
New ways of attracting and measuring attendance
Previous ways to measure meeting attendance were straightforward: number of registrations and number of people physically walking into sessions. An online conference, however, offers dozens of ways to measure attendance. While the number of registrations remained one tool – and all the organizations interviewed reported record numbers of registrations – organizations also used other metrics to measure success, such as “participation,” “engagement,” and “viewing time.”
ACC defined “participation” as a unique user logging in, and it defined “engagement” as sticking around for a while, possibly using chat functions or discussing the content on social media. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference in May, which attracted more than 44,000 registered attendees, also measured total content views – more than 2.5 million during the meeting – and monitored social media. More than 8,800 Twitter users posted more than 45,000 tweets with the #ASCO20 hashtag during the meeting, generating 750 million likes, shares, and comments. The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) annual congress registered a record 18,700 delegates – up from 14,500 in 2019 – but it also measured attendance by average viewing time and visits by congress day and by category.
Organizations shifted fee structures as well. While ACC refunded fees for its first online meeting, it has since developed tiers to match fees to anticipated value, such as charging more for livestreamed sessions that allow interactivity than for viewing recordings. ASCO offered a one-time fee waiver for members plus free registration to cancer survivors and caregivers, discounted registration for patient advocates, and reduced fees for other categories. But adjusting how to measure attendance and charge for events were the easy parts of transitioning to online.
Priority for having robust content
The biggest difficulty for most organizations was the short time they had to move online, with a host of challenges accompanying the switch, said the executive director of EULAR, Julia Rautenstrauch, DrMed. These included technical requirements, communication, training, finances, legal issues, compliance rules, and other logistics.
“The year 2020 will be remembered for being the year of unexpected transformation,” said a spokesperson from European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), who declined to be named. “The number of fundamental questions we had to ask ourselves is pages long. The solutions we have implemented so far have been successful, but we won’t rest on our laurels.”
ASCO had an advantage in the pivot, despite only 6 weeks to make the switch, because they already had a robust online platform to build on. “We weren’t starting from scratch, but we were sure changing the way we prepared,” ASCO CEO Clifford Hudis, MD, said.
All of the organizations made the breadth and quality of scientific and educational content a top priority, and those who have already hosted meetings this year report positive feedback.
“The rating of the scientific content was excellent, and the event did indeed fulfill the educational goals and expected learning outcomes for the vast majority of delegates,” EULAR’s Dr. Rautenstrauch said.
“Our goal, when we went into this, was that, in the future when somebody looks back at ASCO20, they should not be able to tell that it was a different year from any other in terms of the science,” Dr. Hudis said.
Missing out on networking and social interaction
Even when logistics run smoothly, virtual conferences must overcome two other challenges: the loss of in-person interactions and the potential for “Zoom burnout.”
“You do miss that human contact, the unsaid reactions in the room when you’re speaking or providing a controversial statement, even the facial expression or seeing people lean in or being distracted,” Ms. Sibley said.
Taher Modarressi, MD, an endocrinologist with Diabetes and Endocrine Associates of Hunterdon in Flemington, N.J., said all the digital conferences he has attended were missing those key social elements: “seeing old friends, sideline discussions that generate new ideas, and meeting new colleagues. However, this has been partly alleviated with the robust rise of social media and ‘MedTwitter,’ in particular, where these discussions and interactions continue.”
To attempt to meet that need for social interaction, societies came up with a variety of options. EULAR offered chatrooms, “Meet the Expert” sessions, and other virtual opportunities for live interaction. ASCO hosted discussion groups with subsets of participants, such as virtual meetings with oncology fellows, and it plans to offer networking sessions and “poster walks” during future meetings.
“The value of an in-person meeting is connecting with people, exchanging ideas over coffee, and making new contacts,” ASCO’s Dr. Hudis said. While virtual meetings lose many of those personal interactions, knowledge can also be shared with more people, he said.
The key to combating digital fatigue is focusing on opportunities for interactivity, ACC’s Ms. Sibley said. “When you are creating a virtual environment, it’s important that you offer choices.” Online learners tend to have shorter attention spans than in-person learners, so people need opportunities to flip between sessions, like flipping between TV channels. Different engagement options are also essential, such as chat functions on the video platforms, asking questions of presenters orally or in writing, and using the familiar hashtags for social media discussion.
“We set up all those different ways to interact, and you allow the user to choose,” Ms. Sibley said.
Some conferences, however, had less time or fewer resources to adjust to a virtual format and couldn’t make up for the lost social interaction. Andy Bowman, MD, a neonatologist in Lubbock, Tex., was supposed to attend the Neonatal & Pediatric Airborne Transport Conference sponsored by International Biomed in the spring, but it was canceled at the last minute. Several weeks later, the organizers released videos of scheduled speakers giving their talks, but it was less engaging and too easy to get distracted, Dr. Bowman said.
“There is a noticeable decrease in energy – you can’t look around to feed off other’s reactions when a speaker says something off the wall, or new, or contrary to expectations,” he said. He also especially missed the social interactions, such as “missing out on the chance encounters in the hallway or seeing the same face in back-to-back sessions and figuring out you have shared interest.” He was also sorry to miss the expo because neonatal transport requires a lot of specialty equipment, and he appreciates the chance to actually touch and see it in person.
Advantages of an online meeting
Despite the challenges, online meetings can overcome obstacles of in-person meetings, particularly for those in low- and middle-income countries, such as travel and registration costs, the hardships of being away from practice, and visa restrictions.
“You really have the potential to broaden your reach,” Ms. Sibley said, noting that people in 157 countries participated in ACC.20.
Another advantage is keeping the experience available to people after the livestreamed event.
“Virtual events have demonstrated the potential for a more democratic conference world, expanding the dissemination of information to a much wider community of stakeholders,” ESMO’s spokesperson said.
Not traveling can actually mean getting more out of the conference, said Atisha Patel Manhas, MD, a hematologist/oncologist in Dallas, who attended ASCO. “I have really enjoyed the access aspect – on the virtual platform there is so much more content available to you, and travel time doesn’t cut into conference time,” she said, though she also missed the interaction with colleagues.
Others found that virtual conferences provided more engagement than in-person conferences. Marwah Abdalla, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine and director of education for the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, felt that moderated Q&A sessions offered more interaction among participants. She attended and spoke on a panel during virtual SLEEP 2020, a joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society (SRS).
“Usually during in-person sessions, only a few questions are possible, and participants rarely have an opportunity to discuss the presentations within the session due to time limits,” Dr. Abdalla said. “Because the conference presentations can also be viewed asynchronously, participants have been able to comment on lectures and continue the discussion offline, either via social media or via email.” She acknowledged drawbacks of the virtual experience, such as an inability to socialize in person and participate in activities but appreciated the new opportunities to network and learn from international colleagues who would not have been able to attend in person.
Ritu Thamman, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, pointed out that many institutions have cut their travel budgets, and physicians would be unable to attend in-person conferences for financial or other reasons. She especially appreciated that the European Society of Cardiology had no registration fee for ESC 2020 and made their content free for all of September, which led to more than 100,000 participants.
“That meant anyone anywhere could learn,” she said. “It makes it much more diverse and more egalitarian. That feels like a good step in the right direction for all of us.”
Dr. Modarressi, who found ESC “exhilarating,” similarly noted the benefit of such an equitably accessible conference. “Decreasing barriers and improving access to top-line results and up-to-date information has always been a challenge to the global health community,” he said, noting that the map of attendance for the virtual meeting was “astonishing.”
Given these benefits, organizers said they expect a future of hybrid conferences: physical meetings for those able to attend in person and virtual ones for those who cannot.
“We also expect that the hybrid congress will cater to the needs of people on-site by allowing them additional access to more scientific content than by physical attendance alone,” Dr. Rautenstrauch said.
Everyone has been in reactive mode this year, Ms. Sibley said, but the future looks bright as they seek ways to overcome challenges such as socio-emotional needs and virtual expo spaces.
“We’ve been thrust into the virtual world much faster than we expected, but we’re finding it’s opening more opportunities than we had live,” Ms. Sibley said. “This has catapulted us, for better or worse, into a new way to deliver education and other types of information.
“I think, if we’re smart, we’ll continue to think of ways this can augment our live environment and not replace it.”
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Fifteen days. That’s how much time the American College of Cardiology (ACC) had to convert its annual conference, scheduled for the end of March this year in Chicago, into a virtual meeting for the estimated 17,000 people who had planned to attend.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Illinois announced restrictions on the size of gatherings on March 13, causing the ACC to pivot to an online-only model.
“One big advantage was that we already had all of our content planned,” Janice Sibley, the ACC’s executive vice president of education, told Medscape Medical News. “We knew who the faculty would be for different sessions, and many of them had already planned their slides.”
But determining how to present those hundreds of presentations at an online conference, not to mention addressing the logistics related to registrations, tech platforms, exhibit hall sponsors, and other aspects of an annual meeting, would be no small task.
But according to a Medscape poll, many physicians think that, while the virtual experience is worthwhile and getting better, it’s never going to be the same as spending several days on site, immersed in the experience of an annual meeting.
As one respondent commented, “I miss the intellectual excitement, the electricity in the room, when there is a live presentation that announces a major breakthrough.”
Large medical societies have an advantage
As ACC rapidly prepared for its virtual conference, the society first refunded all registration and expo fees and worked with the vendor partners to resolve the cancellation of rental space, food and beverage services, and decorating. Then they organized a team of 15 people split into three groups. One group focused on the intellectual, scientific, and educational elements of the virtual conference. They chose 24 sessions to livestream and decided to prerecord the rest for on-demand access, limiting the number of presenters they needed to train for online presentation.
A second team focused on business and worked with industry partners on how to translate a large expo into digital offerings. They developed virtual pages, advertisements, promotions, and industry-sponsored education.
The third team’s focus, Ms. Sibley said, was most critical, and the hardest: addressing socio-emotional needs.
“That group was responsible for trying to create the buzz and excitement we would have had at the event,” she said, “pivoting that experience we would have had in a live event to a virtual environment. What we were worried about was, would anyone even come?”
But ACC built it, and they did indeed come. Within a half hour of the opening session, nearly 13,000 people logged on from around the world. “It worked beautifully,” Ms. Sibley said.
By the end of the 3-day event, approximately 34,000 unique visitors had logged in for live or prerecorded sessions. Although ACC worried at first about technical glitches and bandwidth needs, everything ran smoothly. By 90 days after the meeting, 63,000 unique users had logged in to access the conference content.
ACC was among the first organizations forced to switch from an in-person to all-online meeting, but dozens of other organizations have now done the same, discovering the benefits and drawbacks of a virtual environment while experimenting with different formats and offerings. Talks with a few large medical societies about the experience revealed several common themes, including the following:
- Finding new ways to attract and measure attendance.
- Ensuring the actual scientific content was as robust online as in person.
- Realizing the value of social media in enhancing the socio-emotional experience.
- Believing that virtual meetings will become a permanent fixture in a future of “hybrid” conferences.
