EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 11/3/22

I’ve experienced an uptick in email solicitations over the last couple of weeks. It’s been fascinating to see the different content and how marketers are trying to use various strategies to get the reader’s attention.

Quite a few of them are going for the friendly-sounding approach, with short sentences and colloquial language. One of the repeat senders is further trying to build on the familiarity by mentioning the local weather and a nearby restaurant, which is fascinating but a bit odd since it’s in an adjacent town. I wonder what the algorithm looks like that says, “hey, let’s pick something close, but not creepy-stalker close” and throw that into the email. They even go so far to mention “location inferred from your company” regardless of the fact that my “company” is located hundreds of miles from the town they mentioned.

I strongly suspect that the emails are stemming from mailing lists related to the conferences I’m attending in the next couple of weeks. It’s one more way for meeting organizers to increase conference revenue, even though it’s annoying for the attendees. I don’t recall seeing any kind of “don’t sell my information” opt-out checkboxes during the registration processes for either of them, but there’s always a chance that I missed them along the way (although from past experience, it’s more likely that the conference didn’t give attendees the chance to opt out). Much like the weeks following HIMSS, I’m sure I’ll be spending quite a bit of time creating new email filters and wading through various pieces of junk email.

I do have to say that I’m a little nervous about my upcoming conference attendance, especially since flu cases are on the rise. The US has already seen more than 880,000 cases of lab-confirmed influenza, and that number doesn’t include the patients who are tested using in-office test kits at physician offices and urgent care centers or those patients who don’t present for testing. Physicians who care for children are concerned, since more than 75% of pediatric hospital beds are full. The leading viral strain at present is H3N2 influenza, which has in past years been associated with higher severity of illness for older adults and children.

Based on what I’ve seen during recent travels, I’m betting I will be one of the few people wearing a mask in crowded situations. I have to admit that I did enjoy the first HIMSS post-COVID, when a good number of people were masking, because I used to nearly always return from HIMSS with a sore throat, runny nose, and generally feeling of cruddiness consistent with a respiratory virus. Especially if you’re not going to mask, now is a great time to get a flu vaccine if you haven’t already received one. I know that lots of people are tired of thinking about contagion after the last couple of years, but the basic tenets of public health are always a good idea.

Speaking of vaccines, while some organizations have kept their vaccination requirements static, several leading universities are requiring students to receive the new bivalent COVID boosters. Schools requiring the new boosters include Harvard University, Yale University, Tufts University, Fordham University, and Wellesley College. Pushback is expected, and the comments on the article are all over the place. Uptake of the new booster has stalled in my community and my urgent care and emergency department colleagues are still exhausted, so some of us are dreading what might happen over the coming months when people move their activities inside and begin gathering for the holidays.

After a recent medical visit, I was flipping through my health system’s patient portal to see how various kinds of documents were rendering and whether there were any changes after the recent updates to requirements for release of information to patients. I found a visit from a few months ago that now had a visible visit note when it didn’t previously have one. I’m confident I would have remembered seeing a note previously based on the last line of the document: “This dictation was done with voice recognition software and may contain errors and omissions.” That’s certainly far from a vote of confidence for the treating provider. Maybe I’m old school, but I can’t imagine putting something like that on one of my notes or signing a note without proofreading and correcting it. I know that everyone in healthcare is stressed, but I’d be embarrassed to allow that in any of my patients’ charts. I had already decided to look for a new physician in this specialty and this just confirms my decision.

It’s common for researchers to create catchy names for their studies, so I was excited to see COSMOS, otherwise known as the COcoa Supplement and Multivitamin Outcomes Study. It’s a randomized clinical trial looking at cocoa extract supplement in comparison to a standard multivitamin with respect to cardiovascular risk reduction. A sub-study, COSMOS-Mind, will look at whether the cocoa extract supplement improves cognitive function and reduces the risk of dementia. Of course, I’m a big fan of chocolate (although usually in baked goods rather than in a capsule) so I’ve been keeping an eye out for the study outcomes, which finally came out this week.

The results were exactly opposite of what was expected. The multivitamin, rather than the cocoa supplement, was found to be more closely associated with improved cognitive function in older adults. The benefits were greatest in patients with a history of cardiovascular disease. Since nearly 90% of the study participants were non-Hispanic whites, the authors note that additional work is needed to confirm the findings, in particular with a more diverse patient population. Halloween passed in my neighborhood with only a small number of trick-or-treaters, so I’ve got plenty of cocoa on hand. I’m looking forward to the mood boost even if it’s not going to prevent dementia.

How was the Halloween traffic in your area? Will you be nibbling chocolates for weeks to come? Leave a comment or email me.

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