Endotracheal intubation skill acquisition by medical students

During the course of their training, medical students may receive introductory experience with advanced resuscitation skills. Endotracheal intubation (ETI – the insertion of a breathing tube into the trachea) is an example of an important advanced resuscitation intervention. Only limited data characterize clinical ETI skill acquisition by medical students. We sought to characterize medical student acquisition of ETI procedural skill.11Presented as a poster discussion on 17 October 2007 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in San Francisco, CA.The study included third-year medical students participating in a required anesthesiology clerkship. Students performed ETI on operating room patients under the supervision of attending anesthesiologists. Students reported clinical details of each ETI effort, including patient age, sex, Mallampati score, number of direct laryngoscopies and ETI success. Using mixed-effects regression, we characterized the adjusted association between ETI success and cumulative ETI experience.ETI was attempted by 178 students on 1,646 patients (range 1–23 patients per student; median 9 patients per student, IQR 6–12). Overall ETI success was 75.0% (95% CI 72.9–77.1%). Adjusted for patient age, sex, Mallampati score and number of laryngoscopies, the odds of ETI success improved with cumulative ETI encounters (odds ratio 1.09 per additional ETI encounter; 95% CI 1.04–1.14). Students required at least 17 ETI encounters to achieve 90% predicted ETI success.In this series medical student ETI proficiency was associated with cumulative clinical procedural experience. Clinical experience may provide a viable strategy for fostering medical student procedural skills

At the coalface and the cutting edge: general practitioners’ accounts of the rewards of engaging with HIV medicine

The interviews we conducted with GPs suggest that an engagement with HIV medicine enables clinicians to develop strong and long-term relationships with and expertise about the care needs of people living with HIV ‘at the coalface’, while also feeling connected with a broader network of medical practitioners and other professionals concerned with and contributing to the ever-changing world of science: ‘the cutting edge’. The general practice HIV prescriber is being modelled here as the interface between these two worlds, offering a rewarding opportunity for general practitioners to feel intimately connected to both community needs and scientific change

A new class of glycomimetic drugs to prevent free fatty acid-induced endothelial dysfunction

Background: Carbohydrates play a major role in cell signaling in many biological processes. We have developed a set of glycomimetic drugs that mimic the structure of carbohydrates and represent a novel source of therapeutics for endothelial dysfunction, a key initiating factor in cardiovascular complications. Purpose: Our objective was to determine the protective effects of small molecule glycomimetics against free fatty acid­induced endothelial dysfunction, focusing on nitric oxide (NO) and oxidative stress pathways. Methods: Four glycomimetics were synthesized by the stepwise transformation of 2,5­dihydroxybenzoic acid to a range of 2,5­substituted benzoic acid derivatives, incorporating the key sulfate groups to mimic the interactions of heparan sulfate. Endothelial function was assessed using acetylcholine­induced, endotheliumdependent relaxation in mouse thoracic aortic rings using wire myography. Human umbilical vein endothelial cell (HUVEC) behavior was evaluated in the presence or absence of the free fatty acid, palmitate, with or without glycomimetics (1µM). DAF­2 and H2DCF­DA assays were used to determine nitric oxide (NO) and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, respectively. Lipid peroxidation colorimetric and antioxidant enzyme activity assays were also carried out. RT­PCR and western blotting were utilized to measure Akt, eNOS, Nrf­2, NQO­1 and HO­1 expression. Results: Ex vivo endothelium­dependent relaxation was significantly improved by the glycomimetics under palmitate­induced oxidative stress. In vitro studies showed that the glycomimetics protected HUVECs against the palmitate­induced oxidative stress and enhanced NO production. We demonstrate that the protective effects of pre­incubation with glycomimetics occurred via upregulation of Akt/eNOS signaling, activation of the Nrf2/ARE pathway, and suppression of ROS­induced lipid peroxidation. Conclusion: We have developed a novel set of small molecule glycomimetics that protect against free fatty acidinduced endothelial dysfunction and thus, represent a new category of therapeutic drugs to target endothelial damage, the first line of defense against cardiovascular disease