New ways of attracting and measuring attendance
Previous ways to measure meeting attendance were straightforward: number of registrations and number of people physically walking into sessions. An online conference, however, offers dozens of ways to measure attendance. While the number of registrations remained one tool – and all the organizations interviewed reported record numbers of registrations – organizations also used other metrics to measure success, such as “participation,” “engagement,” and “viewing time.”
ACC defined “participation” as a unique user logging in, and it defined “engagement” as sticking around for a while, possibly using chat functions or discussing the content on social media. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual conference in May, which attracted more than 44,000 registered attendees, also measured total content views – more than 2.5 million during the meeting – and monitored social media. More than 8,800 Twitter users posted more than 45,000 tweets with the #ASCO20 hashtag during the meeting, generating 750 million likes, shares, and comments. The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) annual congress registered a record 18,700 delegates – up from 14,500 in 2019 – but it also measured attendance by average viewing time and visits by congress day and by category.
Organizations shifted fee structures as well. While ACC refunded fees for its first online meeting, it has since developed tiers to match fees to anticipated value, such as charging more for livestreamed sessions that allow interactivity than for viewing recordings. ASCO offered a one-time fee waiver for members plus free registration to cancer survivors and caregivers, discounted registration for patient advocates, and reduced fees for other categories. But adjusting how to measure attendance and charge for events were the easy parts of transitioning to online.
Priority for having robust content
The biggest difficulty for most organizations was the short time they had to move online, with a host of challenges accompanying the switch, said the executive director of EULAR, Julia Rautenstrauch, DrMed. These included technical requirements, communication, training, finances, legal issues, compliance rules, and other logistics.
“The year 2020 will be remembered for being the year of unexpected transformation,” said a spokesperson from European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), who declined to be named. “The number of fundamental questions we had to ask ourselves is pages long. The solutions we have implemented so far have been successful, but we won’t rest on our laurels.”
ASCO had an advantage in the pivot, despite only 6 weeks to make the switch, because they already had a robust online platform to build on. “We weren’t starting from scratch, but we were sure changing the way we prepared,” ASCO CEO Clifford Hudis, MD, said.
All of the organizations made the breadth and quality of scientific and educational content a top priority, and those who have already hosted meetings this year report positive feedback.
“The rating of the scientific content was excellent, and the event did indeed fulfill the educational goals and expected learning outcomes for the vast majority of delegates,” EULAR’s Dr. Rautenstrauch said.
“Our goal, when we went into this, was that, in the future when somebody looks back at ASCO20, they should not be able to tell that it was a different year from any other in terms of the science,” Dr. Hudis said.
Missing out on networking and social interaction
Even when logistics run smoothly, virtual conferences must overcome two other challenges: the loss of in-person interactions and the potential for “Zoom burnout.”
“You do miss that human contact, the unsaid reactions in the room when you’re speaking or providing a controversial statement, even the facial expression or seeing people lean in or being distracted,” Ms. Sibley said.
Taher Modarressi, MD, an endocrinologist with Diabetes and Endocrine Associates of Hunterdon in Flemington, N.J., said all the digital conferences he has attended were missing those key social elements: “seeing old friends, sideline discussions that generate new ideas, and meeting new colleagues. However, this has been partly alleviated with the robust rise of social media and ‘MedTwitter,’ in particular, where these discussions and interactions continue.”
To attempt to meet that need for social interaction, societies came up with a variety of options. EULAR offered chatrooms, “Meet the Expert” sessions, and other virtual opportunities for live interaction. ASCO hosted discussion groups with subsets of participants, such as virtual meetings with oncology fellows, and it plans to offer networking sessions and “poster walks” during future meetings.
“The value of an in-person meeting is connecting with people, exchanging ideas over coffee, and making new contacts,” ASCO’s Dr. Hudis said. While virtual meetings lose many of those personal interactions, knowledge can also be shared with more people, he said.
The key to combating digital fatigue is focusing on opportunities for interactivity, ACC’s Ms. Sibley said. “When you are creating a virtual environment, it’s important that you offer choices.” Online learners tend to have shorter attention spans than in-person learners, so people need opportunities to flip between sessions, like flipping between TV channels. Different engagement options are also essential, such as chat functions on the video platforms, asking questions of presenters orally or in writing, and using the familiar hashtags for social media discussion.
“We set up all those different ways to interact, and you allow the user to choose,” Ms. Sibley said.
Some conferences, however, had less time or fewer resources to adjust to a virtual format and couldn’t make up for the lost social interaction. Andy Bowman, MD, a neonatologist in Lubbock, Tex., was supposed to attend the Neonatal & Pediatric Airborne Transport Conference sponsored by International Biomed in the spring, but it was canceled at the last minute. Several weeks later, the organizers released videos of scheduled speakers giving their talks, but it was less engaging and too easy to get distracted, Dr. Bowman said.
“There is a noticeable decrease in energy – you can’t look around to feed off other’s reactions when a speaker says something off the wall, or new, or contrary to expectations,” he said. He also especially missed the social interactions, such as “missing out on the chance encounters in the hallway or seeing the same face in back-to-back sessions and figuring out you have shared interest.” He was also sorry to miss the expo because neonatal transport requires a lot of specialty equipment, and he appreciates the chance to actually touch and see it in person.
Advantages of an online meeting
Despite the challenges, online meetings can overcome obstacles of in-person meetings, particularly for those in low- and middle-income countries, such as travel and registration costs, the hardships of being away from practice, and visa restrictions.
“You really have the potential to broaden your reach,” Ms. Sibley said, noting that people in 157 countries participated in ACC.20.
Another advantage is keeping the experience available to people after the livestreamed event.
“Virtual events have demonstrated the potential for a more democratic conference world, expanding the dissemination of information to a much wider community of stakeholders,” ESMO’s spokesperson said.
Not traveling can actually mean getting more out of the conference, said Atisha Patel Manhas, MD, a hematologist/oncologist in Dallas, who attended ASCO. “I have really enjoyed the access aspect – on the virtual platform there is so much more content available to you, and travel time doesn’t cut into conference time,” she said, though she also missed the interaction with colleagues.
Others found that virtual conferences provided more engagement than in-person conferences. Marwah Abdalla, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine and director of education for the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, felt that moderated Q&A sessions offered more interaction among participants. She attended and spoke on a panel during virtual SLEEP 2020, a joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the Sleep Research Society (SRS).
“Usually during in-person sessions, only a few questions are possible, and participants rarely have an opportunity to discuss the presentations within the session due to time limits,” Dr. Abdalla said. “Because the conference presentations can also be viewed asynchronously, participants have been able to comment on lectures and continue the discussion offline, either via social media or via email.” She acknowledged drawbacks of the virtual experience, such as an inability to socialize in person and participate in activities but appreciated the new opportunities to network and learn from international colleagues who would not have been able to attend in person.
Ritu Thamman, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, pointed out that many institutions have cut their travel budgets, and physicians would be unable to attend in-person conferences for financial or other reasons. She especially appreciated that the European Society of Cardiology had no registration fee for ESC 2020 and made their content free for all of September, which led to more than 100,000 participants.
“That meant anyone anywhere could learn,” she said. “It makes it much more diverse and more egalitarian. That feels like a good step in the right direction for all of us.”
Dr. Modarressi, who found ESC “exhilarating,” similarly noted the benefit of such an equitably accessible conference. “Decreasing barriers and improving access to top-line results and up-to-date information has always been a challenge to the global health community,” he said, noting that the map of attendance for the virtual meeting was “astonishing.”
Given these benefits, organizers said they expect a future of hybrid conferences: physical meetings for those able to attend in person and virtual ones for those who cannot.
“We also expect that the hybrid congress will cater to the needs of people on-site by allowing them additional access to more scientific content than by physical attendance alone,” Dr. Rautenstrauch said.
Everyone has been in reactive mode this year, Ms. Sibley said, but the future looks bright as they seek ways to overcome challenges such as socio-emotional needs and virtual expo spaces.
“We’ve been thrust into the virtual world much faster than we expected, but we’re finding it’s opening more opportunities than we had live,” Ms. Sibley said. “This has catapulted us, for better or worse, into a new way to deliver education and other types of information.
“I think, if we’re smart, we’ll continue to think of ways this can augment our live environment and not replace it.”
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Fetal estrogens show promise for safer therapy for menopause
Hormone therapy for menopausal symptoms has come a long way in the past decade, but some low risks remain, particularly for certain groups of women. But new naturally occurring estrogens are on the horizon and may provide safer options with similar efficacy for treating hot flashes and other symptoms, researchers report.
“Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the perfect estrogen that has all the things that makes it favorable and none of the negative,” Hugh S. Taylor, MD, told attendees at the virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society. “It probably doesn’t exist. But there’s an opportunity for us to design better estrogens or take advantage of other naturally occurring estrogens that come closer to that goal of the ideal estrogen,” said Dr. Taylor, professor and chair of ob.gyn. and reproductive sciences at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Those naturally occurring estrogens are the fetal estrogens, estetrol and estriol, which are produced almost exclusively during pregnancy. Only estetrol has been investigated in clinical trials, and it does show some promise, Dr. Taylor said.
“If there’s a better cardiovascular effect without the breast cancer risk, this could be something everyone would want to take,” Dr. Taylor said in an interview. We’ve never really been able to get a synthetic estrogen [that works].”
Hormone therapy still most effective for vasomotor symptoms
The primary benefits of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women are decreased hot flashes and night sweats and the prevention of bone loss, vaginal dryness, and vaginal atrophy. But as women age, particularly past age 70 years, the risks for stroke, heart disease, and breast cancer associated with hormone therapy begin to outweigh the benefits.
That leaves women who are still experiencing those symptoms in a quandary.
“Some people will take on substantial risks because they want to continue taking hormones,” Nanette F. Santoro, MD, a professor of ob.gyn. at the University of Colorado at Denver, Aurora, said in an interview. “If they understand what they’re doing and they tell me that they are that miserable, then I will continue their hormones.”
Dr. Santoro, who was not involved in Taylor’s work, said some patients have seen her because their primary care providers refused to continue prescribing them hormones at their age, despite serious vasomotor symptoms that interfered with their daily life.
“Women are sometimes not taken seriously, and I think that’s a problem,” Dr. Santoro said. “Women need to be able to make an informed choice about what kinds of risk they’re taking on. Many physicians’ rationales are that hot flashes never killed anybody. Well, they can sure make you miserable.”
Dr. Taylor echoed the importance of taking women’s symptoms seriously and helping them choose the most effective treatments to manage their symptoms.
“The rush of adrenaline, the anxiety, the palpitations, the heart racing, the sweating, all the night sweats [that mean] you can’t sleep at night, and the lack of adequate REM sleep – all these things add up and can really be disruptive to someone’s life,” Dr. Taylor said in an interview. “I think it’s important that we raise awareness of how severe it can be, about just how low the risks [of hormone therapy] are, and get people more comfortable using hormone therapy, but also continue to search for safer, better products that will eliminate even those low risks.”
A major development toward that goal in the past decade has been therapies that combine an estrogen with a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), which have antiestrogen effects in the endometrium and breast without blocking estrogen in the bones and brain.
