Cutting-Edge Medicine

Cutting-Edge Medicine: What Psychiatrists Need to Know offers a comprehensive overview of recent developments in cardiovascular illness, gastrointestinal disorders, transplant medicine, and premenstrual mood disorders. With today's rapid and continuous advances in medicine, this book will help psychiatrists become familiar with the new technologies and knowledgeable about how these state-of-the-art medical treatments -- high-technology cardiac care, organ transplantation, and new psychotropic, immunosuppressant, and antiretroviral drugs -- affect and interact with other disorders and medications. • Chapter 1: Mind and Heart: The Interplay Between Psychiatric and Cardiac Illness -- reviews intriguing findings on the links between psychiatric disorders (depression, anxiety) and cardiovascular disease. For example, depression appears to be an independent risk factor for the development and progression of coronary artery disease -- even in patients without preexisting heart disease. Also addressed are the neuropsychiatric effects of and psychosocial crises related to high-technology cardiac care and the cardiovascular side effects of psychotropic medications.• Chapter 2: Psychiatric Aspects of Gastroenterology -- discusses the evidence for a relationship between psychiatric/behavioral disorders and the organs of the gastrointestinal system. Examples include the documented comorbidity between psychiatric disorders and certain functional bowel disorders and the fact that behavioral problems such as alcohol abuse can lead to gastrointestinal disorders such as cirrhosis. Two tables are of particular interest: one lists psychiatric side effects of medications used for gastrointestinal disorders, and the other presents factors to be considered when prescribing psychotropic medications for patients with gastrointestinal disease.• Chapter 3: Psychiatric Overview of Solid Organ Transplantation -- explores the difficult road from pretransplant screening to posttransplant recovery, focusing on how the psychiatrist can help patients and families navigate the inevitable uncertainties, demands, and setbacks. Featured are four useful tables presenting 1) a sample pretransplant psychosocial evaluation, 2) antidepressant considerations in end-stage organ disease, 3) intensive care unit environmental changes to reduce distress and confusion, and 4) medications contributing to delirium onset.• Chapter 4: Psychiatric Disorders and the Menstrual Cycle -- summarizes what is known about the etiology and treatment of premenstrual mood disorders, which affect about 5% of menstruating women. Evidence suggests that vulnerability to premenstrual dysphoria is partly heritable and partly based on interactions between reproductive hormones and the neurotransmitters serotonin and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA).

A well-organized and highly informative compendium, this volume is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners of psychiatry and related disciplines.