LAS VEGAS — Osteopathic manipulative treatments can be used in several areas of medicine for a variety of conditions, according to a speaker here.
Brie Howerton, DO, MSBE, an emergency medicine physician at McLaren Health Care offered a presentation on osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT)/osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) as part of emergency care at the annual OMED conference.
Healio spoke with Howerton to learn more about the benefits of OMT in various areas of medicine, the codes to know for billing and more.
Healio: Why did you decide to present on this topic?
Howerton: OMM is

BOSTON — Too many adults have uncontrolled or resistant hypertension, but more solutions are available now or will be soon, a speaker said at the Cardiometabolic Health Congress.
“If your patient needs four blood pressure medications to be controlled, they have resistant hypertension,” Naomi D.L. Fisher, MD, endocrinologist and director of hypertension services at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said during a presentation. “Why do we care? Because this group of patients carries the very highest cardiovascular risk. This is the No. 1

Humans’ perception of bats as gothic bloodsuckers and wicked creatures of the night probably owes a lot to their portrayal in fiction.
Yes, some bats feed exclusively on blood — a practice shared by mythical vampires, making both ubiquitous in the iconography of Halloween. Bat-related childhood trauma gave Bruce Wayne his superhero identity.
In reality, bats are essential to the ecology of the United States, providing important pest control and seed dispersal, which saves the country more than $1 billion a year in crop loss and pesticide costs and drives early growth in cleared rainforests,

Healthy eating may help cancer survivors live longer and lower their risk for ischemic heart disease, heart failure or stroke, according to data published in JACC: Advances.
Implementing or maintaining a high-quality, heart-healthy diet such as the Mediterranean, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) or Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet after a cancer diagnosis may have cardioprotective benefit and enhance overall survival, researchers reported.
In addition, the reduced risk for CV events was not observed with high intake of a healthy

An automated insulin delivery system substantially improved time in range and HbA1c at 3 months for youths with type 1 diabetes, according to data published in Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics.
The iLet bionic pancreas (Beta Bionics) is an automated insulin delivery that replaces carbohydrate counting and manual bolus calculations with qualitative meal announcements, according to Elizabeth R. Sullivan-Ingram, DO, pediatric endocrinology fellow at University of Alabama at Birmingham and Children’s of Alabama. In a single-center real-world study of youths who initiated the device,

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As cannabis is increasingly used to address pain, nausea and vomiting among patients with gastrointestinal disorders in the U.S., discussion of its role in practice intensifies.
Two experts debated the issue at ACG Annual Scientific Meeting.
“Cannabis is here and it’s not going anywhere — and our patients are using [cannabinoids],” David J. Levinthal, MD, PhD, FACG, director of the Neurogastroenterology & Motility Center at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told attendees. “The [number] of patients using cannabis grows year on year.
“It’s across all age groups,” he

SAN DIEGO — Challenges continue to grow in neurology, from the increasing prevalence of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases to decreases in funding for the research investigating their treatment.
But Craig Blackstone, MD, PhD, FANA, programming committee chair for the 151st Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association, draws optimism from the topics and collaborations he helped select for the conference program.
“It’s a very enjoyable part of my job,” Blackstone, who also is the Julianne Dorne Professor of Neurology at

DENVER — High-dose cholecalciferol was not associated with improved survival vs. standard care for patients on dialysis, according to study data presented at ASN Kidney Week.
Vitamin D deficiencies are common among patients on dialysis and may lead to increased risks for death, CVD, infection, fractures and hospitalization, according to Rona M. Smith, MD, MBBS, associate professor of nephrology at University of Cambridge.
“[Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes] says that for patients with [chronic kidney disease] stage 3 to 5, which includes patients on dialysis, that 25-hydroxyvitamin D

NASHVILLE — In this video, Elliot Tapper, MD, FAASLD, discusses a presentation from the ACG Annual Meeting about when it is safe to stop cancer therapy when it results in hepatitis.
“While it might feel inelegant to simultaneously turbocharge someone’s immune system to attack their cancer while also try to cool it off to avoid hepatitis, these are the kinds of compromises that we make for the patients we see each and every day,” Tapper, professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, told Healio.

Dermatology clinics contribute to climate change, but targeting supply chain practices can decrease their environmental impact, according to a study published in the International Journal of Dermatology.
“A substantial amount of evidence indicates that climate change and pollution broadly harm health and specifically play a role in many skin diseases, often disproportionately affecting our most vulnerable and marginalized patients,” Eva Rawlings Parker, MD, DTMH, FAAD, assistant professor of dermatology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Healio. “Healthcare is a notable part of that