One such tissue-selective estrogen complex (TSEC) is the combination of bazedoxifene (20 mg) and conjugated estrogens (0.45 mg). Clinical trials showed that this TSEC reduced the frequency of hot flashes by 74%, compared with 47% with placebo. In addition, TSEC reduced the severity of hot flashes by 39%, compared with 13% with placebo. The combination also improved bone density at the spine and hip without promoting endometrial hyperplasia.
“It looks like it does exactly what we want,” Dr. Taylor told NAMS attendees. “The SERM is antagonizing the effects of the estrogens in the endometrium but not in the bone or brain.” It also led to a decrease in total cholesterol, and there was no increase in breast stimulation or density.
Another advance in recent years has been more choices and more precision with dosing, Dr. Santoro said.
“Where inroads have been made is in having women be aware of all the options they have and in getting the most convenient compounds to people,” she said, despite the confusion and misinformation that have arisen from the proliferation of bioidenticals. “You can dial in a dose for just about anybody.”
New estrogens in the pipeline
Neither of these developments, however, have eliminated the risks associated with hormone therapy for women of older age or for women at high risk for breast cancer. Although total elimination of risk may not be possible, recent research suggests that the naturally occurring fetal estrogens estriol and estetrol appear to have SERM-like properties, Dr. Taylor said. These estrogens are made only in pregnancy and appear to have evolved for a purpose different from that of estrone and estradiol.
“While both are weak estrogens by traditional standards, both have unique properties that make them very interesting for therapeutic use,” Dr. Taylor said. In particular, estetrol has a much longer half-life than estriol, making it more appropriate for therapeutic investigation.
A study of estetrol that was published in Menopause in August 2020 showed encouraging results. Despite a fairly sizable placebo effect, there was also a dose-response effect from estetrol on vasomotor symptoms. Low doses did not have much effect, but with higher doses (15 mg), there was a robust, significant improvement in the frequency and severity of hot flashes. So far, Dr. Taylor said, it looks like estetrol can be a highly effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms.
In addition, preclinical research suggests that estetrol may have a better safety profile than currently available therapies, though much more work is needed to know for sure. For example, a 2015 study found that it requires extremely high doses – well above therapeutic levels – for tumor growth to occur. Similarly, a 2019 study found that very high doses of estetrol or estriol were needed before it would stimulate breast cancer cell growth, likely because these are such weak estrogens, compared with estradiol, Dr. Taylor said.
There is currently less information on estetrol’s potential cardiovascular effects, but an animal model suggests positive effects, he said. Giving a mouse estetrol led to an increase in blood vessel dilation with increased blood flow.
The reason these estrogens appear to pose less risk yet still show therapeutic effects appears related to how they bind to the estrogen receptor and what their purpose is, Dr. Taylor told attendees.
“These fetal estrogens are really there probably for developmental programming,” he said. “It’s no wonder they may have some unique and favorable properties for therapeutic use. I’m really enthusiastic to see this explored further as a potential new hormonal therapy.”
Dr. Taylor disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Santoro reported stock ownership in Menogenix and consulting or advising for Ansh Labs, Menogenix, and Ogeda/Astellas.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Hormone therapy for menopausal symptoms has come a long way in the past decade, but some low risks remain, particularly for certain groups of women. But new naturally occurring estrogens are on the horizon and may provide safer options with similar efficacy for treating hot flashes and other symptoms, researchers report.
“Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the perfect estrogen that has all the things that makes it favorable and none of the negative,” Hugh S. Taylor, MD, told attendees at the virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society. “It probably doesn’t exist. But there’s an opportunity for us to design better estrogens or take advantage of other naturally occurring estrogens that come closer to that goal of the ideal estrogen,” said Dr. Taylor, professor and chair of ob.gyn. and reproductive sciences at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Those naturally occurring estrogens are the fetal estrogens, estetrol and estriol, which are produced almost exclusively during pregnancy. Only estetrol has been investigated in clinical trials, and it does show some promise, Dr. Taylor said.
“If there’s a better cardiovascular effect without the breast cancer risk, this could be something everyone would want to take,” Dr. Taylor said in an interview. We’ve never really been able to get a synthetic estrogen [that works].”
Hormone therapy still most effective for vasomotor symptoms
The primary benefits of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women are decreased hot flashes and night sweats and the prevention of bone loss, vaginal dryness, and vaginal atrophy. But as women age, particularly past age 70 years, the risks for stroke, heart disease, and breast cancer associated with hormone therapy begin to outweigh the benefits.
That leaves women who are still experiencing those symptoms in a quandary.
“Some people will take on substantial risks because they want to continue taking hormones,” Nanette F. Santoro, MD, a professor of ob.gyn. at the University of Colorado at Denver, Aurora, said in an interview. “If they understand what they’re doing and they tell me that they are that miserable, then I will continue their hormones.”
Dr. Santoro, who was not involved in Taylor’s work, said some patients have seen her because their primary care providers refused to continue prescribing them hormones at their age, despite serious vasomotor symptoms that interfered with their daily life.
“Women are sometimes not taken seriously, and I think that’s a problem,” Dr. Santoro said. “Women need to be able to make an informed choice about what kinds of risk they’re taking on. Many physicians’ rationales are that hot flashes never killed anybody. Well, they can sure make you miserable.”
Dr. Taylor echoed the importance of taking women’s symptoms seriously and helping them choose the most effective treatments to manage their symptoms.
“The rush of adrenaline, the anxiety, the palpitations, the heart racing, the sweating, all the night sweats [that mean] you can’t sleep at night, and the lack of adequate REM sleep – all these things add up and can really be disruptive to someone’s life,” Dr. Taylor said in an interview. “I think it’s important that we raise awareness of how severe it can be, about just how low the risks [of hormone therapy] are, and get people more comfortable using hormone therapy, but also continue to search for safer, better products that will eliminate even those low risks.”
A major development toward that goal in the past decade has been therapies that combine an estrogen with a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), which have antiestrogen effects in the endometrium and breast without blocking estrogen in the bones and brain.
One such tissue-selective estrogen complex (TSEC) is the combination of bazedoxifene (20 mg) and conjugated estrogens (0.45 mg). Clinical trials showed that this TSEC reduced the frequency of hot flashes by 74%, compared with 47% with placebo. In addition, TSEC reduced the severity of hot flashes by 39%, compared with 13% with placebo. The combination also improved bone density at the spine and hip without promoting endometrial hyperplasia.
“It looks like it does exactly what we want,” Dr. Taylor told NAMS attendees. “The SERM is antagonizing the effects of the estrogens in the endometrium but not in the bone or brain.” It also led to a decrease in total cholesterol, and there was no increase in breast stimulation or density.
Another advance in recent years has been more choices and more precision with dosing, Dr. Santoro said.
“Where inroads have been made is in having women be aware of all the options they have and in getting the most convenient compounds to people,” she said, despite the confusion and misinformation that have arisen from the proliferation of bioidenticals. “You can dial in a dose for just about anybody.”
New estrogens in the pipeline
Neither of these developments, however, have eliminated the risks associated with hormone therapy for women of older age or for women at high risk for breast cancer. Although total elimination of risk may not be possible, recent research suggests that the naturally occurring fetal estrogens estriol and estetrol appear to have SERM-like properties, Dr. Taylor said. These estrogens are made only in pregnancy and appear to have evolved for a purpose different from that of estrone and estradiol.
“While both are weak estrogens by traditional standards, both have unique properties that make them very interesting for therapeutic use,” Dr. Taylor said. In particular, estetrol has a much longer half-life than estriol, making it more appropriate for therapeutic investigation.
A study of estetrol that was published in Menopause in August 2020 showed encouraging results. Despite a fairly sizable placebo effect, there was also a dose-response effect from estetrol on vasomotor symptoms. Low doses did not have much effect, but with higher doses (15 mg), there was a robust, significant improvement in the frequency and severity of hot flashes. So far, Dr. Taylor said, it looks like estetrol can be a highly effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms.
In addition, preclinical research suggests that estetrol may have a better safety profile than currently available therapies, though much more work is needed to know for sure. For example, a 2015 study found that it requires extremely high doses – well above therapeutic levels – for tumor growth to occur. Similarly, a 2019 study found that very high doses of estetrol or estriol were needed before it would stimulate breast cancer cell growth, likely because these are such weak estrogens, compared with estradiol, Dr. Taylor said.
There is currently less information on estetrol’s potential cardiovascular effects, but an animal model suggests positive effects, he said. Giving a mouse estetrol led to an increase in blood vessel dilation with increased blood flow.
The reason these estrogens appear to pose less risk yet still show therapeutic effects appears related to how they bind to the estrogen receptor and what their purpose is, Dr. Taylor told attendees.
“These fetal estrogens are really there probably for developmental programming,” he said. “It’s no wonder they may have some unique and favorable properties for therapeutic use. I’m really enthusiastic to see this explored further as a potential new hormonal therapy.”
Dr. Taylor disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Santoro reported stock ownership in Menogenix and consulting or advising for Ansh Labs, Menogenix, and Ogeda/Astellas.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Hormone therapy for menopausal symptoms has come a long way in the past decade, but some low risks remain, particularly for certain groups of women. But new naturally occurring estrogens are on the horizon and may provide safer options with similar efficacy for treating hot flashes and other symptoms, researchers report.
“Unfortunately, there is no such thing as the perfect estrogen that has all the things that makes it favorable and none of the negative,” Hugh S. Taylor, MD, told attendees at the virtual annual meeting of the North American Menopause Society. “It probably doesn’t exist. But there’s an opportunity for us to design better estrogens or take advantage of other naturally occurring estrogens that come closer to that goal of the ideal estrogen,” said Dr. Taylor, professor and chair of ob.gyn. and reproductive sciences at Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Those naturally occurring estrogens are the fetal estrogens, estetrol and estriol, which are produced almost exclusively during pregnancy. Only estetrol has been investigated in clinical trials, and it does show some promise, Dr. Taylor said.
“If there’s a better cardiovascular effect without the breast cancer risk, this could be something everyone would want to take,” Dr. Taylor said in an interview. We’ve never really been able to get a synthetic estrogen [that works].”
Hormone therapy still most effective for vasomotor symptoms
The primary benefits of hormone therapy for postmenopausal women are decreased hot flashes and night sweats and the prevention of bone loss, vaginal dryness, and vaginal atrophy. But as women age, particularly past age 70 years, the risks for stroke, heart disease, and breast cancer associated with hormone therapy begin to outweigh the benefits.
That leaves women who are still experiencing those symptoms in a quandary.
“Some people will take on substantial risks because they want to continue taking hormones,” Nanette F. Santoro, MD, a professor of ob.gyn. at the University of Colorado at Denver, Aurora, said in an interview. “If they understand what they’re doing and they tell me that they are that miserable, then I will continue their hormones.”
Dr. Santoro, who was not involved in Taylor’s work, said some patients have seen her because their primary care providers refused to continue prescribing them hormones at their age, despite serious vasomotor symptoms that interfered with their daily life.
“Women are sometimes not taken seriously, and I think that’s a problem,” Dr. Santoro said. “Women need to be able to make an informed choice about what kinds of risk they’re taking on. Many physicians’ rationales are that hot flashes never killed anybody. Well, they can sure make you miserable.”
