13th October 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
Aortic aneurysm (AA) and aortic dissection (AD) are potentially fatal conditions. Without treatment, ruptured AA/AD carries a mortality rate of up to 90%. Population-based studies estimated the annual incidence to be 2.4 to 14.8 per 100 000 persons for AA (1-4) and 3.8 to 8.8 per 100 000 persons for AD (3,5-7). Although the incidence varied across countries, the number has universally increased over time (1-5,7).…
11th October 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
There are a few “rare” medical diagnoses that are stuck in our minds since medical school days. They may be rare but it’s important not to miss them. Temporal arteritis, also known as giant cell arteritis (GCA) is one of those not so common conditions. It is actually not that rare. It is the most frequent primary systemic vasculitis with an annual incidence rate of 15–25 per 100,000 in Caucasians ≥50 years of age and it primarily affects medium- and large-sized vessels (1,2). When do you suspect GCA?…
27th September 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
We know that hyperglycaemia is associated with increased cardiovascular mortality. We also know that in patients with diabetes, hypoglycaemia is also associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. What about patients who don’t have diabetes and have low blood glucose (<4.0 mmol/L)? I am sure we all have patients who do not have diabetes but on screening blood tests, have BSL lower than 4.0 mmol/L.…
13th August 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
We all know the usefulness of highly sensitive troponin (hsTn) in diagnosing acute myocardial infarction in daily practice. hsTn has also been demonstrated to be strongly associated with recurrent events in patients with stable atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) (1-7). However, hsTn is not routinely used in clinical practice in this population of patients.…
27th July 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
Just pause and think for just one minute. Over the last 12 months, how many atrial fibrillations have you picked up incidentally on ECG? How many silent old acute myocardial infarct have you seen on ECG in a patient with diabetes? How many ST and T wave changes have you seen on ECG which suggest ischaemia which requires further investigations?…
12th June 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
Like me, you probably have come across homocysteine, methionine and MTHFR gene polymorphism from time to time and are aware of some connection between those things and cardiovascular disease but not quite sure how to connect them together. Which patient should we be checking homocysteine levels in? What about the MTHFR gene polymorphism?…
22nd May 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
Let’s imagine we have a pregnant woman who tested positive for β-thalassaemia trait (minor) on antenatal screening blood tests. If both partners carry the same thalassaemia trait, there is a 25% chance of having a baby with thalassaemia major. Thus, we are advised to screen her partner for thalassaemia as well. Say, the partner’s blood picture is normal with no microcytosis and high performance cation-exchange chromatography (HPLC) shows normal levels of HbA2 and HbF.…
28th April 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
The incidence and mortality from coronary artery disease in Australia continue to decline. Coronary revascularisation consisting of percutaneous coronary intervention and coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) is rapidly increasing as the standard of care for coronary artery disease. There have been numerous trials comparing CABG with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and so far, no studies have convincingly shown any overall difference between the two revascularisation strategies.…
10th April 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
It’s amazing how quickly news travel during a pandemic. A bit of information came out a few weeks ago that suggests SARS-CoV-2 enters the body via the angiotensin converting enzyme receptor 2 (ACE2) present in abundance in pulmonary tissues. Initial reports out of Wuhan found that patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes and hypertension were at higher risks of getting the infection as well as developing the severe form of Covid-19 if they do get the infection.…
28th March 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
Covid-19 belong to the subfamily Coronavirinae in the family of Coronaviridae of the order Nidovirales, and this subfamily includes four genera: α-coronavirus, β-coronavirus, γ-coronavirus, and δ-coronavirus. The new 2019 nCoV (or Covid-19), which belongs to β-coronavirus can infect the lower respiratory tract and cause pneumonia in humans, but it seems that the symptoms are milder than SARS and MERS.…
25th March 2020, Dr Chee L Khoo
They tell us that patients need to have 1) returned from overseas (any country will do now) OR been in contact with someone confirmed to have coronavirus infection AND 2) Flu symptoms with FEVER before we swab for Covid-19. Otherwise, we just reassure the patient that no they can’t have the swab and yes, they probably don’t have coronavirus infection.…
I told you last week that I am no expert and despite that I did write an article about the coronavirus. Well, I am doing that again this week but this time with a little more information and little bit more “expertise”. We have been getting oodles of feeds from many sources and I don’t know about you, but, all these bulletins really don’t help us working at the frontline.…