SHOULD I GO TO URGENT CARE INSTEAD OF THE EMERGENCY

That’s a complex question. A patient should go to urgent care for any non-lifethreatening emergencies. Typically, we have a triage system called the emergency severity index (ESI). So ESI level 1 and 2 patients are emergencies, the type of patients that absolutely have to be seen in an emergency room, with cases like motor vehicle accidents, gunshot wounds, stabbings, heart attacks. But most of the time, patients are going to know symptoms and not conditions, so that’s really important to differentiate. The ESI levels 3, 4, and 5 typically can be seen in an urgent care center. Those are patients who usually either go home after treatment or possibly go to the hospital.

Urgent care situations would be simple lacerations, sprains, strains, the common u, bronchitis, acute asthma attacks, asthma exacerbations, or COPD exacerbations. A typical patient that would go to the emergency room would be somebody experiencing chest pain, loss of consciousness, or something called a sinkable event, like passing out; any patient with loss of limb or loss of eyesight obviously needs to be in ER and also, generally speaking, anything that’s going to require extra resources.

It’s safe to say, after almost 20 years spent in the emergency room, that 80 to 90 percent of the patients we see in the emergency room can be seen in urgent care. People show up in ER that don’t have emergencies and people show up in urgent care that should be in ER. Most ERs are bogged down with ESI levels 3, 4, and 5, and actually are seeing 10 to 20 percent of patients with true emergencies. Most urgent care centers don’t use that ESI triage system, but it’s something we do immediately in our urgent care centers.

The urgent care center also has to have the right physician there. A lot of urgent care centers are staffed with traditional family practitioners who don’t have a lot of ER experience. Our model includes both a family practice physician and the ER physician to handle our urgent care patients, so we can recognize a true emergency from a non-emergency.

The initial concept of FHV Health founder David C. Lew, M.D. was to create an urgent care service line so we can take care of our own patients’ needs as well as others in the community. This service line is a way to provide full-scope continuity of care for our patients.

For More Information

To learn more about FHV Health Urgent Care Division:

Leesburg

352.504.0220

27637 US HWY 27, Leesburg 9-7 Mon-Fri // 8-5 Sat-Sun

Lady Lake

352.350.5774

201 LaGrande Blvd, Lady Lake 9-7 Sun, Mon, Fri fhvhealth.com

How Does An

Dr. Maen Hussein: Ascertaining which breast cancer patients do not have to undergo chemotherapy treatment is now a much better-defined process because of a study recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine. According to the study’s findings, almost 70 percent of women with early stage breast cancer and an intermediate risk of recurrence can now safely skip chemotherapy after their tumors have been surgically removed.

Over 10,000 patients in the clinical study received a genomic test that estimates the individual risk that cancer will recur. Known as gene expression testing, this assessment helps determine which breast cancer patients are most likely to benefit from chemotherapy following breast surgery.

Those with a high-risk score (above 25) were advised to have chemotherapy, along with hormone therapy, which is standard treatment; those with a lowrisk score (0 to 10) would still need hormone therapy, but could forego chemo and avoid its sometimes harsh side effects.

Prior to this study, the group of patients with test results in the intermediate risk range (between 11 to 25) did not have a clear course of action with regard to chemotherapy; however, the results of the study found that, within the intermediate-risk group, all women over 50 whose tumors responded to hormone therapy and tested negative for the HER2 gene had no significant benefit by adding chemotherapy and could safely skip it. Chemo did offer some benefit for those 50 and younger who had a recurrence score between 16 and 25.

Florida Cancer Specialists is proud to have participated in this study. Its findings provide more certainty about which patients in the intermediate-risk group need chemotherapy and which do not. This is just one example of the incredible benefit that clinical research brings to both current and future cancer patients.

While this new research is welcome news and an important advancement, the findings are still limited to a minority of breast cancer patients. Despite the excitement around this research, it’s important that patients recognize the complexity of breast cancer and seek advice from their oncologist to better understand whether their personal risk results will change their recommended treatment, given this new research.

The Heart Institute at Leesburg Regional Medical Center has provided superior care for residents of Lake and Sumter Counties for 20 years. This includes comprehensive, individualized care for each patient and expert attention for cardiac or vascular conditions.

Dr. Karen Thompson, a cardiothoracic surgeon with Leesburg Ocala Heart Institute and on the medical staff at Leesburg Regional Medical Center, is considered the area’s heart valve expert. “Part of my training was completed at Northwestern University in Chicago under Dr. Patrick McCarthy, a world-renowned mitral valve expert.”

Dr. Thompson graduated with honors from Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1998 and has more than 20 years of diverse experience, including extensive expertise in valve repair and replacement.

The heart has four valves that work hard to ensure that blood flows in the right direction. If any of these valves become diseased or damaged, blood might not leave the heart at a normal rate, or might flow backwards into the heart. The two that most often require a doctor’s attention are the aortic valve and mitral valve.

“Many patients come in with stenosis or regurgitation and we