Dr. Taylor echoed the importance of taking women’s symptoms seriously and helping them choose the most effective treatments to manage their symptoms.
“The rush of adrenaline, the anxiety, the palpitations, the heart racing, the sweating, all the night sweats [that mean] you can’t sleep at night, and the lack of adequate REM sleep – all these things add up and can really be disruptive to someone’s life,” Dr. Taylor said in an interview. “I think it’s important that we raise awareness of how severe it can be, about just how low the risks [of hormone therapy] are, and get people more comfortable using hormone therapy, but also continue to search for safer, better products that will eliminate even those low risks.”
A major development toward that goal in the past decade has been therapies that combine an estrogen with a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM), which have antiestrogen effects in the endometrium and breast without blocking estrogen in the bones and brain.
One such tissue-selective estrogen complex (TSEC) is the combination of bazedoxifene (20 mg) and conjugated estrogens (0.45 mg). Clinical trials showed that this TSEC reduced the frequency of hot flashes by 74%, compared with 47% with placebo. In addition, TSEC reduced the severity of hot flashes by 39%, compared with 13% with placebo. The combination also improved bone density at the spine and hip without promoting endometrial hyperplasia.
“It looks like it does exactly what we want,” Dr. Taylor told NAMS attendees. “The SERM is antagonizing the effects of the estrogens in the endometrium but not in the bone or brain.” It also led to a decrease in total cholesterol, and there was no increase in breast stimulation or density.
Another advance in recent years has been more choices and more precision with dosing, Dr. Santoro said.
“Where inroads have been made is in having women be aware of all the options they have and in getting the most convenient compounds to people,” she said, despite the confusion and misinformation that have arisen from the proliferation of bioidenticals. “You can dial in a dose for just about anybody.”
New estrogens in the pipeline
Neither of these developments, however, have eliminated the risks associated with hormone therapy for women of older age or for women at high risk for breast cancer. Although total elimination of risk may not be possible, recent research suggests that the naturally occurring fetal estrogens estriol and estetrol appear to have SERM-like properties, Dr. Taylor said. These estrogens are made only in pregnancy and appear to have evolved for a purpose different from that of estrone and estradiol.
“While both are weak estrogens by traditional standards, both have unique properties that make them very interesting for therapeutic use,” Dr. Taylor said. In particular, estetrol has a much longer half-life than estriol, making it more appropriate for therapeutic investigation.
A study of estetrol that was published in Menopause in August 2020 showed encouraging results. Despite a fairly sizable placebo effect, there was also a dose-response effect from estetrol on vasomotor symptoms. Low doses did not have much effect, but with higher doses (15 mg), there was a robust, significant improvement in the frequency and severity of hot flashes. So far, Dr. Taylor said, it looks like estetrol can be a highly effective treatment for vasomotor symptoms.
In addition, preclinical research suggests that estetrol may have a better safety profile than currently available therapies, though much more work is needed to know for sure. For example, a 2015 study found that it requires extremely high doses – well above therapeutic levels – for tumor growth to occur. Similarly, a 2019 study found that very high doses of estetrol or estriol were needed before it would stimulate breast cancer cell growth, likely because these are such weak estrogens, compared with estradiol, Dr. Taylor said.
There is currently less information on estetrol’s potential cardiovascular effects, but an animal model suggests positive effects, he said. Giving a mouse estetrol led to an increase in blood vessel dilation with increased blood flow.
The reason these estrogens appear to pose less risk yet still show therapeutic effects appears related to how they bind to the estrogen receptor and what their purpose is, Dr. Taylor told attendees.
“These fetal estrogens are really there probably for developmental programming,” he said. “It’s no wonder they may have some unique and favorable properties for therapeutic use. I’m really enthusiastic to see this explored further as a potential new hormonal therapy.”
Dr. Taylor disclosed no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Santoro reported stock ownership in Menogenix and consulting or advising for Ansh Labs, Menogenix, and Ogeda/Astellas.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
Cardiogenic shock rate soars in COVID-positive ACS
COVID-19–positive patients undergoing an invasive strategy for acute coronary syndrome presented hours later than uninfected historical controls, had a far higher incidence of cardiogenic shock, and their in-hospital mortality rate was four- to fivefold greater, according to data from the Global Multicenter Prospective COVID–ACS Registry. These phenomena are probably interrelated, according to Anthony Gershlick, MBBS, who presented the registry results at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics virtual annual meeting.
“We know that increasing ischemic time leads to bigger infarcts. And we know that bigger infarcts lead to cardiogenic shock, with its known higher mortality,” said Dr. Gershlick, professor of interventional cardiology at the University of Leicester (England).
“These data suggest that patients may have presented late, likely due to COVID concerns, and they had worse outcomes. If these data are borne out, future public information strategies need to be reassuring, proactive, simple, and more effective because we think patients stayed away,” the cardiologist added. “There are important public information messages to be taken from these data about getting patients to come to hospital during such pandemics.”
He presented prospectively collected registry data on 144 patients with confirmed ST-elevation MI (STEMI) and 122 with non-ST–elevation MI (NSTEMI), all COVID-19 positive on presentation at 85 hospitals in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America during March through August of 2020. Since the initial message to the public early in the pandemic in many places was to try to avoid the hospital, the investigators selected for their no-COVID comparison group the data on more than 22,000 STEMI and NSTEMI patients included in two British national databases covering 2018-2019.
The COVID-positive STEMI patients were significantly younger, had more comorbidities, and had a higher mean heart rate and lower systolic blood pressure at admission than the non-COVID STEMI control group. Their median time from symptom onset to admission was 339 minutes, compared with 178 minutes in controls. Their door-to-balloon time averaged 83 minutes, versus 37 minutes in the era before the pandemic.
“I suspect that’s got something to do with the donning and doffing of personal protective equipment,” he said at the meeting sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.
The in-hospital mortality rates were strikingly different: 27.1% in COVID-positive STEMI patients versus 5.7% in controls. Bleeding Academic Research Consortium type 3-5 bleeding was increased as well, by a margin of 2.8% to 0.3%. So was stroke, with a 2.1% in-hospital incidence in COVID-positive STEMI patients and a 0.1% rate in the comparator arm.
“But the biggest headline here for me was that the cardiogenic shock rate was 20.1% in the COVID-positive patients versus 8.7% in the non-COVID STEMI patients,” the cardiologist continued.
The same pattern held true among the COVID-positive NSTEMI patients: They were younger, sicker, and slower to present to the hospital than the non-COVID group. The in-hospital mortality rate was 6.6% in the COVID-positive NSTEMI patients, compared with 1.2% in the reference group. The COVID-positive patients had a 2.5% bleeding rate versus 0.1% in the controls. And the incidence of cardiogenic shock was 5%, compared with 1.4% in the controls from before the pandemic.
“Even though NSTEMI is traditionally regarded as lower risk, this is really quite dramatic. These are sick patients,” Dr. Gershlick observed.
Nearly two-thirds of in-hospital deaths in COVID-positive ACS patients were cardiovascular, and three-quarters of those cardiovascular deaths occurred in patients with cardiogenic shock. Thirty-two percent of deaths in COVID-positive ACS patients were of respiratory causes, and 4.9% were neurologic.
Notably, the ischemic time of patients with cardiogenic shock who died – that is, the time from symptom onset to balloon deployment – averaged 1,271 minutes, compared with 441 minutes in those who died without being in cardiogenic shock.
Session comoderator Sahil A. Parikh, MD, director of endovascular services at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, commented, “One of the striking things that is resonating with me is the high incidence of cardiogenic shock and the mortality. It’s akin to what we’ve seen in New York.”
Discussant Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, said he doubts that the increased in-hospital mortality in the COVID–ACS registry is related to the prolonged time to presentation at the hospital. More likely, it’s related to the greater thrombotic burden various studies have shown accompanies COVID-positive ACS. It might even be caused by a direct effect of the virus on the myocardium, added Dr. Fuster, director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
“I have to say I absolutely disagree,” responded Dr. Gershlick. “I think it’s important that we try to understand all the mechanisms, but we know that patients with COVID are anxious, and I think one of the messages from this registry is patients took longer to come to hospital, they were sicker, they had more cardiogenic shock, and they died. And I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than that.”
Another discussant, Mamas Mamas, MD, is involved with a 500-patient U.K. pandemic ACS registry nearing publication. The findings, he said, are similar to what Dr. Gershlick reported in terms of the high rate of presentation with cardiogenic shock and elevated in-hospital mortality. The COVID-positive ACS patients were also more likely to present with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. But like Dr. Fuster, he is skeptical that their worse outcomes can be explained by a delay in seeking care.
“I don’t think the delay in presentation is really associated with the high mortality rate that we see. The delay in our U.K. registry is maybe half an hour for STEMIs and maybe 2-3 hours for NSTEMIs. And I don’t think that can produce a 30%-40% increase in mortality,” asserted Dr. Mamas, professor of cardiology at Keele University in Staffordshire, England.
Dr. Gershlick reported having no financial conflicts regarding his presentation.
COVID-19–positive patients undergoing an invasive strategy for acute coronary syndrome presented hours later than uninfected historical controls, had a far higher incidence of cardiogenic shock, and their in-hospital mortality rate was four- to fivefold greater, according to data from the Global Multicenter Prospective COVID–ACS Registry. These phenomena are probably interrelated, according to Anthony Gershlick, MBBS, who presented the registry results at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics virtual annual meeting.
“We know that increasing ischemic time leads to bigger infarcts. And we know that bigger infarcts lead to cardiogenic shock, with its known higher mortality,” said Dr. Gershlick, professor of interventional cardiology at the University of Leicester (England).
“These data suggest that patients may have presented late, likely due to COVID concerns, and they had worse outcomes. If these data are borne out, future public information strategies need to be reassuring, proactive, simple, and more effective because we think patients stayed away,” the cardiologist added. “There are important public information messages to be taken from these data about getting patients to come to hospital during such pandemics.”
He presented prospectively collected registry data on 144 patients with confirmed ST-elevation MI (STEMI) and 122 with non-ST–elevation MI (NSTEMI), all COVID-19 positive on presentation at 85 hospitals in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America during March through August of 2020. Since the initial message to the public early in the pandemic in many places was to try to avoid the hospital, the investigators selected for their no-COVID comparison group the data on more than 22,000 STEMI and NSTEMI patients included in two British national databases covering 2018-2019.
The COVID-positive STEMI patients were significantly younger, had more comorbidities, and had a higher mean heart rate and lower systolic blood pressure at admission than the non-COVID STEMI control group. Their median time from symptom onset to admission was 339 minutes, compared with 178 minutes in controls. Their door-to-balloon time averaged 83 minutes, versus 37 minutes in the era before the pandemic.
“I suspect that’s got something to do with the donning and doffing of personal protective equipment,” he said at the meeting sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.
The in-hospital mortality rates were strikingly different: 27.1% in COVID-positive STEMI patients versus 5.7% in controls. Bleeding Academic Research Consortium type 3-5 bleeding was increased as well, by a margin of 2.8% to 0.3%. So was stroke, with a 2.1% in-hospital incidence in COVID-positive STEMI patients and a 0.1% rate in the comparator arm.
