Amanda Loudin

1 week ago | heart.org | Amanda Loudin

By Amanda Loudin, American Heart Association News Barbara Collura couldn't understand why she became breathless and sweaty simply from climbing the stairs to a balcony at a concert. At 58, the retired attorney from Delmar, New York, ran regularly, ate a healthy diet and had no serious medical issues. Climbing stairs never bothered her before. Why was it a problem now? Maybe, she thought, she caught the flu. The next day, she felt exhausted. She was again short of breath.

2 weeks ago | news.asu.edu | Amanda Loudin

Editor's note: This story was featured in the summer 2025 issue of ASU Thrive. By Amanda Loudin As parents of seven children, Julie and Dietrich Evans spend a lot of time thinking about how to pay for college tuition. So, when they moved to Fountain Hills, Arizona, in 2021, they were disappointed to learn the local high school didn’t offer a dual-enrollment option. They still had half their brood to usher through high school.

3 weeks ago | medscape.com | Amanda Loudin

It reads like the alphabet soup of healthcare: CDI, MRSA, CAUTI, and VAE. Those letters all fall under the category of hospital or healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs), and they can wreak havoc on patient care. On any given day, about 1 in 31 hospital patients has at least one HAI, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The good news: As of 2023, the numbers demonstrated an improvement from the decade prior, but even a single HAI case is one too many.

3 weeks ago | medscape.com | Amanda Loudin

Caring for complex patients — those experiencing a laundry list of conditions simultaneously — can be challenging for any physician. From incorporating multiple specialists to working with social workers, primary care physicians and more, figuring out the right calculus to help these particularly ill patients is often difficult. For hospitalists, that math can be even tougher. Unlike certain specialists and primary care physicians, hospitalists don’t know the majority of their patients well.

3 weeks ago | medscape.com | Amanda Loudin

In the United Sates, heart disease is the for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups. Not only that but also the number of heart-disease related deaths began increasing in 2012, following decades of progress. There are numerous theories as to why, but the bottom line as a primary care physician is that you’re going to have patients with high risk factors for heart issues.