Philadelphia Medicine Winter-Spring 2021 - 4

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Letter from the president

T

here's a war going on.

It's not a conventional
battle. Instead, it uses
strategies and tactics never seen before.

Natalia
Ortiz-Torrent,
MD, DFAPA, FACLP, FPCP,
and President, PCMS

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It's a prepared battle, with the right
weapons, against COVID-19 and the collateral
damage as a result of the epidemic: obesity,
great challenges with onset diabetes and
with severe respiratory symptoms and other
complications after recovery.

Corina Graziani, MD
Andy Andrews, Editor
Susan Robbins, MD, MPH, FAAP
Paul D. Siegel, MD

4

Philadelphia Medicine : Winter-Spring 2021

It's important in treating FAS syndrome
that parents understand it is not a blame-game
but a chance to work together to ensure the
infant's healthy growth into adulthood. That's
a battle worth winning.
Turchi said the program " should cease to
exist. This is 100% preventable. "

In this issue, we focus on a medical
" utility program " called MDCalc, a collection
of different tools for medicine, a single
resource for more than 600 different medical
calculators. There are about 30 COVID-19
calculators in development and, as of press
time, MDCalc has published about five of
them in the war against the pandemic.

And what's the battle been like for
restaurants with the strict lockdowns and
COVID-19 mitigation efforts?

Read what Dr. Joseph Habboushe - cofounder and CEO of a company, MD Aware
LLC, headquartered in New York, which
created MDCalc - has to say on Page 6.

" Last August, we did a survey of 100
small-business mom-and-pop operations
across the state to see how long they could
survive if nothing changes, " said Chuck
Moran, executive director of the Pennsylvania
Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association in
Harrisburg (www.PaTaverns.com), which
has about 500 members, including in the
Philadelphia area.

For pregnant mothers, it is important to
wage a battle for self-care and baby's health.
So it is critical to avoid alcohol consumption
during pregnancy.
Did you know there is no safe amount or
type of alcohol for an expectant mother to
drink, and there is no safe time?
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention studies have identified 0.2 to 1.5
infants with fetal alcohol syndrome, or FAS,
for every 1,000 live births in certain areas
of the United States. The most recent CDC
study analyzed medical and other records
and found FAS in 0.3 out of 1,000 children
from 7 to 9 years of age.

EDITORIAL BOARD

" In my experience, for a lot of families, the
diagnosis is a big part, " she said. " But it's often
what follows after that that is even harder. "

Dr. Renee Turchi, medical director of
the Center for Children with Special Health
Care Needs at St. Christopher's Hospital for
Children in Philadelphia, said it is important
to treat and track fetal alcohol spectrum
disorder, or FASD, victims long-term.

To mom-and-pop tavern and small
restaurant owners, according to an association
director, the COVID-19 pandemic has been
disastrous.

" At that time, our poll was running right
in line with national polls that suggested that
if nothing changes, the deeper this gets into
the pandemic, we can expect up to 70% not
making it, " Moran said.
Finally, another conflict to win is in
recognizing that chemical treatment in the
battle against substance abuse is not enough.
Medication-assisted treatment, or MAT,
is the use of medications, in combination
with counseling and behavioral therapies, to
provide a " whole-patient " approach to the
treatment of substance use disorders.
Dr. Maya Bass, assistant professor in
family, community and preventive medicine
at the Drexel University College of Medicine,
said that " one size does not fit all. And a
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Philadelphia Medicine Winter-Spring 2021

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