“But the biggest headline here for me was that the cardiogenic shock rate was 20.1% in the COVID-positive patients versus 8.7% in the non-COVID STEMI patients,” the cardiologist continued.
The same pattern held true among the COVID-positive NSTEMI patients: They were younger, sicker, and slower to present to the hospital than the non-COVID group. The in-hospital mortality rate was 6.6% in the COVID-positive NSTEMI patients, compared with 1.2% in the reference group. The COVID-positive patients had a 2.5% bleeding rate versus 0.1% in the controls. And the incidence of cardiogenic shock was 5%, compared with 1.4% in the controls from before the pandemic.
“Even though NSTEMI is traditionally regarded as lower risk, this is really quite dramatic. These are sick patients,” Dr. Gershlick observed.
Nearly two-thirds of in-hospital deaths in COVID-positive ACS patients were cardiovascular, and three-quarters of those cardiovascular deaths occurred in patients with cardiogenic shock. Thirty-two percent of deaths in COVID-positive ACS patients were of respiratory causes, and 4.9% were neurologic.
Notably, the ischemic time of patients with cardiogenic shock who died – that is, the time from symptom onset to balloon deployment – averaged 1,271 minutes, compared with 441 minutes in those who died without being in cardiogenic shock.
Session comoderator Sahil A. Parikh, MD, director of endovascular services at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, commented, “One of the striking things that is resonating with me is the high incidence of cardiogenic shock and the mortality. It’s akin to what we’ve seen in New York.”
Discussant Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, said he doubts that the increased in-hospital mortality in the COVID–ACS registry is related to the prolonged time to presentation at the hospital. More likely, it’s related to the greater thrombotic burden various studies have shown accompanies COVID-positive ACS. It might even be caused by a direct effect of the virus on the myocardium, added Dr. Fuster, director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
“I have to say I absolutely disagree,” responded Dr. Gershlick. “I think it’s important that we try to understand all the mechanisms, but we know that patients with COVID are anxious, and I think one of the messages from this registry is patients took longer to come to hospital, they were sicker, they had more cardiogenic shock, and they died. And I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than that.”
Another discussant, Mamas Mamas, MD, is involved with a 500-patient U.K. pandemic ACS registry nearing publication. The findings, he said, are similar to what Dr. Gershlick reported in terms of the high rate of presentation with cardiogenic shock and elevated in-hospital mortality. The COVID-positive ACS patients were also more likely to present with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. But like Dr. Fuster, he is skeptical that their worse outcomes can be explained by a delay in seeking care.
“I don’t think the delay in presentation is really associated with the high mortality rate that we see. The delay in our U.K. registry is maybe half an hour for STEMIs and maybe 2-3 hours for NSTEMIs. And I don’t think that can produce a 30%-40% increase in mortality,” asserted Dr. Mamas, professor of cardiology at Keele University in Staffordshire, England.
Dr. Gershlick reported having no financial conflicts regarding his presentation.
COVID-19–positive patients undergoing an invasive strategy for acute coronary syndrome presented hours later than uninfected historical controls, had a far higher incidence of cardiogenic shock, and their in-hospital mortality rate was four- to fivefold greater, according to data from the Global Multicenter Prospective COVID–ACS Registry. These phenomena are probably interrelated, according to Anthony Gershlick, MBBS, who presented the registry results at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics virtual annual meeting.
“We know that increasing ischemic time leads to bigger infarcts. And we know that bigger infarcts lead to cardiogenic shock, with its known higher mortality,” said Dr. Gershlick, professor of interventional cardiology at the University of Leicester (England).
“These data suggest that patients may have presented late, likely due to COVID concerns, and they had worse outcomes. If these data are borne out, future public information strategies need to be reassuring, proactive, simple, and more effective because we think patients stayed away,” the cardiologist added. “There are important public information messages to be taken from these data about getting patients to come to hospital during such pandemics.”
He presented prospectively collected registry data on 144 patients with confirmed ST-elevation MI (STEMI) and 122 with non-ST–elevation MI (NSTEMI), all COVID-19 positive on presentation at 85 hospitals in the United Kingdom, Europe, and North America during March through August of 2020. Since the initial message to the public early in the pandemic in many places was to try to avoid the hospital, the investigators selected for their no-COVID comparison group the data on more than 22,000 STEMI and NSTEMI patients included in two British national databases covering 2018-2019.
The COVID-positive STEMI patients were significantly younger, had more comorbidities, and had a higher mean heart rate and lower systolic blood pressure at admission than the non-COVID STEMI control group. Their median time from symptom onset to admission was 339 minutes, compared with 178 minutes in controls. Their door-to-balloon time averaged 83 minutes, versus 37 minutes in the era before the pandemic.
“I suspect that’s got something to do with the donning and doffing of personal protective equipment,” he said at the meeting sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation.
The in-hospital mortality rates were strikingly different: 27.1% in COVID-positive STEMI patients versus 5.7% in controls. Bleeding Academic Research Consortium type 3-5 bleeding was increased as well, by a margin of 2.8% to 0.3%. So was stroke, with a 2.1% in-hospital incidence in COVID-positive STEMI patients and a 0.1% rate in the comparator arm.
“But the biggest headline here for me was that the cardiogenic shock rate was 20.1% in the COVID-positive patients versus 8.7% in the non-COVID STEMI patients,” the cardiologist continued.
The same pattern held true among the COVID-positive NSTEMI patients: They were younger, sicker, and slower to present to the hospital than the non-COVID group. The in-hospital mortality rate was 6.6% in the COVID-positive NSTEMI patients, compared with 1.2% in the reference group. The COVID-positive patients had a 2.5% bleeding rate versus 0.1% in the controls. And the incidence of cardiogenic shock was 5%, compared with 1.4% in the controls from before the pandemic.
“Even though NSTEMI is traditionally regarded as lower risk, this is really quite dramatic. These are sick patients,” Dr. Gershlick observed.
Nearly two-thirds of in-hospital deaths in COVID-positive ACS patients were cardiovascular, and three-quarters of those cardiovascular deaths occurred in patients with cardiogenic shock. Thirty-two percent of deaths in COVID-positive ACS patients were of respiratory causes, and 4.9% were neurologic.
Notably, the ischemic time of patients with cardiogenic shock who died – that is, the time from symptom onset to balloon deployment – averaged 1,271 minutes, compared with 441 minutes in those who died without being in cardiogenic shock.
Session comoderator Sahil A. Parikh, MD, director of endovascular services at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, commented, “One of the striking things that is resonating with me is the high incidence of cardiogenic shock and the mortality. It’s akin to what we’ve seen in New York.”
Discussant Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, said he doubts that the increased in-hospital mortality in the COVID–ACS registry is related to the prolonged time to presentation at the hospital. More likely, it’s related to the greater thrombotic burden various studies have shown accompanies COVID-positive ACS. It might even be caused by a direct effect of the virus on the myocardium, added Dr. Fuster, director of the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
“I have to say I absolutely disagree,” responded Dr. Gershlick. “I think it’s important that we try to understand all the mechanisms, but we know that patients with COVID are anxious, and I think one of the messages from this registry is patients took longer to come to hospital, they were sicker, they had more cardiogenic shock, and they died. And I don’t think it’s anything more complicated than that.”
Another discussant, Mamas Mamas, MD, is involved with a 500-patient U.K. pandemic ACS registry nearing publication. The findings, he said, are similar to what Dr. Gershlick reported in terms of the high rate of presentation with cardiogenic shock and elevated in-hospital mortality. The COVID-positive ACS patients were also more likely to present with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. But like Dr. Fuster, he is skeptical that their worse outcomes can be explained by a delay in seeking care.
“I don’t think the delay in presentation is really associated with the high mortality rate that we see. The delay in our U.K. registry is maybe half an hour for STEMIs and maybe 2-3 hours for NSTEMIs. And I don’t think that can produce a 30%-40% increase in mortality,” asserted Dr. Mamas, professor of cardiology at Keele University in Staffordshire, England.
Dr. Gershlick reported having no financial conflicts regarding his presentation.
FROM TCT 2020
Brazil confirms death of volunteer in COVID-19 vaccine trial
The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) announced Oct. 21 that it is investigating data received on the death of a volunteer in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
In an email sent to Medscape Medical News, the agency states that it was formally informed of the death on October 19. It has already received data regarding the investigation of the case, which is now being conducted by the Brazilian International Security Assessment Committee.
The identity of the volunteer and cause of death have not yet been confirmed by any official source linked to the study. In the email, Anvisa reiterated that “according to national and international regulations on good clinical practices, data on clinical research volunteers must be kept confidential, in accordance with the principles of confidentiality, human dignity, and protection of participants.”
A report in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, however, states that the patient who died is a 28-year-old doctor, recently graduated, who worked on the front line of combating COVID-19 in three hospitals in Rio de Janeiro. . Due to the study design, it is impossible to know whether the volunteer received the vaccine or placebo.
It is imperative to wait for the results of the investigations, said Sergio Cimerman, MD, the scientific coordinator of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases (SBI), because death is possible during any vaccine trial, even more so in cases in which the final goal is to immunize the population in record time.
“It is precisely the phase 3 study that assesses efficacy and safety so that the vaccine can be used for the entire population. We cannot let ourselves lose hope, and we must move forward, as safely as possible, in search of an ideal vaccine,” said Cimerman, who works at the Instituto de Infectologia Emílio Ribas and is also an advisor to the Portuguese edition of Medscape.
This article was translated and adapted from the Portuguese edition of Medscape.
The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) announced Oct. 21 that it is investigating data received on the death of a volunteer in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
In an email sent to Medscape Medical News, the agency states that it was formally informed of the death on October 19. It has already received data regarding the investigation of the case, which is now being conducted by the Brazilian International Security Assessment Committee.
The identity of the volunteer and cause of death have not yet been confirmed by any official source linked to the study. In the email, Anvisa reiterated that “according to national and international regulations on good clinical practices, data on clinical research volunteers must be kept confidential, in accordance with the principles of confidentiality, human dignity, and protection of participants.”
A report in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, however, states that the patient who died is a 28-year-old doctor, recently graduated, who worked on the front line of combating COVID-19 in three hospitals in Rio de Janeiro. . Due to the study design, it is impossible to know whether the volunteer received the vaccine or placebo.
It is imperative to wait for the results of the investigations, said Sergio Cimerman, MD, the scientific coordinator of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases (SBI), because death is possible during any vaccine trial, even more so in cases in which the final goal is to immunize the population in record time.
“It is precisely the phase 3 study that assesses efficacy and safety so that the vaccine can be used for the entire population. We cannot let ourselves lose hope, and we must move forward, as safely as possible, in search of an ideal vaccine,” said Cimerman, who works at the Instituto de Infectologia Emílio Ribas and is also an advisor to the Portuguese edition of Medscape.
This article was translated and adapted from the Portuguese edition of Medscape.
The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) announced Oct. 21 that it is investigating data received on the death of a volunteer in a clinical trial of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
In an email sent to Medscape Medical News, the agency states that it was formally informed of the death on October 19. It has already received data regarding the investigation of the case, which is now being conducted by the Brazilian International Security Assessment Committee.
