Medical Complications in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

This book serves as a practical resource to physiatrists who are providing daily inpatient care or who are sharing call on inpatients. It focuses on the most common medical complications for major rehabilitation diagnoses in adults who we see in a large rehabilitation hospital. The book covers the major topics including musculoskeletal disorders, spinal cord injury, multiple trauma and burns, stroke, traumatic brain injury, neurological and rheumatological disorders, cancer rehabilitation, and amputations written by physiatrists. It discusses the diagnosis and management of the majority of medical complications written by acute care specialists. The book also focuses on total hip arthroplasty (THA) and knee arthroplasty (TKA), and discusses any differences the practitioner might encounter while treating these patients after surgery in the inpatient unit. TKA goals are to facilitate the rapid recovery of the knee range of motion (ROM), strengthen the knee and hip musculature, and return to functional independence. Medical complications are common among patients undergoing inpatient rehabilitation, so the rehabilitation specialists need to be aware of them, know their treatments and prevention strategies. The complications can be direct or indirect. Those that might require transfer would more likely be as a result of indirect complications such as pneumonia, DVT with pulmonary embolism (PE), urinary tract infections (UTIs) that become systemic, hip fracture from fall, and gastrointestinal (GI) ulcer. Rehabilitation inpatient facilities host a heterogeneous group of patients. The age of such patients varies widely as does the range of their conditions, which includes neuromuscular diseases, brain injuries, stroke, spinal cord injuries, burns, fractures, prosthetic joint replacement, organ transplants, and conditioning following long-term hospitalizations. Special considerations are required in the evaluation of fevers since different patient groups may exhibit atypical symptoms of infection and the etiology of fever includes noninfectious causes.