The identity of the volunteer and cause of death have not yet been confirmed by any official source linked to the study. In the email, Anvisa reiterated that “according to national and international regulations on good clinical practices, data on clinical research volunteers must be kept confidential, in accordance with the principles of confidentiality, human dignity, and protection of participants.”
A report in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, however, states that the patient who died is a 28-year-old doctor, recently graduated, who worked on the front line of combating COVID-19 in three hospitals in Rio de Janeiro. . Due to the study design, it is impossible to know whether the volunteer received the vaccine or placebo.
It is imperative to wait for the results of the investigations, said Sergio Cimerman, MD, the scientific coordinator of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases (SBI), because death is possible during any vaccine trial, even more so in cases in which the final goal is to immunize the population in record time.
“It is precisely the phase 3 study that assesses efficacy and safety so that the vaccine can be used for the entire population. We cannot let ourselves lose hope, and we must move forward, as safely as possible, in search of an ideal vaccine,” said Cimerman, who works at the Instituto de Infectologia Emílio Ribas and is also an advisor to the Portuguese edition of Medscape.
This article was translated and adapted from the Portuguese edition of Medscape.
COVID-19 experience forced residents to quickly improve patient communication skills
While the spring peak of COVID-19 was tough and traumatic for many residents and interns in a New York City health system, the experience may have accelerated their patient communication skills regarding difficult goals-of-care discussions, results of a recent survey suggest.
Breaking bad news was an everyday or every-other-day occurrence at the peak of the pandemic for nearly all of 50 of the trainees surveyed, who had worked at hospitals affiliated with the internal medicine residency program at the at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai from March to June 2020.
However, trainees became significantly more comfortable and fluent in goals-of-care discussions during the pandemic, according to Patrick Tobin-Schnittger, MBBS, a third-year internal medicine resident in the Mount Sinai program.
“COVID-19 has obviously made a huge impact on the world, but I think it’s also made a huge impact on a whole generation of junior doctors,” said Dr. Tobin-Schnittger, who presented the findings in a late-breaking abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting, held virtually this year.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future as that generation matures, and I think one of the things is that we’re a lot more comfortable with end-of-life care,” he said in an interview conducted during the conference.
Nevertheless, coping with death may still be a challenge for many residents, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger. In the survey, internal medicine residents who had rarely encountered patient deaths suddenly found themselves experiencing deaths weekly, with more than one in five saying they were encountering it every day.
When asked to self-rate themselves according to Bugen’s Coping With Death scale, most participants had scores that suggested their ability to cope was suboptimal, the researcher said.
To help trainees cope with local COVID-19 surges, internal medicine residency programs should be implementing “breaking bad news” workshops and educating house staff on resilience in times of crisis, especially if it can be done virtually, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger.
“That could be done pretty quickly, and it could be done remotely so people could practice this from home,” he explained. “They wouldn’t even need to congregate in a big room.”
As a “mini-surge” of COVID-19 cases hits the United States, teaching self-care and coping techniques may also be important, said Mangala Narasimhan, DO, FCCP, director of critical care services at Northwell Health in New York City.
“We’ve had several sessions in our health system of letting people vent, talk about what happened, and tell stories about patients that they are still thinking about and haunted by – there was so much death,” Dr. Narasimhan said in an interview.
“People will be suffering for a long time thinking about what happened in March and April and May, so I think our focus now needs to be how to fix that in any way we can and to support people, as we’re dealing with these increases in numbers,” she said. “I think everyone’s panicking over the increase in numbers, but they’re panicking because of the fear of going through what they went through before.”
Dr. Tobin-Schnittger and colleagues sent their survey to 94 residents and interns in the Mount Sinai program who had worked through the peak of the pandemic. They received 50 responses. Of those individuals, the mean age was 29.5 years, and about 46% had worked for more than 3 years.
Before the pandemic, only 3 of the 50 respondents reported having goals-of-care conversations every day or every other day, while during the pandemic, those conversations were happening at least every other day for 38 of the respondents, survey data show.
Self-reported fluency and comfort with those discussions increased significantly, from a mean of about 50 on a scale of 100 before the pandemic to more than 75 during the pandemic, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger.
When asked how they remembered coping with patient death, one respondent described holding up a phone so a dying patient could hear his daughter’s voice. Another reported not being able to sleep at night.
“I constantly would have dreams that my patients were dying and there was nothing I could do about it,” the respondent said in a survey response.
A third respondent described the experience as ”humbling” but said there were rewarding aspects in patient care during the peak of the pandemic, which helped in being able to focus during difficult days.
Three participants (7.7%) said they changed their career plans as a result of the pandemic experience, the researchers reported.
Negative consequences of the peak pandemic experience included anger, anxiety, professional strain, trauma, and emotional distancing, some respondents reported.
However, others called attention to positive outcomes, such as more professional pride, resilience, confidence, and camaraderie.
“While we did encounter a lot of traumatic experiences, overall, there’s a huge sense that there is a lot more camaraderie within our department, but also within other departments,” said Dr. Tobin-Schnittger. “So I think there are some positives that come from this, and I think there’s been a bit of a culture change.”
Dr. Tobin-Schnittger said that he and his coauthors had no conflicts of interest or relationships with commercial interests to report.
SOURCE: Tobin-Schnittger P. CHEST 2020. Late-breaking abstract. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2020.09.040.
While the spring peak of COVID-19 was tough and traumatic for many residents and interns in a New York City health system, the experience may have accelerated their patient communication skills regarding difficult goals-of-care discussions, results of a recent survey suggest.
Breaking bad news was an everyday or every-other-day occurrence at the peak of the pandemic for nearly all of 50 of the trainees surveyed, who had worked at hospitals affiliated with the internal medicine residency program at the at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai from March to June 2020.
However, trainees became significantly more comfortable and fluent in goals-of-care discussions during the pandemic, according to Patrick Tobin-Schnittger, MBBS, a third-year internal medicine resident in the Mount Sinai program.
“COVID-19 has obviously made a huge impact on the world, but I think it’s also made a huge impact on a whole generation of junior doctors,” said Dr. Tobin-Schnittger, who presented the findings in a late-breaking abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting, held virtually this year.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future as that generation matures, and I think one of the things is that we’re a lot more comfortable with end-of-life care,” he said in an interview conducted during the conference.
Nevertheless, coping with death may still be a challenge for many residents, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger. In the survey, internal medicine residents who had rarely encountered patient deaths suddenly found themselves experiencing deaths weekly, with more than one in five saying they were encountering it every day.
When asked to self-rate themselves according to Bugen’s Coping With Death scale, most participants had scores that suggested their ability to cope was suboptimal, the researcher said.
To help trainees cope with local COVID-19 surges, internal medicine residency programs should be implementing “breaking bad news” workshops and educating house staff on resilience in times of crisis, especially if it can be done virtually, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger.
“That could be done pretty quickly, and it could be done remotely so people could practice this from home,” he explained. “They wouldn’t even need to congregate in a big room.”
As a “mini-surge” of COVID-19 cases hits the United States, teaching self-care and coping techniques may also be important, said Mangala Narasimhan, DO, FCCP, director of critical care services at Northwell Health in New York City.
“We’ve had several sessions in our health system of letting people vent, talk about what happened, and tell stories about patients that they are still thinking about and haunted by – there was so much death,” Dr. Narasimhan said in an interview.
“People will be suffering for a long time thinking about what happened in March and April and May, so I think our focus now needs to be how to fix that in any way we can and to support people, as we’re dealing with these increases in numbers,” she said. “I think everyone’s panicking over the increase in numbers, but they’re panicking because of the fear of going through what they went through before.”
Dr. Tobin-Schnittger and colleagues sent their survey to 94 residents and interns in the Mount Sinai program who had worked through the peak of the pandemic. They received 50 responses. Of those individuals, the mean age was 29.5 years, and about 46% had worked for more than 3 years.
Before the pandemic, only 3 of the 50 respondents reported having goals-of-care conversations every day or every other day, while during the pandemic, those conversations were happening at least every other day for 38 of the respondents, survey data show.
Self-reported fluency and comfort with those discussions increased significantly, from a mean of about 50 on a scale of 100 before the pandemic to more than 75 during the pandemic, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger.
When asked how they remembered coping with patient death, one respondent described holding up a phone so a dying patient could hear his daughter’s voice. Another reported not being able to sleep at night.
“I constantly would have dreams that my patients were dying and there was nothing I could do about it,” the respondent said in a survey response.
A third respondent described the experience as ”humbling” but said there were rewarding aspects in patient care during the peak of the pandemic, which helped in being able to focus during difficult days.
Three participants (7.7%) said they changed their career plans as a result of the pandemic experience, the researchers reported.
Negative consequences of the peak pandemic experience included anger, anxiety, professional strain, trauma, and emotional distancing, some respondents reported.
However, others called attention to positive outcomes, such as more professional pride, resilience, confidence, and camaraderie.
“While we did encounter a lot of traumatic experiences, overall, there’s a huge sense that there is a lot more camaraderie within our department, but also within other departments,” said Dr. Tobin-Schnittger. “So I think there are some positives that come from this, and I think there’s been a bit of a culture change.”
Dr. Tobin-Schnittger said that he and his coauthors had no conflicts of interest or relationships with commercial interests to report.
SOURCE: Tobin-Schnittger P. CHEST 2020. Late-breaking abstract. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2020.09.040.
While the spring peak of COVID-19 was tough and traumatic for many residents and interns in a New York City health system, the experience may have accelerated their patient communication skills regarding difficult goals-of-care discussions, results of a recent survey suggest.
Breaking bad news was an everyday or every-other-day occurrence at the peak of the pandemic for nearly all of 50 of the trainees surveyed, who had worked at hospitals affiliated with the internal medicine residency program at the at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai from March to June 2020.
However, trainees became significantly more comfortable and fluent in goals-of-care discussions during the pandemic, according to Patrick Tobin-Schnittger, MBBS, a third-year internal medicine resident in the Mount Sinai program.
“COVID-19 has obviously made a huge impact on the world, but I think it’s also made a huge impact on a whole generation of junior doctors,” said Dr. Tobin-Schnittger, who presented the findings in a late-breaking abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting, held virtually this year.
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future as that generation matures, and I think one of the things is that we’re a lot more comfortable with end-of-life care,” he said in an interview conducted during the conference.
Nevertheless, coping with death may still be a challenge for many residents, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger. In the survey, internal medicine residents who had rarely encountered patient deaths suddenly found themselves experiencing deaths weekly, with more than one in five saying they were encountering it every day.
When asked to self-rate themselves according to Bugen’s Coping With Death scale, most participants had scores that suggested their ability to cope was suboptimal, the researcher said.
To help trainees cope with local COVID-19 surges, internal medicine residency programs should be implementing “breaking bad news” workshops and educating house staff on resilience in times of crisis, especially if it can be done virtually, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger.
“That could be done pretty quickly, and it could be done remotely so people could practice this from home,” he explained. “They wouldn’t even need to congregate in a big room.”
As a “mini-surge” of COVID-19 cases hits the United States, teaching self-care and coping techniques may also be important, said Mangala Narasimhan, DO, FCCP, director of critical care services at Northwell Health in New York City.
“We’ve had several sessions in our health system of letting people vent, talk about what happened, and tell stories about patients that they are still thinking about and haunted by – there was so much death,” Dr. Narasimhan said in an interview.
“People will be suffering for a long time thinking about what happened in March and April and May, so I think our focus now needs to be how to fix that in any way we can and to support people, as we’re dealing with these increases in numbers,” she said. “I think everyone’s panicking over the increase in numbers, but they’re panicking because of the fear of going through what they went through before.”
Dr. Tobin-Schnittger and colleagues sent their survey to 94 residents and interns in the Mount Sinai program who had worked through the peak of the pandemic. They received 50 responses. Of those individuals, the mean age was 29.5 years, and about 46% had worked for more than 3 years.
Before the pandemic, only 3 of the 50 respondents reported having goals-of-care conversations every day or every other day, while during the pandemic, those conversations were happening at least every other day for 38 of the respondents, survey data show.
Self-reported fluency and comfort with those discussions increased significantly, from a mean of about 50 on a scale of 100 before the pandemic to more than 75 during the pandemic, according to Dr. Tobin-Schnittger.
When asked how they remembered coping with patient death, one respondent described holding up a phone so a dying patient could hear his daughter’s voice. Another reported not being able to sleep at night.
“I constantly would have dreams that my patients were dying and there was nothing I could do about it,” the respondent said in a survey response.
A third respondent described the experience as ”humbling” but said there were rewarding aspects in patient care during the peak of the pandemic, which helped in being able to focus during difficult days.
Three participants (7.7%) said they changed their career plans as a result of the pandemic experience, the researchers reported.
Negative consequences of the peak pandemic experience included anger, anxiety, professional strain, trauma, and emotional distancing, some respondents reported.
However, others called attention to positive outcomes, such as more professional pride, resilience, confidence, and camaraderie.
“While we did encounter a lot of traumatic experiences, overall, there’s a huge sense that there is a lot more camaraderie within our department, but also within other departments,” said Dr. Tobin-Schnittger. “So I think there are some positives that come from this, and I think there’s been a bit of a culture change.”
Dr. Tobin-Schnittger said that he and his coauthors had no conflicts of interest or relationships with commercial interests to report.
SOURCE: Tobin-Schnittger P. CHEST 2020. Late-breaking abstract. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2020.09.040.
FROM CHEST 2020
Bariatric surgery linked to longer life
A new analysis of the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study shows that bariatric surgery is associated with about a 3-year increase in lifespan, compared with obese patients who do not undergo surgery. Still, surgery did not restore normal lifespan: Surgical patients’ lifespan remained less than that of a sample from the general Swedish population. The study follows other reports suggesting reduced mortality after bariatric surgery, but with a longer follow-up.
“These data add even more evidence to the growing literature showing that patients who undergo bariatric surgery experience a reduction in all-cause long-term mortality. In making decisions around bariatric surgical procedures and care, patients and their health care providers need to understand the trade-offs between improved weight, health, and longer-term survival versus the surgical risks and problems over time,” said Anita P. Courcoulas, MD, MPH, chief of minimally invasive bariatric and general surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said in an interview. Dr. Courcoulas was not involved in the study.
The results appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The SOS study drew from 25 surgical departments and 480 primary health care centers in Sweden. The researchers examined data from 2,007 patients who underwent bariatric surgery between 1987 and 2001, and compared their outcomes to 2,040 matched controls. All were between age 37 and 60 years, with a body mass index (BMI) of at least 34 kg/m2 for men and 38 for women. They also compared outcomes with 1,135 randomly sampled from the Swedish population registry.
Procedures included banding (18%), vertical banded gastroplasty (69%), and gastric bypass (13%). After an initial BMI reduction of about 11, the surgery group stabilized by year 8 at a BMI about 7 lower than baseline, and there was little change in BMI among controls.
After a mean follow-up of 24 years (interquartile range, 22-27 years), there were 10.7 deaths per 1,000 person-years in the surgery group, 13.2 among obese controls, and 5.2 in the general population (hazard ratio, 0.77 for surgery versus no surgery; P < .001). The general population had a lower mortality than nonsurgical controls (HR, 0.44; P < .001).
The surgery group had a higher median life expectancy than controls (median, 2.4 years; adjusted difference, 3.0 years; P < .001). The general population group had a median life expectancy that was 7.4 years higher than the control group (adjusted difference, 8.5 years; P < .001). The surgery group’s median life expectancy was still shorter than the general population reference (adjusted difference, 5.5 years; P < .001).
Cardiovascular disease risk was lower in the surgery group (HR, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.57-0.85), as was risk of MI (HR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.33-0.79), heart failure (HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.31-0.88), and stroke (HR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.24-0.84). Cancer mortality was also lower (HR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.61-0.96).
In the surgery group, causes of death that were elevated over the general population included cardiovascular causes (HR, 2.64; 95% CI, 1.78-3.91) and noncardiovascular causes, mainly infections; postsurgical complications; and factors such as alcoholism, suicide, or trauma (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.18-1.91).
The study is limited by its retrospective nature, and because the surgical techniques used at the time are less effective than those used today, and could lead to weight gain over time. As a result, many patients who underwent surgery remained heavier than the general population. It’s also possible that negative health effects accumulated before surgery and persisted afterwards, according to Dr. Courcoulas.
The findings are likely generalizable to people with obesity, many of whom choose not to undergo bariatric surgery despite the potential benefits. “The population studied in SOS had a similar profile of underlying medical diseases to those groups who undergo bariatric surgery today and in the U.S. and around the world,” said Dr. Courcoulas.
The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council and others. Dr. Courcoulas has no relevant financial disclosures
SOURCE: Carlsson L et al. N Engl J Med. 2020 Oct 15. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2002449.
A new analysis of the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study shows that bariatric surgery is associated with about a 3-year increase in lifespan, compared with obese patients who do not undergo surgery. Still, surgery did not restore normal lifespan: Surgical patients’ lifespan remained less than that of a sample from the general Swedish population. The study follows other reports suggesting reduced mortality after bariatric surgery, but with a longer follow-up.
“These data add even more evidence to the growing literature showing that patients who undergo bariatric surgery experience a reduction in all-cause long-term mortality. In making decisions around bariatric surgical procedures and care, patients and their health care providers need to understand the trade-offs between improved weight, health, and longer-term survival versus the surgical risks and problems over time,” said Anita P. Courcoulas, MD, MPH, chief of minimally invasive bariatric and general surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said in an interview. Dr. Courcoulas was not involved in the study.
The results appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The SOS study drew from 25 surgical departments and 480 primary health care centers in Sweden. The researchers examined data from 2,007 patients who underwent bariatric surgery between 1987 and 2001, and compared their outcomes to 2,040 matched controls. All were between age 37 and 60 years, with a body mass index (BMI) of at least 34 kg/m2 for men and 38 for women. They also compared outcomes with 1,135 randomly sampled from the Swedish population registry.
Procedures included banding (18%), vertical banded gastroplasty (69%), and gastric bypass (13%). After an initial BMI reduction of about 11, the surgery group stabilized by year 8 at a BMI about 7 lower than baseline, and there was little change in BMI among controls.
After a mean follow-up of 24 years (interquartile range, 22-27 years), there were 10.7 deaths per 1,000 person-years in the surgery group, 13.2 among obese controls, and 5.2 in the general population (hazard ratio, 0.77 for surgery versus no surgery; P < .001). The general population had a lower mortality than nonsurgical controls (HR, 0.44; P < .001).
The surgery group had a higher median life expectancy than controls (median, 2.4 years; adjusted difference, 3.0 years; P < .001). The general population group had a median life expectancy that was 7.4 years higher than the control group (adjusted difference, 8.5 years; P < .001). The surgery group’s median life expectancy was still shorter than the general population reference (adjusted difference, 5.5 years; P < .001).
Cardiovascular disease risk was lower in the surgery group (HR, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.57-0.85), as was risk of MI (HR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.33-0.79), heart failure (HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.31-0.88), and stroke (HR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.24-0.84). Cancer mortality was also lower (HR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.61-0.96).
In the surgery group, causes of death that were elevated over the general population included cardiovascular causes (HR, 2.64; 95% CI, 1.78-3.91) and noncardiovascular causes, mainly infections; postsurgical complications; and factors such as alcoholism, suicide, or trauma (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.18-1.91).
The study is limited by its retrospective nature, and because the surgical techniques used at the time are less effective than those used today, and could lead to weight gain over time. As a result, many patients who underwent surgery remained heavier than the general population. It’s also possible that negative health effects accumulated before surgery and persisted afterwards, according to Dr. Courcoulas.
The findings are likely generalizable to people with obesity, many of whom choose not to undergo bariatric surgery despite the potential benefits. “The population studied in SOS had a similar profile of underlying medical diseases to those groups who undergo bariatric surgery today and in the U.S. and around the world,” said Dr. Courcoulas.
The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council and others. Dr. Courcoulas has no relevant financial disclosures
SOURCE: Carlsson L et al. N Engl J Med. 2020 Oct 15. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2002449.
A new analysis of the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study shows that bariatric surgery is associated with about a 3-year increase in lifespan, compared with obese patients who do not undergo surgery. Still, surgery did not restore normal lifespan: Surgical patients’ lifespan remained less than that of a sample from the general Swedish population. The study follows other reports suggesting reduced mortality after bariatric surgery, but with a longer follow-up.
“These data add even more evidence to the growing literature showing that patients who undergo bariatric surgery experience a reduction in all-cause long-term mortality. In making decisions around bariatric surgical procedures and care, patients and their health care providers need to understand the trade-offs between improved weight, health, and longer-term survival versus the surgical risks and problems over time,” said Anita P. Courcoulas, MD, MPH, chief of minimally invasive bariatric and general surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said in an interview. Dr. Courcoulas was not involved in the study.
The results appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The SOS study drew from 25 surgical departments and 480 primary health care centers in Sweden. The researchers examined data from 2,007 patients who underwent bariatric surgery between 1987 and 2001, and compared their outcomes to 2,040 matched controls. All were between age 37 and 60 years, with a body mass index (BMI) of at least 34 kg/m2 for men and 38 for women. They also compared outcomes with 1,135 randomly sampled from the Swedish population registry.
Procedures included banding (18%), vertical banded gastroplasty (69%), and gastric bypass (13%). After an initial BMI reduction of about 11, the surgery group stabilized by year 8 at a BMI about 7 lower than baseline, and there was little change in BMI among controls.
After a mean follow-up of 24 years (interquartile range, 22-27 years), there were 10.7 deaths per 1,000 person-years in the surgery group, 13.2 among obese controls, and 5.2 in the general population (hazard ratio, 0.77 for surgery versus no surgery; P < .001). The general population had a lower mortality than nonsurgical controls (HR, 0.44; P < .001).
The surgery group had a higher median life expectancy than controls (median, 2.4 years; adjusted difference, 3.0 years; P < .001). The general population group had a median life expectancy that was 7.4 years higher than the control group (adjusted difference, 8.5 years; P < .001). The surgery group’s median life expectancy was still shorter than the general population reference (adjusted difference, 5.5 years; P < .001).
Cardiovascular disease risk was lower in the surgery group (HR, 0.70; 95% confidence interval, 0.57-0.85), as was risk of MI (HR, 0.51; 95% CI, 0.33-0.79), heart failure (HR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.31-0.88), and stroke (HR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.24-0.84). Cancer mortality was also lower (HR, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.61-0.96).
In the surgery group, causes of death that were elevated over the general population included cardiovascular causes (HR, 2.64; 95% CI, 1.78-3.91) and noncardiovascular causes, mainly infections; postsurgical complications; and factors such as alcoholism, suicide, or trauma (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.18-1.91).
The study is limited by its retrospective nature, and because the surgical techniques used at the time are less effective than those used today, and could lead to weight gain over time. As a result, many patients who underwent surgery remained heavier than the general population. It’s also possible that negative health effects accumulated before surgery and persisted afterwards, according to Dr. Courcoulas.
The findings are likely generalizable to people with obesity, many of whom choose not to undergo bariatric surgery despite the potential benefits. “The population studied in SOS had a similar profile of underlying medical diseases to those groups who undergo bariatric surgery today and in the U.S. and around the world,” said Dr. Courcoulas.
The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council and others. Dr. Courcoulas has no relevant financial disclosures
SOURCE: Carlsson L et al. N Engl J Med. 2020 Oct 15. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2002449.
FROM THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE
Outpatient visits rebound for most specialties to pre-COVID-19 levels
, according to new data.
Overall visits plunged by almost 60% at the low point in late March and did not start recovering until late June, when visits were still off by 10%. Visits began to rise again – by 2% over the March 1 baseline – around Labor Day.
As of Oct. 4, visits had returned to that March 1 baseline, which was slightly higher than in late February, according to data analyzed by Harvard University, the Commonwealth Fund, and the healthcare technology company Phreesia, which helps medical practices with patient registration, insurance verification, and payments, and has data on 50,000 providers in all 50 states.
The study was published online by the Commonwealth Fund.
In-person visits are still down 6% from the March 1 baseline. Telemedicine visits – which surged in mid-April to account for some 13%-14% of visits – have subsided to 6% of visits.
Many states reopened businesses and lifted travel restrictions in early September, benefiting medical practices in some areas. But clinicians in some regions are still facing rising COVID-19 cases, as well as “the challenges of keeping patients and clinicians safe while also maintaining revenue,” wrote the report authors.
Some specialties are still hard hit. For the week starting Oct. 4, visits to pulmonologists were off 20% from March 1. Otolaryngology visits were down 17%, and behavioral health visits were down 14%. Cardiology, allergy/immunology, neurology, gastroenterology, and endocrinology also saw drops of 5%-10% from March.
Patients were flocking to dermatologists, however. Visits were up 17% over baseline. Primary care also was popular, with a 13% increase over March 1.
At the height of the pandemic shutdown in late March, Medicare beneficiaries stayed away from doctors the most. Visits dipped 63%, compared with 56% for the commercially insured, and 52% for those on Medicaid. Now, Medicare visits are up 3% over baseline, while Medicaid visits are down 1% and commercially insured visits have risen 1% from March.
The over-65 age group did not have the steepest drop in visits when analyzed by age. Children aged 3-17 years saw the biggest decline at the height of the shutdown. Infants to 5-year-olds have still not returned to prepandemic visit levels. Those visits are off by 10%-18%. The 65-and-older group is up 4% from March.
Larger practices – with more than six clinicians – have seen the biggest rebound, after having had the largest dip in visits, from a decline of 53% in late March to a 14% rise over that baseline. Practices with fewer than five clinicians are still 6% down from the March baseline.
Wide variation in telemedicine use
The researchers reported a massive gap in the percentage of various specialties that are using telemedicine. At the top end are behavioral health specialists, where 41% of visits are by telemedicine.
The next-closest specialty is endocrinology, which has 14% of visits via telemedicine, on par with rheumatology, neurology, and gastroenterology. At the low end: ophthalmology, with zero virtual visits; otolaryngology (1%), orthopedics (1%), surgery (2%), and dermatology and ob.gyn., both at 3%.
Smaller practices – with fewer than five clinicians – never adopted telemedicine at the rate of the larger practices. During the mid-April peak, about 10% of the smaller practices were using telemedicine in adult primary care practices, compared with 19% of those primary care practices with more than six clinicians.
The gap persists. Currently, 9% of the larger practices are using telemedicine, compared with 4% of small practices.
One-third of all provider organizations analyzed never-adopted telemedicine. And while use continues, it is now mostly minimal. At the April peak, 35% of the practices with telemedicine reported heavy use – that is, in more than 20% of visits. In September, 9% said they had such heavy use.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
, according to new data.
Overall visits plunged by almost 60% at the low point in late March and did not start recovering until late June, when visits were still off by 10%. Visits began to rise again – by 2% over the March 1 baseline – around Labor Day.
As of Oct. 4, visits had returned to that March 1 baseline, which was slightly higher than in late February, according to data analyzed by Harvard University, the Commonwealth Fund, and the healthcare technology company Phreesia, which helps medical practices with patient registration, insurance verification, and payments, and has data on 50,000 providers in all 50 states.
The study was published online by the Commonwealth Fund.
In-person visits are still down 6% from the March 1 baseline. Telemedicine visits – which surged in mid-April to account for some 13%-14% of visits – have subsided to 6% of visits.
Many states reopened businesses and lifted travel restrictions in early September, benefiting medical practices in some areas. But clinicians in some regions are still facing rising COVID-19 cases, as well as “the challenges of keeping patients and clinicians safe while also maintaining revenue,” wrote the report authors.
Some specialties are still hard hit. For the week starting Oct. 4, visits to pulmonologists were off 20% from March 1. Otolaryngology visits were down 17%, and behavioral health visits were down 14%. Cardiology, allergy/immunology, neurology, gastroenterology, and endocrinology also saw drops of 5%-10% from March.
Patients were flocking to dermatologists, however. Visits were up 17% over baseline. Primary care also was popular, with a 13% increase over March 1.
At the height of the pandemic shutdown in late March, Medicare beneficiaries stayed away from doctors the most. Visits dipped 63%, compared with 56% for the commercially insured, and 52% for those on Medicaid. Now, Medicare visits are up 3% over baseline, while Medicaid visits are down 1% and commercially insured visits have risen 1% from March.
The over-65 age group did not have the steepest drop in visits when analyzed by age. Children aged 3-17 years saw the biggest decline at the height of the shutdown. Infants to 5-year-olds have still not returned to prepandemic visit levels. Those visits are off by 10%-18%. The 65-and-older group is up 4% from March.
Larger practices – with more than six clinicians – have seen the biggest rebound, after having had the largest dip in visits, from a decline of 53% in late March to a 14% rise over that baseline. Practices with fewer than five clinicians are still 6% down from the March baseline.
Wide variation in telemedicine use
The researchers reported a massive gap in the percentage of various specialties that are using telemedicine. At the top end are behavioral health specialists, where 41% of visits are by telemedicine.
The next-closest specialty is endocrinology, which has 14% of visits via telemedicine, on par with rheumatology, neurology, and gastroenterology. At the low end: ophthalmology, with zero virtual visits; otolaryngology (1%), orthopedics (1%), surgery (2%), and dermatology and ob.gyn., both at 3%.
Smaller practices – with fewer than five clinicians – never adopted telemedicine at the rate of the larger practices. During the mid-April peak, about 10% of the smaller practices were using telemedicine in adult primary care practices, compared with 19% of those primary care practices with more than six clinicians.
The gap persists. Currently, 9% of the larger practices are using telemedicine, compared with 4% of small practices.
One-third of all provider organizations analyzed never-adopted telemedicine. And while use continues, it is now mostly minimal. At the April peak, 35% of the practices with telemedicine reported heavy use – that is, in more than 20% of visits. In September, 9% said they had such heavy use.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.
, according to new data.
Overall visits plunged by almost 60% at the low point in late March and did not start recovering until late June, when visits were still off by 10%. Visits began to rise again – by 2% over the March 1 baseline – around Labor Day.
As of Oct. 4, visits had returned to that March 1 baseline, which was slightly higher than in late February, according to data analyzed by Harvard University, the Commonwealth Fund, and the healthcare technology company Phreesia, which helps medical practices with patient registration, insurance verification, and payments, and has data on 50,000 providers in all 50 states.
The study was published online by the Commonwealth Fund.
In-person visits are still down 6% from the March 1 baseline. Telemedicine visits – which surged in mid-April to account for some 13%-14% of visits – have subsided to 6% of visits.
Many states reopened businesses and lifted travel restrictions in early September, benefiting medical practices in some areas. But clinicians in some regions are still facing rising COVID-19 cases, as well as “the challenges of keeping patients and clinicians safe while also maintaining revenue,” wrote the report authors.
Some specialties are still hard hit. For the week starting Oct. 4, visits to pulmonologists were off 20% from March 1. Otolaryngology visits were down 17%, and behavioral health visits were down 14%. Cardiology, allergy/immunology, neurology, gastroenterology, and endocrinology also saw drops of 5%-10% from March.
Patients were flocking to dermatologists, however. Visits were up 17% over baseline. Primary care also was popular, with a 13% increase over March 1.
At the height of the pandemic shutdown in late March, Medicare beneficiaries stayed away from doctors the most. Visits dipped 63%, compared with 56% for the commercially insured, and 52% for those on Medicaid. Now, Medicare visits are up 3% over baseline, while Medicaid visits are down 1% and commercially insured visits have risen 1% from March.
The over-65 age group did not have the steepest drop in visits when analyzed by age. Children aged 3-17 years saw the biggest decline at the height of the shutdown. Infants to 5-year-olds have still not returned to prepandemic visit levels. Those visits are off by 10%-18%. The 65-and-older group is up 4% from March.
Larger practices – with more than six clinicians – have seen the biggest rebound, after having had the largest dip in visits, from a decline of 53% in late March to a 14% rise over that baseline. Practices with fewer than five clinicians are still 6% down from the March baseline.
Wide variation in telemedicine use
The researchers reported a massive gap in the percentage of various specialties that are using telemedicine. At the top end are behavioral health specialists, where 41% of visits are by telemedicine.
The next-closest specialty is endocrinology, which has 14% of visits via telemedicine, on par with rheumatology, neurology, and gastroenterology. At the low end: ophthalmology, with zero virtual visits; otolaryngology (1%), orthopedics (1%), surgery (2%), and dermatology and ob.gyn., both at 3%.
Smaller practices – with fewer than five clinicians – never adopted telemedicine at the rate of the larger practices. During the mid-April peak, about 10% of the smaller practices were using telemedicine in adult primary care practices, compared with 19% of those primary care practices with more than six clinicians.
The gap persists. Currently, 9% of the larger practices are using telemedicine, compared with 4% of small practices.
One-third of all provider organizations analyzed never-adopted telemedicine. And while use continues, it is now mostly minimal. At the April peak, 35% of the practices with telemedicine reported heavy use – that is, in more than 20% of visits. In September, 9% said they had such heavy use.
A version of this article originally appeared on Medscape.com.